Lit The Dark Forces Saga

I'm the opposite; I loved Vjun so I was super excited when I read Dark Rendezvous. I mean, it even had acid rain...in the book!

 

Played through the first two levels of Dark Forces. The PC animated cutscenes are so 90s.

I'm going to look for some sort of Dark Forces equivalent to the many enhanced Doom engines that make it more playable to modern standards, if anyone knows of any? So far, I've found this:

http://xlengine.com/downloads/

It's improved a few of my favorite 90s games, Daggerfall, Dark Forces, and Blood.

 

I watched those on YouTube, and I laughed at how only their mouths move...nothing else. Just mouths.

 

One really dumb little thing I always liked in Academy is that in the briefings the head model of Luke or Kyle would reset after they finished speaking, and they looked like you insulted their mother or something.

So his claim to fame was that his lightsaber was broken and he was too lazy to fix it?

 

That about epitomizes Hethrir, yes.

 

Yes, but. The but being that you're rationalizing. Of course there's plausible reasons to construct the story this way or that way. I was talking about how the story feels. And while plausible, the story feels pretty different to me if Kyle's not built up as a single hero on a very special journey, but just one guy who happens to be related to the right guy so that he's kind of important in a scenario. In some ways, it's the same with all cases of EU references going over the top and diminishing the extraordinary properties of a story. Wife, kid, dark side? Anakin, you're a punk, Quinlan Vos did ten times cooler than you.

And why don't Obi-Wan and Yoda deal with the Sith situation? Because they wouldn't win, the Force is stacked against them. Luke won't win because he's a weapon. He'll win because he's the key. Vader is his personal stake - but Luke is Vader's personal stake at the same time. Jerec couldn't give a damn whether he's fighting against Kyle, Luke, or Prune Face.

Authors shouldn't put the characters in spots where they have to do something because *insert wacky reason*. That's what creates situations in which the good guys have to be very, very dumb for five books just so that the evil guy can slowly prove his evil persuasion. It's not just that Luke decides not to interfere in a situation where he could very well help - see how he finds a way to interfere with the Outcast story and Kyle actually works with him - it's that he decides to not participate because of a poem that Yoda told Luke during all these training scenes that aren't really known as great cinematic moments because Yoda recites prophetic poems left and right. Yes, it could happen offscreen, of course it could. But it's three degree of complication when you could just have Kyle go off on his own. I wonder what the movie character cameo stuff was for anyway, since it could hardly have been a publicity stunt to increase readership, could it now..

Bottom line, Jedi Knight feels like the adventure of a lifetime. Outcast and Academy feel like episodes in an adventure series, or at least that's how I remember them. And the novel/audio drama version reads like mediocre EU, which is a description missing the word adventure.

That was a demo, too, now I remember. That's why I remember that one the most. Why did I play the demos so much?

 

I don't buy that Obi-Wan and Yoda wouldn't win. That's a false dichotomy. Yoda and Obi-Wan could have been involved in the Rebel Alliance, they could have taken out Vader. Instead they did nothing. The films are just as contrived about that sort of stuff. But I agree with you for the most part.

 

But it's great contrived storytelling. Ben could fight with the rebellion, especially because Kota is soooo cool! But he had to keep Luke safe. Rationalizing, he would have drawn attention to himself at some point, but okay, he could have done a desk job, which wouldn't have been great storytelling. In the end, what do we see? Obi-Wan going on a mission again to save the universe and - dying. throwing his final fight, okay, but not exactly winning it, either. Endangering the rebel mission by endangering Artoo and Leia, and, if we want to remember his original mission, Luke. With Obi-Wan dying, I don't think there's much thought that little swamp guy would really wipe any floor in the galaxy, even if he was still able to bounce around twenty years before, which was retroactive bouncing that only kind-of implies that he would still have had this form after his duel with the Emperor.

So you're right that the SW movies are contrived. But the old guys making room for the young heroes is a classic story, a mythical story. Buddies letting each other take center stage because random prophetic poem crammed into the space between some epic memorable movie scenes is kind of a story, but not a really engaging one.

 

Well, that is sort of the prequel trilogy's story. Maybe that's why they're unpopular.

I don't have a problem with characters acting off of prophecy. That's why Luke goes to Cloud City. It's why Anakin falls to the dark side. The problem is in the execution.

Like having a prophetic vision of your middle aged unborn daughter and knowing that it's your daughter and that you have to keep a secret but also becoming absurdly attached to her at the same moment to the point of casting aside your morals to ensure the vision doesn't come to pass. Just use birth control Jacen.

But I guess we'll just have to disagree about this one. I've really gotten into the Dark Forces Saga as a whole the past few weeks. I'll agree that I think Jedi Knight is probably the best overall. I'm rather fond of the Poem of Ages and the early Darth Bane stuff. You know, the Dark Forces novellas really aren't all that different than Karpyshyn's Bane novels in the way by which they rewrite events. I suppose we could just go to Abel Pena's series of articles for the same backstory, as I do find the game to be somewhat barebones. I enjoy the multimedia projects in general though, whether it be this, TFU, SOTE.

