Video Game / Dark Forces Saga

"I'm no Jedi. I'm just a guy with a lightsaber and a few questions."

— Kyle Katarn

A series of Star Wars Legends First-Person Shooter-cum-Hack and Slash Video Games, with accompanying novellas and audio dramas. They take place during and after the Star Wars original trilogy, and revolve around Kyle Katarn, a Stormtrooper-turned-mercenary-turned-Jedi who roams around the seedy side of the galaxy. The series consists of four full games and one Expansion Pack:

• Dark Forces (1995)
  • The first mission and an origin story for Kyle Katarn was adapted into Soldier For the Empire
• Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (1997)
  • Adapted into two novellas and audio dramas.
  • Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith (1998), an Expansion Pack
• Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (2002)
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003)

The entire series has been made available on Steam and GOG. For more information see Wookieepedia.

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The series as a whole provides examples of:

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Available in several shapes, sizes and colors throughout the series.
• Action Girl: Jan Ors, Mara Jade, and Female Jaden.
• The Alleged Car:
  • The Truly Sorry, a badly worn ship used by Jan Ors' rebel cell, is aptly named. The external plate is all that's holding the hyperdrive motor in place, and the actuator controlling the entry ramp is so old and worn out that it makes sounds that are painful to listen to.
  • The Moldy Crow is thought to be this as well, the first time Kyle and Jan see it.
    Kyle: You've got to be joking. This isn't even a ship! Hey, I thought you said this thing would get off the ground!
    Deck Master: It will! But after that I'm not making any promises!
• Anti-Frustration Features: Officers who carry keycards cannot be pushed around by force powers, concussive weapons or any other form of knocking them around. Otherwise they could fall into a Bottomless Pit and render the level unwinnable. The same goes for killing them with fully-charged Disruptor Rifle shots, which normally destroys every trace of an enemy including their weapons, but leaves keycards intact.
• Anti-Hero: Kyle is fully aware of how tempting the dark side is, to the point he rejected the force to avoid eventually falling. Even then, he is a prime example that Good Is Not Soft.
• Appropriated Title: The Dark Forces title was replaced with Jedi Knight when the second game (Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II) proved more popular.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Force Drain. While it's satisfying to use and has an awesome animation when used up close, it leaves you very vulnerable to fire since you can't move while using it, and it quickly burns through your force pool. Compare to Force Heal, which can be used both in and out of combat, and at higher levels allows you to freely move around.
  • Force Deadlysight. Turning this power on causes a literal Death Glare, burning everyone in sight. However, it cannot be turned off until mana is completely drained, is rather slow in its effect, and doesn't work on bosses.
• Bavarian Fire Drill: In the Jedi Knight novella, Kyle pretends to be one of Jerec's Dark Jedi while sneaking through the Imperial installation. A stern look and a frown is more than enough to get past an Imperial that thinks about questioning him.
• BFG: The Concussion Rifle, which fires massive blasts of ionized air that do huge damage. Dark Forces features a mortar gun, while Jedi Knight replaces that with a railgun. Dark Forces also features the Dark Trooper Assault Cannon, which is so huge that it's intended for the larger Dark Troopers, but Kyle himself seems to have no problem lugging around.
• Bizarrchitecture: Several locations within the games have layouts that make little sense. Nar Shaddaa is a repeat offender that appears in most of the games requiring Kyle to traverse some very dangerous areas. It's even nicknamed "The Vertical City".
• Bleed 'Em and Weep: Happens in the Soldier For the Empire audio drama. After making his first kill (a rebel soldier charging towards his Stormtrooper squad), Kyle temporarily breaks down at the thought of killing another person, and has his squad's medic check the Rebel afterwards.
