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Retrospective: Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Article
Retro PC Article by John Walker
Page 1 of 3.
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Let me attempt to walk you through the order in which the Jedi Knight games appeared. It began with Star Wars: Dark Forces featuring Kyle Katarn's adventures, working in parallel with the original Star Wars films.
Kyle was but a soldier back then, but soon showed a propensity for the Force, which brings us to this, the peculiarly named Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. This is not to be confused with the expansion pack, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith. Nor indeed Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, which was of course followed by Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Erk. We shall call this game Jedi Knight, and all shall understand.
1997's Jedi Knight picks up a year after the end of Return of the Jedi. Katarn learns that a Dark Jedi, Jerec, has killed his father. Returning to his father's home he learns details of a map to the Valley of the Jedi where he will be able to avenge his father's demise, and rather significantly, gets given a lightsabre.
It turns out Katarn has latent Force powers - if only he'd known when fighting those Dark Troopers before! This of course means Jedi Knight becomes a far more elaborate shooter, not only offering the glowy fun-stick for fighting, but a collection of nano-powers (although of course Lucas wouldn't break that terrible news for a long, long time). So with the help of his buddy Jan Ors, it's time to leap around the galaxy.
I'm not even that keen on Star Wars and I find seeing an T-4a shuttle up close quite exciting.
And by crikey, it's good. It's very, very good. It's so good that you can only look down at the ground, shake your head in confusion, and slowly pen a letter to LucasArts asking them what the hell they were thinking when they abandoned FPS development and handed the reins over to Raven. With this, Dark Forces, and indeed the enormous Mysteries of the Sith expansion, LucasArts demonstrated a rare and brilliant skill with a genre that's so often so mediocre.
I'm not really interested in which game did what first, but more which games did what brilliantly. So while Jedi Knight was one of the first games to embrace Direct 3D, and an early adopter of 3D sound and dynamic lighting, the chronology does not matter. What matters is how effectively these tools were employed here, in such a way that they still maintain an impact 12 years later.
Certainly we take it for granted now that you can light a dark corridor, it doesn't make it any less charming to explore the danker areas of the game by wielding your lightsabre as a green torch. There's no doubt that we instinctively explore levels using ambient clues, but this doesn't diminish the thrill of hearing an AT-ST walker somewhere near to the left, and knowing to run. (Oh, and talking of walkers - I know there should be more complicated, nuanced reasons for choosing your alignment in the Star Wars universe, but one side has AT-ATs and AT-STs, and the other doesn't. Decision made.)
But before you get to lightsabres, Force powers and walkers, there's a surprising amount of old-school shooter to play through first. Katarn's adventures begin very modestly, fighting Gamorreans, Gran and Rodian with traditional blaster weapons and thermal detonators. In fact, it's very much in-keeping with the style of Dark Forces, keeping its cards close to its chest for a surprising amount of time.
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Comments: 1-35 of 35 in total
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+10
I prefer just shouting KAATTTAAAARRRRRNNN in a bellowing, hammy way.
Some of the level design was outstanding in this game and they were so damned large! I loved that confusing ship-going-down bit far more than when Tomb raider attempted it recently, for instance. I remember feeling woozy when looking down from (Nar Shadda I think?) the high skyscrapers into the city below. Although once you get the lightsaber, you very rarely need to switch weapons after that, it's still highly entertaining. KAATTTAAAARN! |
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Penguinzoot
11/10/09 @ 13:15
+2
Loved it. Must still have the disc somewhere, wish I could find it :)
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+1
JK is great, I still prefer a good blaster by my side and didn't like it a much as DF but remember the envy I had at the time as I watched on a friends PC the demo.
Once I got my first PC this and X-wing Alliance were my very first PC games, good times! JK evolved into a wicked series though with JK: JA still one of my fav PC games. Picked up the Jedi pack off Steam but need to do DF before I hit the JKs. Anyone know if LA are doing anything about no music on the Steam version of JK? (a crime for any SW game HOW did LA contemplate doing it????) I do wish LA would return to these glory days of these games though, I look forward to their Steam re-releases more than their new games and that's a shame :( |
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MisterHands
11/10/09 @ 13:19
+4
I loved this game something fierce. But I have to ask - did you actually use the lightsaber in the first person? I always just assumed everyone switched over to third-person for that. Anyway - 8T88! Whee!
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+2
Indeed an awesome game, though it seems to be critizied a lot nowadays for the "unrealistic" level design (as in you have to climb through sewers to get to an important destination. You might ask yourself how other people get there then) and the still rather conventional shooter gameplay. At least I get the impression when I read the reviews on Mobygames...
...yet, it's incredibly fun, did some things differently, and went some steps forward to include a narrative into an ego shooter. Maybe it wasn't brave enough on that front, but it's still awesome. Oh, one niggle: "Manny in the Monkey Island games" Either that's Manny in the Grim Fandango game or Murray in the Monkey Island games. Choose. |
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+4
Bloody great game - in fact, one of the last decent ones I remember from LucasArts.
And now seeing that LA couldn't be bothered to fix issues to run on modern PCs, it's nice to see that Shit LucasArts of present can still have a hand in ruining the Great LucasArts of old. So just like George himself then.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 11/10/09 @ 14:53
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obscured021
11/10/09 @ 13:52
+2
I played them all and loved them all, some people are still playing the 3rd game online, i cranked up my copys after reading this, dark forces looks very old school but the rest look great.
