Raven, Activision, and LucasArts recently announced they're working on Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, a loose sequel to Raven's well-received Jedi Knight II. Much of the game is still secret until E3, but GameSpy spoke to Lead Designer Christopher Foster and Lead Artist Les Dorscheid to see what they could reveal about the title. This is what they had to say about working on the latest Star Wars FPS.
GameSpy: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is the title for your game. I know the whole thing is pretty top secret, but could you describe the storyline as best you can?
Christopher Foster: You're a student, learning to be a Jedi, and you're going to be thrown into something much larger than what you'd expect to have happen. You'll grow throughout the game based on your choices [and] decisions; you get to grow, as you want to. And, late in the game, you make the dark/light side choice.
GameSpy: And you aren't Kyle Katarn this time around?
Christopher Foster: You choose your race, gender, and appearance, and the game gives you your name. As you progress through the story, you'll choose missions and you should upgrade.
GameSpy: So things are fairly non-linear?
Christopher Foster: Things are very non-linear… but we can't tell you how yet.
GameSpy: If you're frustrated and can't beat a mission, will you be able to quit that one and choose another?
Les Dorscheid: Yeah.
Christopher Foster: And, by the time you're done, it will all form a story.
Les Dorscheid: You can do missions: 1, 2, 4, 3, and you'll still conclude with a satisfying ending.
GameSpy: Will missions change based on the missions you've done?
Christopher Foster: No, not exactly. It will change based on choices you directly make.
GameSpy: And those choices lead you to the dark or light side?
Christopher Foster: Exactly.
GameSpy: Since the game engine is heavily based on Jedi Knight II, what sort of enhancements can we expect from Jedi Academy? Les, what enhancements can you talk about from an art perspective?
Les Dorscheid: Well, we've got the ability to do so much more with [the] animations to the characters than we did before. We're able to sync the animations up with the environments so much better than we could do before. An example we use a lot is that Rancor can actually touch the wall! We're actually animating the character within the constraints of the environment. So, when he (Rancor) reaches up and puts his hand on the wall, he's actually touching the wall! We never could do that before -- we had to stay away from doing those kinds of things. Now the animation is so much more powerful, it's a new generation, another step.
GameSpy: But it's still the Quake III engine? Or derived from it, right?
Les Dorscheid: We may be using the same engine, but there are so many more things we can do now that we couldn't do before.
GameSpy: In the demo, it looked like you were doing something new with how the game engine handles rubble and rocks?
Christopher Foster: In terms of breaking things?
GameSpy: Breaking things, yeah, but also the general appearance….
Christopher Foster: Since we have a more concrete environment (things can interact better with other things), we can actually take the world and make the part that's hit shatter or break apart. We can actually take it into a 3D program and use physics programs on it. We did some of that in JK2, but that was just the beginning….
Les Dorscheid: We were just starting to be able to do that back then. It was very difficult to use, now it's so much more powerful and easy to use so we can use it more creatively.
GameSpy: And the result is more convincing rubble and rocks? A more realistic environment?
Les & Christopher: Yes.
Les Dorscheid: Like we said, we did some of this with JK2. When you get toward the end of a project, you get familiar with the tools and you can do things you couldn't conceive of at the beginning.
GameSpy: So, I bet you were hoping to do a sequel to Jedi Knight II?
Les Dorscheid: Oh yeah! It's exciting to work on a new engine, but it's also a little frustrating. "I thought we could do this!" -- "Well, you can, but…" With an older engine, you can do more with it just because you know what you can't do and how to make it do the special things that work.
GameSpy: You also learn about what people liked, and didn't like, about the first game. What art enhancements are being done to the saber combat?
Les Dorscheid: There's probably three times as much animation as there was before, [including] multiple fighting styles and different weaponry. It was pretty straightforward before and now it's greatly expanded. I guess toward the end of the project (JK2) we thought the saber animation was going to be special, but when the game was released people said the saber animation and combat was what made the game!
Christopher Foster: That's why you get the saber at the beginning of the game now! We've also got a lot of our team members who are very into martial arts and the saber combat. They're always making suggestions and talking about what would be cool and fun to play. We've come up with some really great special moves that make the game feel movie-like. And you get to do them.
GameSpy: Can you describe some of them?
Christopher Foster: We've got the wall-run. You can use force speed and run at a wall and run right up it, then use force jump to vault backwards off the wall. A lot of the moves feel like that, use the environment, use the enemy, and using force powers together to solve puzzles. Using the saber-staff you can kick, which gives the game a more athletic feel to it. You're going to get to be able to do all the fun things you'd want to do if you were a Jedi!
GameSpy: There are some new finishing moves too?
Les Dorscheid: A lot of that stuff is brand new. We're just adding new finishing moves now. (Laughs) Sometimes an interviewer who has seen a demo asks [about] something just added to the game and I have to say, "No, I haven't seen that yet!" We didn't have that power before, now it's so easy to add stuff to the game. It's like watching Toy Story and then watching Toy Story 2. They added all the stuff they wanted to do in the first one to the second one.
GameSpy: Les, as an artist, would you say it's liberating or constraining to work with an established license like Star Wars?
Les Dorscheid: I don't think it feels constraining at all. I see it as really exciting. There are so many cool things. When we first put the Rancor in that was exciting. Seeing an AT-ST walk is cool.
GameSpy: In a regular unlicensed game, if you put the AT-ST in yourself, or something like it, you'd have to decide how it moved. You'd have the freedom of that, but you'd also have the burden too. With this, you just have to make it move like the movie.
Christopher Foster: In a way, it can be frustrating not to be able to do what you want, but like when we did our Star Trek game (Voyager: Elite Force) we had all those great reference points to work with, but most of them were obscure. But LucasArts and Star Wars makes it easier because everybody knows Star Wars. If we put in an AT-ST and it moved wrong a bunch of us would say, "No! It moves like this!" Star Wars is second nature to people.
GameSpy: Is there a temptation to add to the canon? Add something you made up to Star Wars?
Les Dorscheid: We've added a few things and LucasArts is great about accepting them. Plus it's cool to think something you designed or added might be used in a future film or something else….
GameSpy: Well, the first Dark Forces game was novelized.
Christopher Foster: If the artists want to add something we write it up and send it to LucasArts and they go down the list: "This works, this works, this doesn't work, this works…" and they give us a great amount of feedback.
GameSpy: Is there anything they flat out rejected?
Les Dorscheid: Yeah, sure, usually it's something that doesn't fit in with the timeline. Or it conflicts, like we name something and there's already something with that name.
Christopher Foster: Mostly minor stuff. We already knew, as Star Wars geeks, what would fly and what wouldn't.
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