Written by: Rik
Date posted: January 25, 2022

In the late 90s, rumours abounded that the sequel to Jedi Knight would be a game called Obi-Wan, only for that game to be belatedly given Xbox exclusivity amid slightly opaque PR speak about the restrictions of technology and ‘heightened quality standards’. Which of course provoked some outrage among PC gamers, as well as another round of ‘is PC gaming dead?’ type editorials and comments.

When it came out, however, rather like the prequel film series upon which it was based, Obi-Wan was generally regarded as a load of bum, leading to a possible reinterpretation of those statements about quality standards, as well as a realisation that the next great Star Wars action game had not, in fact, been denied to PC gamers.

Instead, a true sequel to Jedi Knight was hurried into production and turned around in 18 months or so, with the assistance of FPS spin-off specialists Raven. And instead of featuring Ewan McGregor era Obi-Wan, we’re back in the world of bearded mercenary-turned-Jedi Kyle Katarn. Once a gruff, ‘no match for a good blaster’ type, he later grew a beard and learned the ways of the Force, which, in this game, he now seems to have abandoned again.

We’re also into post Return of the Jedi, expanded universe territory here, with Kyle and companion Jan Ohrs working for the New Republic (the former Rebel Alliance) who are still battling ex-Imperial forces known as the Remnant. When Mon Mothma sends Kyle and Jan to investigate a supposedly abandoned Remnant outpost, they get more than they bargained for, triggering around 20 hours of blasting action that at some point involves Kyle changing his mind about the Force again and taking up the lightsaber.

Until that point, though, it’s fairly standard FPS fare, as you blast stormtroopers and other Imperial/Remnant foes in the tradition of Dark Forces. The early action is rather leaden, however, with the initial few levels failing to inspire and including some baffling symbol-based puzzles. Your standard blaster is a bit pony too, especially in the default puny slow fire mode; switching to alternate fire on the right mouse button provides more of a quick-fire, but less accurate, mega-blast.

Unlike in the films, stormtroopers (your most common early foe) don’t just stand there waiting to be shot, either, as they waddle away to find cover in a mildly comical manner. It may well be an improvement in AI terms, but in my view, stormtroopers aren’t meant to be anything more than cannon fodder. Elsewhere, despite featuring lots of authentic Star Wars things, including the background music, the overall SW feeling is a little lacking, possibly due to the post-ROTJ setting, with the familiar refrain of ‘Stop, Rebel scum!’ from Dark Forces now replaced by the much less pleasing ‘Stop, Republic scum!’

(The extremely nerdy point to put forward here would be that Remnant forces would surely not recognise the New Republic and continue to consider themselves the legitimate power, therefore ‘Rebel scum!’ would still have been more accurate and appropriate. Here, it’s like a memo went around asking all Remnant personnel to note new guidelines for the appropriate vocabulary to use upon discovering an enemy and taunting him or her, with 100% uptake).

Barring an early Endor-style caper that involves the dodging, and then blowing up of, AT-STs while trying to disable an ion cannon, it’s rather pedestrian stuff, and things only really pick up when you finally grab your lightsaber, and run into some surprisingly high-profile names from the film series. First, you have to get your lightsaber back from none other than Luke Skywalker, wearing the same black outfit and slightly pompous demeanour from Return of the Jedi, while there’s also a supporting role for Lando Calrissian, which includes a trip to Cloud City. (Mark Hamill doesn’t feature as Luke, although Billy Dee Williams returns on voice-over duties for Lando).

With saber in hand, the action defaults to a third-person view, allowing you to dodge, jump and carve your way through rooms full of foes with considerably more ease. And, as you progress, there are also force powers to unlock and use, although the previous game’s system of allowing you to make choices between Dark and Light side powers has been abandoned, with new powers simply becoming available at a fixed point in time between levels.

Your correspondent wasn’t very good at Jedi Knight (or Dark Forces, for that matter) but from memory (by which I mean, this distant and dusty write-up) the rudimentary Force powers and lightsaber combat failed to fully convince. Here, it’s altogether more authentic-feeling, particularly against hapless generic foes, using Force push to knock them to the ground, or Force pull to whip their weapons away. You can also use Force speed, to slow down time, Max Payne style, allowing you to run rings around them. When you combine all of that with the defensive capabilities of the saber, which blocks most blaster fire with ease, you do finally get a taste of what it might be like to be the all-powerful Jedi of the game’s title.

Perhaps to counter this feeling, some extremely annoying enemies recur. The thermal detonator lobbing baddies (the three-eyed creatures known, apparently, as Gran) can soon put paid to any Jedi magic by blowing you up. More irritating are the snipers, beaming you dead from miles away as soon as you step out of cover. This was, I recall, a growing trend in early 00s shooters, and though it may seem slightly more realistic than the previous trope of opening a door to find several baddies with rocket launchers trained on you, any scenario in which you are doomed to die unless you’ve already been through it before and know what to expect is a little bit cheap, in my view. Plus, these snipers really are hidden far away, in distant spots, seemingly able to lock on and pull the trigger almost immediately.