 

"Good work Jaden, you're on your way to becoming a true Jedi Knight!..."

I ended up with one particularly funny glitch where Kyle and Luke's heads would bob up and down like crazy during the briefings, I don't know how.

 

If you use a custom model for Kyle, like the DF1 one, it doesn't change the model for the disembodied head but puts the skin over it, so it looks like Kyle is wearing someone else's face.

 

I noticed while watching a walkthrough of Outcast on YouTube that though Kyle had the DF1 model, when it showed Galak Fyarr watching him from a Star Destroyer, the recording Fyarr saw had the old model. So there must be a separate code for the "recording" images and the actual Kyle model.

 

After reading this thread suddenly I want to play Jedi Outcast again...

 

It was Taanab, which had been name-dropped in ROTJ by Lando.

I get a lot of use out of the disruptor rifle in that level...

 

Playing a bit through Dark Forces -- I haven't finished my playthrough of Jedi Knight -- it definitely seems to make Kyle out to be more of a badass. Or a bunch of scrubby Grans and Rodians on Nar Shaddaa are better than the Imperial military. MADNESS. But yeah, Kyle cuts through the Imperial stormtrooper corps like a hot knife through butter, but after two levels of Nar Shaddaa fighting a bunch of scrubs he is grievously wounded. I guess the gameplay hyperbolizes what Kyle actually did.

I think after I complete these games I'm going to turn my eye to the modding scene -- Dark Forces seems to have a huge community, or did.

This looks swell.

Kinda curious to see what Jedi Knight has to offer as well.

Edit: Here's a question. Should Jedi Knight have starred someone other than Kyle Katarn? As he is in Dark Forces, Kyle Katarn is the Solid Snake of Star Wars. In his briefings with Mon Mothma, all he's missing is a bandana and a death stick. I would say that this element of his character feeds into his struggle with the dark side, so when he does become a true Jedi you kinda lose that element.

 

Kyle's beard damands that you do.

 

"Nothing is written."

Luke goes because of the trap, Anakin falls because he landed Natalie Portman and couldn't let a good thing go.

Spot on. But this is the by-product of having those characters involved, but Kyle's perspective being relatively isolated, hence... a video game.

If the story could have had split narratives and had Luke duking it out with Hethrir and Tremayne in parallel action to Kyle, it'd feel like a bigger story, but there is indeed a homogenized element to Outcast and Academy. Probably because there's an element of sameyness with the Jedi Knight conclusion, which involves Sith/Jedi/Tombs/Ancientness/Prophecy and everything. The subsequent entries tick only a few of JK's multiple boxes.

A true progression would have been a genuinely personal enemy that Kyle had a relationship with prior. Unfortunately the only candidate would be Jan given the stripped-down cast of the first two games.

 

You would need to move on to a new character. All the sequels to Jedi Knight are sequels to Jedi Knight, which is the problem here. It's kind of the Ghostbusters 2 to Ghostbusters, where the first story was a going into business story, and in the sequel, they need to get back into the business. The first game was a becoming a Jedi Knight game and the sequel is getting back to being a Jedi Knight. Not a problem in itself if you accept it for what it is, but it can never surpass the predecessor by following the same blueprint. There's only so many places you can take the character without re-contextualizing the series like they did from Dark Forces to Jedi Knight. That's probably why they cancelled Jedi Knight III.

Think about it: a major component to the progression of each game is the acquisition of new Force abilities. Once Kyle knows them all, how do you implement a progression? That's why he's constantly re-learning everything, or why Jaden replaces him in Academy. I guess you could do what The Force Unleashed 2 did, which was to introduce some new abilities and give Starkiller most of what he had in the prior game. I think continuity produced something of a snag because the Republic vs Empire paradigm was important to the series and it kinda ran its course. Though I think at this point in time it has been replaced by the Clone Wars and the inundation of Sith that the Empire as villains might be fresh again.

 

I used to think this; I remember when Jedi Knight was coming out that I thought making ol' trigger-happy Kyle into a Jedi was a terrible idea. But, over time, the decision has grown on me.

 

Absolutely. Making him a Force-user undermines his abilities and gives the wrong message.

The Empire without the Sith as villains would be fresh at this point. The Clone Wars generation will be shocked.

 

Well, you know, I think, maybe, probably, yes.

Although it's action movie logic that has survived to this day (just saw Looper recently). There's the hero, and there's thugs. Only one can survive. And one thug wouldn't be very interesting. I wonder how funny it would be if SW EU was a place that had a little less realism and logic and just went for it, you know, when using action tropes.

 

Kyle does seem to kill Boba Fett before The Empire Strikes Back even occurs.

 

To quote Bossk (though I hate the novel were it comes from with a passion )
"I'll believe that when I see Boba Fett's charred corpse."

 

Even then it's not guaranteed it'll be him!

 

Yeah... poor Jodo