• Blown Across the Room: The Flechette Cannon when fired at point blank range will do this, as will the primary and secondary fire of the Concussion Rifle, and rockets. High level Force Push and Force Lightning will also hurl enemies across the room.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: On top of your 100 points of health, you have Deflector Shields that cap at 200. Shields will protect against ranged attacks and explosions, but physical harm like melee attacks or fall damage will bypass them. Notably, shield battery pickups throughout the games tend to be much more common than health-restoring medikits. Once your shields drop below about 50, you'll start taking damage to your health as well as your remaining shields. In the earlier games this is additional damage on top of the damage to your shields, while in Outcast and Academy it's the portion of total damage that didn't get absorbed by your shield.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Force Heal, Force Absorb, and Force Protection, particularly in Academy. While not overly flashy, especially compared to the dark side powers, Heal and Protection make you almost invincible, and Absorb allows you to block offensive force powers, making enemy force users much easier.
  • Force Push/Pull, at least at lower levels. Not as impressive as Lightning, but very useful for crowd control (especially when used over an area it's easy to fall from).
  • The Bryar Pistol. Accurate, decent power, and uses extremely common ammo. It has a relatively slow rate of fire, but this is boosted in Jedi Outcast in addition to being given a Charged Attack.
  • Force Jump, especially given the Malevolent Architecture of many levels that require you to leap to high places and many of the secrets are inaccessible without it. Mysteries of the Sith makes it a mandatory power and Jedi Outcast maps it to the default jump key and incorporates it into lightsabre combat.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Despite appearing as a common enemy, we have the Kell Dragons and the Vornskr: both are quite fast and can kill you in two or three bites. If you're underwater there's the large Drugon, who's quite fast and deals a lot of damage.
• Catch and Return: Timely use of Force Push allows you to send rockets, Concussion Rifle blasts, and Thermal Detonators right back at whoever fired them. For bonus points, time your push for just as they fire.
• Canon Immigrant: Various elements from the games, such as the Dark Troopers, Jerec's plot to harness the Force energy of dead Jedi, even Kyle's signature Bryar pistol, have all made their way into the Disney canon. Most of everything, barring Kyle himself. See Star Wars for more details.
• Charged Attack:
  • The bowcaster in Jedi Knight can be charged to launch multiple bolts at a time in a spread pattern.
  • Jedi Outcast adds this as a Secondary Fire mode for the Bryar pistol, charging up to five units of energy for a much more powerful shot.
• Colon Cancer:
  • Star Wars: Dark Forces features a mission entitled thusly: "Mission I: The Death Star Plans: Operation Skyhook, Phase 2". It was merely a foretaste of what was to come.
  • Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. And the campaign has the additional subtitle of The Force Within to differentiate it from added levels modded into the game.
    • Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II: Mysteries of the Sith
  • Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
  • Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (leading to the joke that its full title ought to be Star Wars: Dark Forces IV: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Outcast II: Jedi Academy)
• Combat Pragmatist: Kyle in spades, whether he's using both guns and his lightsaber, or light and dark sides of the force. The epitome of this is perhaps in Outcast, where he interrupts Galak's gloating speech to hurl his lightsaber into the shield generator.
  • This is taken even further in Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, where if the player chooses the Dark Side ending, Kyle displays a pair of unique abilities in his climactic duel with the player character: the ability to rip the player's lightsaber out of their hands with the Force, and a melee attack that involves grappling the player character and repeatedly punching them in the gut.
• Composite Character: Kyle is basically the personality of Han with the character arc of Luke. Even as a Jedi his relationship with Luke mirrors that of Luke and Han.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Most notably, enemy Force users' perfect reflexes and control with their powers: they always push-deflect missiles and concussion blasts, straight back at you and with perfect accuracy — which leads to some interesting results◊ when two AI force-users face off against each other in the middle of a battlefield.
  • Rodians carrying disruptor rifles can often fire multiple shots with less than half a second between each, depriving you of your only real defense against them (that is, the random chance that you'll automatically Force-dodge a shot from them).
    • Some enemy Force users have limitless Force energy, allowing them to break free from drain and grip at any moment. They can actually abort their special swings to avoid attacks and tend to aim at your hitbox — sometimes killing you by hitting something that seems empty space for the player (oh yeah, they also invisibly "evade" your attacks — slashing their face will occasionally leave them unharmed except for a visible burned mark in the middle). Their Saber Throw also always seems to be at the maximum level — it will stop right where you stand and keep swinging until it kills you or is parried. Yours, on the other hand, will pass further and stop at its maximum range before rank 3.