Eventually, you also get to fight lightsaber-wielding foes, too, although without spoiling the plot too much, the majority aren’t actually true Jedi but drones of one sort or another. Some actual Dark Jedi do pop up, but they act more as boss characters. I do have to admit at this point that the subtleties and intricacies of the Force powers and lightsaber combat proved more difficult to master when faced with similarly-armed enemies, and success was achieved more easily through a combination of luck and unscientific button-mashing than when I tried more thoughtful approaches.

Your opponents scurry about in the same manner as you and all the jumping and slicing is a far cry from the choreographed swordplay of the films. By default, Force powers are linked to the function keys, which is worth changing to ensure those you need at hand most often are easy to access. But for me, the prospect of elegantly deploying combinations seemed a distant prospect. And at some point I realised that even against stormtroopers my main tactic was just pushing them down repeatedly and then slicing them up while they were prone in a most un-Jedi-like manner.

At times, it’s tempting to bring out one of the (numerous) other extremely un-Star Wars heavy weapons and try and blow these enemies into oblivion (which doesn’t, of course, work). Indeed, after a certain point, there seems to be little use for the massive arsenal you accumulate, except in certain situations where you’re up against mech-type robot blasters, or when it’s just easier to use a rocket launcher to disperse generic enemies from afar. But to forgo the defensive capabilities of the lightsaber is a significant risk rarely worth taking. And if you stand there deflecting enemy blaster fire for long enough you’ll eventually kill baddies with their own shots.

With such reliance on the lightsaber, it’s easy to forget that it’s a first person shooter because you spend more time in the third person view. But it doesn’t actually play like a third person action-adventure, which becomes a bit of a problem when so much of the level exploration relies on precision jumping and ledge hopping, the signposting of which also leaves something to be desired. I’m not quite sure I’ve ever spent as much time wandering around lost in a shooter as this, with the game requiring you to make extremely creative use of the force jump power to access unlikely ledges and pipes to make progress. Matters aren’t helped by the lack of objective tracking, which is normally limited to extremely simple one-liners. It’s a step back from the detailed briefings of Dark Forces.

The rules of engagement when it comes to the scenery aren’t always clear: some windows can be broken, but others can’t, Force push and pull can be used to move some objects, but not others, while a small number of doors need to be hacked open with a lightsaber. And lesser-used powers like the Jedi mind trick are occasionally the solution that you forget about altogether. There’s one bit that makes heavy use of the mind trick, in which you’re forced to stealth it through a large and quite open space, which is mildly farcical, as you’re forced to hammer the key at a great number of Stormtroopers while you stride past them. But in contrast to the light comedy of most of that section, there follows a great little bit in which you need to momentarily distract some officers, hit the lights and then dash past them, which is the kind of thing that does feel clever and Jedi-like. More of the latter and less of the former would have been good.

Having recently reminded myself of Dark Forces, I appreciate that exploration, puzzles and jumping are part of the series’ tradition, but I did prefer the occasional levels here where the pacing was a bit snappier, such as in Cloud City. At this point you also have a few allies on your side, too, and it all feels a lot more like your classic Star Wars shoot-out. There are other good ideas here too, such as sections where you take remote control of a droid, or force a Remnant officer to help you at gunpoint. And at least some of the jumping puzzles that require you to navigate large Star Wars-y rooms of danger do recall those moments where leaping somewhere across big grey chasms to turn off a red switch was necessary in the films. But these moments are spread out a little too thinly across the substantial runtime.

I also remain unconvinced by the continuing tales of Katarn and his on-again, off-again relationship with the Force. As mentioned before, like many Expanded Universe characters (see also: Shadows of the Empire‘s Dash Rendar) he initially seemed conceived as a substitute Han Solo, which is definitely the cooler way to go. As the 00s film prequels proved, the Jedi are a little too self-regarding and humour-free to get behind as protagonists, and so Jedi Outcast seems to want to have its cake and eat it by making Kyle a grumpy and cynical character who can take or leave the Force as he pleases. He’s not a desperately charismatic lead in this game, with his polygonal representation seeming to have a surfeit of teeth, and his voice provided by the guy responsible for 90s cartoon lothario Johnny Bravo.

As for the story, it’s afflicted by Expanded Universe silliness, with daft new baddies cooked up and old heroes dragged out of retirement to deal with them. I read a few of the EU books back in the day and enjoyed them at the time, particularly as we all thought at that point that films of Episodes VII-IX would never see the light of day, but increasingly I started to feel a bit sorry for the main heroes, having won the big war then having to tit about sorting out sundry other galactic issues.

Overall, I was pleased to play Jedi Outcast, but retained a nagging sense throughout that I might not perhaps be enjoying it as much as others seemed to, or as I was expecting to. Even acknowledging my own ham-fistedness with the lightsaber here as a factor, I’d still say there are other issues beyond that. Possibly I didn’t like Jedi Knight or Dark Forces as much as the average gamer either, although revisiting DF at the same time as this was interesting, and certainly cast the older game in a more favourable light. While some would apparently still have this as the best Star Wars game, I’d have to respectfully disagree.