Set a route for all requests within a plugin I’m trying to use a plugin to set up a site route that will direct every page request to a special template.

This is what I’ve set up in my plugin file.

public function registerSiteRoutes()
    {
        return array(
            '*' =&gt; 'special/index',
        );
    }


Using the above doesn’t seem to do anything. If I replace * with a word, then try to visit that URL I get something different but not my template.
would love it if someone could put me right here

UPDATE
If I change tact a bit and route to a controller using a specific url then I can see it gets there

public function registerSiteRoutes()
    {
        return array(
            'beer' =&gt; array('action'=&gt;'beer/index'),
        );
    }


But I can't figure out how to catch all requests  using * doesn't appear to do anything

UPDATE
@robin helped me out massively here with some more info outside the comments.

Basically  in Craft 2 the plugin routes get called first no matter what. So I can hijack the init method to load my special template

UPDATE 2 
I made this into a Craft 2 plugin. 
https://github.com/moresoda/craft-emergency-mode

Craft 3 plugin coming soon.
You can use the catch all route 

'catchAll' =&gt; ['site/offline'],


For yii1 you can also do 

'&lt;url:(.*)&gt;' =&gt; 'controller/action'