The Past and Times of Yore: Jedi Knight II, Jedi Outcast, new look, same Kyle & friends

Release Date: March 26th 2002
Genre: First/Third person Shooter
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: LucasArts
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox, Gamecube, Mac OSX
Players: 1 and Multiplayer
Classification: T (Teen)

I have a bit of confession to make, as you may know from my review of Dark Forces I had obtained a number of Star Wars titles from the site ww.gog.com (Good old Games) and had intended to play through the Jedi Knight series of games that I have only played one of so far that being Jedi Academy and so after Dark Forces the next one on the list should have been Dark Forces II though in my brief attempt to play this I found that it was very awkward and I unfortunately couldn’t get my mouse to work right and even when I got it going the graphics and jerky controls of the game didn’t cut it for me and unfortunately I couldn’t keep going. It reminded me of that awful Fifth Element game on Playstation which was made around the same time, I think that games around that era had that kind of awkward look and feel to them with the transition to full 3D, where I felt that I would rather play games like Super Mario World on the SNES with their crisp and clean pixels to something like Driver 2 whereas although I’d hate to say it the gameplay was good but the graphics were a bunch of mush. In fact I think that during this era games that were of cartoony characters like the Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot series’ looked the best as the games that were trying to be realistic just didn’t look very good at all, though I spose back then you couldn’t expect much could you.

Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2, oh my eyes

 In any case I wimped out yes I admit, I’ve got this fascination with playing updated and graphically overhauled versions of old games, I love it, or even just playing games on max settings and seeing how much better they look to when I played them back then. Though, fortunately all of the game’s cutscenes have been uploaded to youtube so you can basically watch what happens and interestingly they were made using a mixture of FMV and 3D animation. To sum things up Kyle Katarn still a mercenary along with his companion Jan Ors investigates the death of his father and finds and defeats the evil Dark Jedi Jerec and stops him from corrupting the Valley of the Jedi. The expansion pack to that Mysteries of the Sith is where you play as Mara Jade as a companion to Kyle Katarn who is now a Jedi, Mara goes on a series of Missions while Kyle goes to Dromund Kaas and Mara finds him in the Dark Force Temple or “Sith” Temple rather and finds him insane with the dark side, but he recovers and swears off the force reuniting with Jan Ors. Having watched the whole thing now I have come to two conclusions FMV acting in games is as terrible then as it is now, and damn is Jan Ors hot in those videos. One last thing because I played Jedi Academy a lot first I’m going to try not to refer back to it so much since chronologically it’s set after this one.

Kyle and Jan in the Dark Forces 2 Cutscenes, this was one of the few where it wasn't so goddamn dark

So then we come to Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, made in 2002, the first in the series to be made by Raven Software and was powered by the Quake III Arena engine. As you would probably know this one was the precursor to Jedi Knight : Jedi Academy  which was unofficially called Jedi Knight 3 but was actually the 4^th in the series and as you know from my review, the first one I had played. When I got the rest from GOG.com I had intended to go all of the way through them including the X-wing space combat simulation series and the Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) series, both of which I have yet to finish, but with X-wing series as well I have skipped some too. Jedi Outcast was (and sometimes still is) hailed as one of the best lightsaber combat simulations ever. Having played it now both in singleplayer and multiplayer at a LAN, I could almost agree but not quite due to the lack of dual sabres and saber-staffs, I did find the Lightsaber combat very similar though as both games were made by the same developer. The gameplay wasn't always just shooting and Lightsabering of course, there was a great section involving an AT-ST which was heaps of fun and much longer then the Jedi Academy one. 

The name says it all, kicking ass with an AT-ST

The story begins with Kyle still in his bounty hunter ways with Jan accepting a mission from Mon Mothma to investigate an imperial Remanent base on Kejim though Kyle is taken aback slightly when shown some cortosis crystals which are used to make lightsabers as he no longer wants anything to do with being a Jedi.

Kyle, Jan and Mon Mothma, this time all of the cutscenes are done in the game engine.

Through investigations on Kejim and Artus Prime where the crystals are being mined Kyle and Jan find that they are being studied and also used in experiments on living beings, I had fun doing these sections with just weapons as you obviously don’t have your Lightsaber at this point so I played in first person mode. Though you soon meet Desann, a Chistori Dark Jedi who used to be under the tutelage of Luke Skywalker (who Kyle mentioned once in Jedi Academy as I remember) and his apprentice Tavion Axmis who you all know as the main antagonist from Jedi Academy as well, though this time she is second fiddle to her master.

Tavion and Desann

In your first fight with Desann you are basically set up to lose as you have no force powers so you have no chance against him, it’s only afterwards that when Jan is captured and apparently killed, Kyle goes to the Valley of the Jedi to regain his Force powers and then to Yavin 4 to retrieve his lightsaber from Luke Skywalker. The trials that Kyle re-does and a lot like the ones in Jedi Academy though slightly different, you eventually get your Lightsaber and swing it up in Nar Shaddaa when you have a run-in with Lando Calrissian and then head to Cloud City on Bespin.

