Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure: The Empire Strikes Back

This article is non-canon within the Star Wars Legends continuity.

This article covers a Star Wars Legends subject that was published under the Infinities label or that Lucasfilm otherwise declared non-canon within the Legends continuity.

Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure: The Empire Strikes Back is a non-canon Legends junior novel written by Christopher Golden and illustrated by Phil Franké. It is the second Choose Your Own Star Wars Adventure book, and it was published on August 10, 1998 by Bantam Skylark. The novel adapts the 1980 film Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, with the reader taking the role of Luke Skywalker's best friend and choosing which storyline to follow.

Publisher's summary[]

What price would you pay to learn the ways of a Jedi knight?

The fight against evil rages on. You have the power to decide your future—and the fate of the galaxy. You could go to Dagobah and learn the ways of the Force from Yoda, but Darth Vader tempts you with the power of the dark side. Will you help your friends in the Rebellion fight the Emperor, or will you betray Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and all who love you to seize unimagined power for yourself?

Plot summary[]

Although the first book allowed for multiple different endings, this book goes on as if all the events from A New Hope took place. You are Luke Skywalker's best friend and a lieutenant in the Rebel Alliance currently stationed at Echo Base on the planet Hoth. When the Empire discovers your base, you are given the choice to either join Luke and head for Dagobah to further your Jedi training, or you can go with Princess Leia and Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon to evade the Empire.

Possible routes and endings[]

Leave Luke to die by the wampa and try to get back to Echo Base, but freeze to death (non-canon).
Do not go with Han's plan to cut open the tauntaun and try to walk back while everyone dies (non-canon).
Join Han and the others, meet Lando, get captured by the Empire, and escape.
- Try to fight Darth Vader and get sent to Kessel (non-canon).
- Han is encased in carbonite and taken by Boba Fett.
  - Let Lando help you escape but fail to rescue Han. Rescue Luke and plan Han's liberation.
  - Use the Force to escape and confront Fett to rescue Han from from falling into the clutches of Jabba the Hutt (non-canon).
Try to escape the space worm in the Millennium Falcon without everyone and get destroyed by an asteroid (non-canon).
Join Luke in the Battle of Hoth, and then travel to Dagobah and train with Yoda to become a Jedi (all of the following are non-canon).
- Run away from Yoda and get left behind by Luke. Yoda finds you and trains you to become a Jedi.
- Do not enter the dark side cave and return to the Rebel Alliance to become Rogue Leader.
Team up with Luke on Bespin and defeat Darth Vader. Luke kills Vader and you plan Han's rescue (non-canon).
- Or rescue your friends and foil Boba Fett's plan and save Han (non-canon).
Get captured by Darth Vader on Hoth and venture on the dark side of the Force and be left with the choice to betray your friends or not (all of the following are non-canon).
- Refuse Vader's offer and get sent to Kessel.
- At Cloud City, help Lando rescue Han and the others; they escape but you are captured by Vader and imprisoned.
- Rejoin the Rebels, spending the foreseeable future attempting to resist the pull from the dark side.
- Hand your friends over to the Imperials and become a general of the Empire.