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0
This was the first real PC game I got into. Spent countless hours on my Jedi quest, learning both the way of the game, using a PC and PC gaming at all once. One of the best games ever made tbh, I still fondly remember playing the demo in an early PC zone, where the disc had some dance music that accompanied the demo if the CD was in the drive.
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+3
This was a truly awesome game! Deep, thought provoking levels, created a game that took a decent length of time to complete. None of this 6 hours of single player gameplay rubbish (yes, I'm looking at you COD4)!
However, the game has not aged well at all. Technical issues are rife, a quick glimpse at Steam forums will give you a clear idea of how bad. The game also looks ugly as hell, but a modified enhancement pack has been created for those with the original CD version (if you can get it to work). And the lack of in game music is not completely unsurprising (the original game CD is a data/audio hybrid), but previous games have managed to get around this issue (by converting to MP3) so I don't know why LA wasn't able to. It really is a travesty that LA didn't release an updated version. I seriously would've paid full price if they had. Fingers crossed they allow someone to update it, like TellTale did with Monkey Island. |
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0
8T88? No matter how many times I say it nor how I pronounce it (Eighty-eight-eight, Eighty-eightyeight, Eight-tee-eight-eight, and so on) I don't get the joke.
Do I need to speak english as my first langauge or have an enourmous knowledge of the Star Wars universe in order to understand what it's all about? |
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YourMessageHere
11/10/09 @ 16:25
+2
Hmm, I confess I loved this game when it was new, but now, I smell rose tinted specs. This was always a groundbreaking game in a lot of ways, but a lot of the love for it is IMO more to do with it being the first time anyone got to play with a lightsabre than the game genuinely being all-round excellent. The level design was patchy, often truly excellent but sometimes dire (timed falling ship level rrrrrrRRRRRR!); the engine itself was great in its large levels but simultaneously seemed ropey in the way that iD or Epic or Valve's game engines never have; the boss fights were highly tiresome, and I distinctly remember thinking that the game was ugly as hell even at the time.
I wish I knew why these games kept messing with the weapons. Almost all the best ones disappear in the next game. The rail launcher from this one, for example; I did enjoy embedding sizzling explosives in stormtroopers and watch them running futilely in terror before detonating, but that weapon never saw the light of day again. Similarly the Mortar from the first game; that was cool and fun, and never came back. People always complain that the non-lightsabre weapons seemed extraneous, but successive games seemed to make them more and more pedestrian. Ho hum. |
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0
Played through the game for the first time now with the Steam release. I was impressed by what an unprecedented sense of scale Lucasarts seemed to be aiming for with every new location; whether it was a space station, a mountain range or a city you could bet that the level designers had cranked up the size of everything to 11. No other FPS has done anything like it before or since.
That said, I wasn't too happy with the lightsaber action and force powers. I just never managed to wrap my head around the sword swinging mechanics and found myself struggling mightily with each and every duel.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 11/10/09 @ 20:39
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0
My first keyboard/mouse-based FPS. Oh, the memories.
Used to play multiplayer on the zone all the time when I was a kid. Played all the custom mods and loads of custom maps. I remember at one point people were announcing a new TC once a week! None of them ever got finished though :( Not sure I'd want to play it again now though. IMO it's not aged well. |
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Penguinzoot
11/10/09 @ 19:58
0
[...] but now, I smell rose tinted specs.
Well, certainly there may be an element of that. Just wish I could find my disc to make sure ... /rummages some more |
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+1
I was watching a YouTube walkthrough of the first level of this game. There really is massive difference in terms of level design here when compared to most modern games. Modern games, while you do occassionally move up and down through a level, are set on quite linear paths. From what I've seen of Dark Forces II, and from what I've played of the first, there's way more open-ness to the levels, with the game holding your hand much less than they do now.
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The_Inquisitor
11/10/09 @ 23:51
+1
No music on the Steam versions? The game was great because of its atmosphere and the music was an important factor, so I can't imagine it without it.
My memories of the game usual start with the first few levels in the Tie Fighter hangers, and with the music, it felt so much like being in the Star Wars universe. Such a great game. |
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Scott_Kevill
12/10/09 @ 02:27
0
Although Zone shut down in June 2006, you can still play Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Mysteries of Sith online in GameRanger. The multiplayer holds up surprisingly well.
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0
There IS a "System Shock 2"-style update for Dark Forces 2.
Look here: http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?pr... Updated models! It looks a LOT better. |
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0
Using this link (inside a link) from the steam forums will get the 3d up and running again as I have used it myself and it works.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/sh... Picking up the jedi knight steam collection has been one of this years best purchases for me, even though I do have all of them on disks stored up in the attic. |
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Britesparc
12/10/09 @ 14:34
0
This game is amazing. I last played it a few years ago, at uni, and it still held up really, really well. It's the sort of game that's rarely made anymore - vast levels, lots of different routes, high walls and steep drops, massive enemies, tons of bad guys around...
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0
the crashing star destroyer level was just the best level i'd ever played in an FPS ... i love and loved everything about this game .. and still wonder why more Star wars games didn't allow you to whip the guns out of your enemy's hands.
a classic at a time where most Star Wars games were going to be good |
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DanMarchant
12/10/09 @ 16:05
0
Must resist...... It's not the money... I just know these games will suck away my life AGAIN.
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VelvetFistIronGlove
25/10/09 @ 17:53
0
I dug out my old CDs of this an am playing through again. I’ve not got the music working, so instead my other computer is sitting beside, looping through the 3 star wars soundtracks on random, which works nicely :D
This game really is a blast. |
Comments: 1-35 of 35 in total
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