Well there's another familiar face

On Bespin Kyle battles the Reborn for the first time, these reborn were actually seen in Jedi Academy as the New Reborn along with the Disciples of Ragnos and are basically the same kind of fight as that game, all dodging and lightsaber swinging and force using fun combat. After battling and defeating Tavion on Bespin, Kyle learns that Jan is indeed alive and Desann and Tavion had tricked him into revealing the location of the Valley of the Jedi. He also soon learns that Desann, with the help of Admiral Galak Fyyar planned to use the Reborn to rebuild the Galactic Empire though I noticed only when reading the wiki was that this was part of a larger plan involving another character called Lord Hethrir and his Empire Reborn which itself is a faction of the Imperial Remnant whew we’re going real meta now. Though eventually through a very lengthy level Kyle defeats Fyarr in his cortosis-based armor (I actually just read something about that which would have made it much easier to beat him XD) and we get a brief cameo from Rogue Squadron who blow up his ship. 

Admiral Galak Fyarr in his Cortosis Armor, and Kyle throwing his lightsaber apparently.

 Kyle then goes to the Jedi Temple on Yavin, fights off the troops there eventually teaming up with the other Jedi to defeat the reborn and Desann himself who was kind of a pushover really despite his huge size and lightsaber reach, I noted that Kyle say that the Reborn are no match for the Jedi as they have been artificially infused with force power and have not had any training in adapting and understanding the force. Kyle decided to be a Jedi again then he and Jan then go to the beaches of Spira and got it on, well I hope.

Kyle defends the Temple with his fellow Jedi buddies

So with both Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight being made by Raven software they were obviously very similar in most things the most obvious being graphics and gameplay. The shooting and lightsaber fighting was pretty much exactly the same with the same controls, I used guns at the start obviously but didn’t use them much after that except to snipe on several occasions, the force powers were the same as usual getting better and more powerful as you go along. I can’t think of much that was different from Academy, it would have obviously been massively different and improved from Dark Forces II but I’m not gonna go there.

Ahh the good old Stormtrooper blaster rifle

One thing I did find is that I regretted playing it on the “Jedi” difficulty because man there were so many goddamn enemies with lots of hits points, I mean seriously when I shoot someone in the face with a gun or slice them with a lightsaber I want them to die, not just shrug it off but of course you could say the same for me. I eventually had to turn off the 360 degree slow-mo rotation that I loved so much as there were simply too many enemies and it got tedious, next time I will definitely go for the Padawan difficulty. Another thing I found difficult was the objectives and level design, sometimes I had no idea where to go and what to do, though that’s often the case in games I haven’t played before especially Dark Forces and I had to refer to online guides which wouldn’t have been so bad if the game didn’t brighten up with desktop so much that text was almost unreadable when you alt-tabbed. And before you ask yes I did use a trainer with this game as well which worked though I had to keep re-enabling it after every loading screen which got a tad annoying.

Kyle blasts and cuts through a crapload of droids and troopers and eventually confronts Tavion.  Notice how I get frustrated and switch to guns halfway through.

Other than that the game was good and I thoroughly enjoyed the story as I finally knew what happened before Jedi Academy. The game worked well through the GOG system, the graphics were good as usual as the Quake III Arena engine doesn’t disappoint and the sound and music was good too. One of the things I found both awesome and funny was the way the game has non-scripted fighting, so for example in scenes where enemies are fighting it’s basically like two bots fighting each other in multiplayer and looks absolutely ridiculous but it’s great to see that you can be helped by non-playable characters in the story mode. 


Luke and Desann have a non-scripted duel with Luke getting killed at least twice, while Kyle boards the Doomgiver.

I didn’t delve much into the multiplayer, to be honest I didn’t much in Jedi Academy either though we did have a few random free-for-all battles at a LAN which was a lot of fun and absolutely ridiculous as people were playing as all kinds of characters. Some appropriate such as Kyle Katarn’s model but others looked ridiculous playing as imperial officers and Stormtroopers, I didn’t know it then but the Shadow Trooper Model I played as actually did use Lightsabers in the game.

The Ridiculous looking lightsaber battles at Bluewire Lan, footage from me and Ramrod.

I would still say Jedi Academy is the better of the two as being able to create your own Jedi and be a student in the Academy is much more rewarding not to mention the ability to wield dual sabers or saber staffs, nevertheless Jedi Outcast had a great story I was glad to finally get through it. So it looks like I’ve come to the end of the Jedi Knight series having skipped two games now XD, Hopefully I’ll like Knights of the Old Republic since it was made around the same time which will be next on the list of the Jedi Lightsaberin’ series just as X-wing vs Tie Fighter will be next on the Starfightering series if I ever finish Tie Fighter that is.

JD

9/10

Things I liked:

Great gameplay, lightsaber combat especially

Great, engaging story

Use of non-scripted NPC fighting both innovative and laughable.

Multiplayer is awesome fun

Things I didn’t like:

Levels dragged on a bit “oh gawd not another huge room of Stormtroopers”

No Dual Sabers or Sabre Staff :(

The Jedi Outcast Trailer

Force pushing the boundaries