• Converse with the Unconscious: In the Rebel Agent novella, Jan Ors finally declares her love for Kyle while he's in a bacta tank recovering from wounds sustained in his last mission.
• Damsel in Distress: Jan Ors is captured in all three games that she's in and also a few Noodle Incident missions that only get a sentence in RPG articles. Also subverted, in that Kyle is rescued by Jan about the same amount of times or more. It's even lampshaded a couple of times.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kyle himself. And of course Mara Jade.
• Death Course: A staple of the series, frequently in the form of a Corridor Cubbyhole Run or Conveyor Belt o' Doom.
• Deflector Shields: The series' protagonists all use personal shields. Force Protection in Jedi Knight also allows you to summon one on demand, although in Jedi Academy it only reduces the damage you receive instead of absorbing it entirely. The only NPC in the entire series to have one is Lando Calrissian, which suggests that no one else uses them because they're costly.
• Destination Defenestration: Combining the Force and Malevolent Architecture allows you to do this on plenty of occasions.
• Dodge the Bullet: This can be done even without force powers, but is much easier with Force Speed. The only exception is the hitscan Disruptor Rifle, unless you get lucky and your character automatically dodges the shot. NPC Force users will also dodge it perfectly, unless they're in midair when you fire.
• Energy Absorption: Force Absorb.
• Exploding Barrels: Quite why these are lying around just waiting for you to shoot them is a mystery. Maybe the same designers responsible for all the Malevolent Architecture left them there?
• Faking the Dead: In Rebel Agent, a surviving mercenary whose group has just been strafed by the Moldy Crow decides it's better to play dead when he sees the look on Jan Ors' face when she leaves the ship to save a wounded Kyle.
• False Flag Operation: In the backstory to the series, Kyle defects to the Rebellion once he is shown proof that the attack in which his father died was one of these — Imperial troopers with Rebel insignias painted on their ships, but still using standard Imperial tactics.
• Forgotten First Meeting: An RPG article states that Kyle and Jan first met each other at the Imperial Academy on Carida while the latter was there undercover, though neither of them made any real impression upon the other.
• Game Mod: All the games have had many.
  • The Crow's Nest and the DF-21 Hall of Fame showcase some of the best for Dark Forces.
  • The Admiral's Command Chamber has reviews of mods for Dark Forces through Jedi Outcast, although the latter section didn't get far before reviews were discontinued.
  • The Dark Forces Mod was an upgraded port of Dark Forces to the Jedi Academy engine, started in 2002. The project has since been cancelled, but a 6-level demo is still available for download.
  • The Massassi Temple is the largest website ever dedicated to Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith. New levels have been released for them as late as November 2012.
  • The XL Engine has the DarkXL, which allows you to play the original Dark Forces in widescreen resolutions.
  • Jedi Academy - Outcast — as the name might suggest — ports the campaign from Outcast into Academy.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Kyle's melee attack is this whenever he doesn't have access to a lightsaber, save for the beginning of Jedi Outcast where he settles for some variety of weak shock prod. He also has a special melee attack for use against the player in Jedi Academy if they turn to the Dark Side.
• Guns Are Useless:
  • While in-story Kyle has no qualms about continuing to use guns even after acquiring a lightsaber and Force powers (there's even one section in Jedi Academy where he, as an NPC, is programmed to use his old Bryar pistol instead of his lightsaber), once you get your lightsaber in Jedi Outcast, you will generally only use 3 guns again: one for stealth kills, one for long range kills and one for robots.
  • Averted in Dark Forces, where Kyle is not a Jedi yet and relies exclusively on guns. Part of the story even involves a weapon designer who created a blaster that can fire three shots in a triangular pattern, which would make it devastating against Jedi since they could only deflect two of the shots at most.
  • Taken to a literal level on the Drommund Kaas levels of 'Mysteries Of The Sith', where all of your non-lightsaber weapons simply refuse to work. Blasters only produce sparks, explosives thud harmlessly to the ground and can be picked up again... the game flat-out forces you to use nothing but the lightsaber, the Force and your survival skills.
  • Averted in Jedi Knight. Guns are a viable option throughout the game, especially if you choose the Light Side by foregoing the offensive Dark Side powers. Played straight for boss battles, where the Dark Jedi will just use Force Pull to disarm you. They can also still be effective in Outcast and Academy, especially the first two missions of the former and the No-Gear Level of the latter, where respectively Kyle has given up his connection to the Force and Jaden has had his lightsaber stolen, leaving guns as your primary options.
• Harder Than Hard: Jedi Master difficulty. In Outcast and Academy, you have 50% health and 50% shields, and enemy Force users are much smarter. Also, in Academy, major bosses like Alora, Tavion, and Marka Ragnos can take 4 times as much damage as they normally can.
• Healing Factor: Force Heal. At the first level it's a slow healing trance that leaves you completely vulnerable as you slowly regain health, but by level 3 you're healing so fast it would give Wolverine's healing a run for its money.
• Heal Thyself: Medipacks and Bacta Tanks allow you to instantly heal yourself by picking them up.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: The amount of weapons you can carry around at once borders on ridiculous — by Outcast, there are so many weapon types they went beyond the number keys and had to attach extra slots to the plus and minus keys. Jedi Academy has a variant, where you start each level with a Limited Loadout of your lightsaber, a blaster pistol, and your choice of two other guns and one type of explosive, but then can pick up every gun you come across during the level and end it with three or four times as many guns as you started.
  • Semi-averted with a trading card actually showing Kyle loaded down with various guns, though it's still missing about half of the weapons in the first game.
• Idle Animation:
  • Further establishing that he is unquestionably badass, one of Kyle Katarn's idle animations is to shave his beard… with his lightsaber!
  • Mara gets her own one in Mysteries Of The Sith where she places the blade against her hand and ends up recoiling from the burn.
• I'll Kill You!: Thrawn, in his pre-Grand Admiral days, briefly features in an audio drama of this series, when he sends out a commander who hates nonhumans. Thrawn's not human.
  Thrawn: Your xenocentric chauvinism is no concern of mine. I care about performance and results, and your record is exemplary. I do not care about your petty bigotry. Understood?
  Commander: Understood, Captain.
  Thrawn: Oh, and Commander, if I ever find out that your bigotry is affecting your performance, I'll have your carcass ejected with the next garbage load. Understood?
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy:
  • An offshoot of the Trope Namer. Averted in Outcast, though, in which stormtroopers are much smarter and deadlier than typical (not helped by the engine's fuzzy blaster hit detection). The levels taking place before you get Force powers will leave you in tears.
  • Interestingly, in the level where you take an AT-ST through a canyon the stormtroopers firing rockets at you have horrible accuracy, almost never hitting you in your 20 meter tall vehicle. However if you exited the AT-ST every rocket would fire straight at your character.
  • A less subtle piece of Lampshade Hanging is a sample of Enemy Chatter in Outcast where a stormtrooper will express his frustration over the armor's helmet, claiming that it obstructs his sight.
  • And again in Academy: in the mission in which you infiltrate some catacombs, you can overhear two mercenaries talking (providing that you don't kill them as soon as you see them), with one of them complaining about how his helmet obstructs his sight and that it reminds him of his days as a stormtrooper.
  • Another variation in Jedi Academy, where a snowtrooper in the first main story mission mentions that he was a champion racer on speeder bikes; when his partner asks why he's not a scout trooper, he mentions that he was selected for training, but caused a pile-up that destroyed about a dozen speeder bikes and was immediately kicked back out because he couldn't see out of their helmet.
  • All of which can be considered a call-back to Luke's (invokedpossibly ad-libbed) complaint in A New Hope: "I can't see a thing in this helmet!"
  • If it comes to it, the Stormtrooper blaster rifle is generally not a very accurate weapon in the games even for the player, having a noticeable scatter even in relatively short ranges which gets worse if you use the More Dakka alt-fire. Only some weapons in Outcast and Academy are accurate enough that a shot flies exactly where you were aiming even at a distance; the blaster rifle is certainly not one of these, though with Force Sense at rank 2 or above you can force it to be perfectly accurate (somehow^note The idea may be about "using your feelings" or whatever to aim better, but that doesn't really work when you can one-hand a blaster pistol with perfect accuracy no matter what, not to mention the millions of contradictory explanations in the series for why exactly the stormtrooper's rifle is so inaccurate in the first place, most of which have nothing to do with the user and everything to do with abysmal quality standards on the blaster itself).
    • The relatively poor quality of the E11 is Lampshaded by Enemy Chatter in the first part of the Cairn installation, where the troopers remark on new blasters being shipped in, one of them saying "Yeah, that'd be nice, this thing hasn't been too accurate."
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Levels in the games are generally built in such a way that they're either a challenge to or insurmountable by your current power set but would be a breeze for what you'll have later — take for example the low amount of platforming early in Outcast and Academy that could be bypassed in an instant with level 3 Force Jump, compared to extremely long jumps you have to make when you do get that power later. Incidentally, since non-core powers are unlocked at a rate that the player decides rather than at a set rate in Academy, its levels aren't built with those powers in mind — allowing you to, say, totally break the Rancor encounter on Nar Kreeta just by using Mind Trick on it, or instantly kill the assassin droids on Coruscant with level-3 Lightning.
• Jedi Mind Trick: A usable power in every game after the original. In its earliest incarnation, it's just an invisibility spell, but in Jedi Outcast, it can be used to make non hostile NPCs interact with certain objects.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The droid A-Cee is shot by either an Imperial officer, bounty hunter, or an Imperial governor right as he is in the middle of celebrating that they won't be as accurate as Imperial soldiers.
• Lampshade Hanging: Many times by Kyle, particularly as an NPC in Academy.
  Kyle: They always lock the door. You'd think they'd have learned by now. Doesn't look like there's a key. That would be too easy. The console to unlock the door is probably hidden in some room twelve floors up or something… how does that make sense?
• Life Drain: Force Drain, if you're the player. For enemies, your force pool goes first, then your health.
• Locked Door: Used often, and spoofed (as noted above) in Academy.
• Malevolent Architecture: Between the No OSHA Compliance and more Bottomless Pits than you can shake a lightsaber at, the architects of the majority of Imperial bases must have been strange, strange men. In fact it's so malevolent, that it almost warps all the way back around to Benevolent Architecture, given how many opportunities it gives you to kill enemies with it.
  • Lampshaded by Kyle at one point.
  Kyle: Not another thing to fall from!
• Make It Look Like a Struggle: In the novella and audio drama, Kyle has to either punch or shoot (depending on the adaptation) his former Academy friend that helped him infiltrate Danuta to absolve him of any guilt. It was never revealed if it worked or not.
• Mana Drain: Force Drain on the player drains the player's force pool first, and moves onto health when fully depleted. The player's Force Drain instead only targets health.
• Mythology Gag: The Imperial blaster rifle is the least accurate gun in the games. Except when you get to stick a scope on it in Mysteries of the Sith, whereupon it suddenly becomes pinpoint accurate when aiming through the scope.
• Necessary Drawback: Rage allows you to move quicker and deal more damage, but at the expense of draining health while active. Force Absorb & Protection allow you to block force powers and damage respectively, but you won't naturally regenerate any force energy until the effect ends.
• Nerf:
  • The progression of the concussion rifle from game to game is a study in gradual nerfing. It doesn't even make it into Outcast, where its function is replaced by the Secondary Fire for the Heavy Repeater, although it returns (much improved) in Academy.
  • The Repeater's ridiculous accuracy from Jedi Knight is reduced to pretty much spray and pray for close combat in Jedi Outcast, though not nearly as bad as the Stormtrooper Rifle. On the other hand, its power and rate of fire are significantly increased.
  • The Rocket Launcher from Jedi Outcast is about equivalent to Jedi Knight's Rail Detonator, except its reserve ammo count is reduced by 66%.
• Nigh-Invulnerability:
  • Force Rage temporarily grants immunity to death, though your health can still be reduced to 1.
  • Maxed out Force Protection allows you to shrug off a staggering 75% of all damage while it's active. Combine it with shields and/or Force Heal, and nothing will stand a chance against you. And with Force Absorb, you will be the bane of any force-wielder crazy enough to fight you.
• No-Gear Level: Every game in the series has at least one level like this, in some form. Dark Forces II is the exception, but its expansion makes up for this by doing it twice — once when you're captured by a Hutt, and again in the last level where none of your weapons except for your lightsaber will actually work. Outcast gets a variant where your weapons are confiscated upon entering the cantina on Nar Shaddaa, though the lightsaber you just spent the last level recovering is kept (probably as a subtle cue that you should start using it).
• No OSHA Compliance: In addition to having some of the most Malevolent Architecture you'll ever see, architects throughout the galaxy were apparently very fond of leaving Exploding Barrels around, allowing open drops with no safety rails, leaving electrified conduits with no shielding, or failing to take the most basic steps to prevent you from hurling enemies into that vat of molten metal. Frankly, it's a wonder that the Imperials haven't lost their entire force to workplace accidents, given how difficult a powerful Jedi finds it to navigate at times.
• No-Sell:
  • Force Absorb allows you block offensive force powers in this way.
  • The hardest bosses can never be gripped, and will always block any attempt to throw your saber at them.
  • Starting in Outcast, enemy force users will always perfectly dodge or reflect any gun shot aimed at them, forcing lightsaber combat.
  • Bosses in Jedi Knight will simply use Force Pull any time you even try to use a gun on them.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Probably one of the most glaring examples of this trope in the history of gaming, the Dark Forces Saga is a tetralogy that features two second parts and no third or fourth. The first game is called Dark Forces, but the sequel turns the moniker into an odd subtitle with a number while adopting a new moniker, and it is called Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (or the other way around, nobody seems to be sure). The third game abandons the Dark Forces moniker and is called Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. The fourth game has no numeral and is titled Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.
• Official Couple: From the second game onwards Kyle and Jan are a thing. They don't usually make too big of a fuss about it.
• Once per Episode: Nar Shadaa is a recurring location throughout the games. Every entry in the series where Kyle is the main protagonist has him visit the place at some point.
• One-Man Army: Kyle Katarn. Notably, in the first game, before he gets any Force powers, he sneaks aboard the Executor (Darth Vader's personal flagship!) just so that he can take a shuttle from there to the Arc Hammer, where the Dark Troopers are being created. He then shoots his way through the entire ship (which is about half the size of the Executor, but still larger than a Star Destroyer), kills a dozen Dark Troopers (six of which were enough to take out an entire colony's defenses), destroys the most powerful Dark Trooper yet made, then destroys the Arc Hammer. While Vader, apparently unaware until now, watches from the bridge of the Executor. Then he got Force powers!
• Parrying Bullets: Introduced in Jedi Knight to give Kyle a chance against gun wielding opponents when using a lightsaber. It gets boosted in Jedi Outcast — when your "Saber Defense" power reaches level 3, you're practically invulnerable to blaster fire and will deflect shots directly back to enemies — even when there's a million shots coming at you all at once. However, in all the games it's useless against any kind of explosive weapon.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: The Bryar Pistol pretty much exemplifies this trope. It does just as much damage per shot as the Stormtrooper Rifle and is also ridiculously accurate and more efficient with the energy cells to boot (using only one energy per shot rather than two) with the only drawback being a lower rate of fire, not a huge problem when enemies armed with Stormtrooper Rifles don't seem to take advantage of its More Dakka qualities.
• Putting the Band Back Together: In a Wizards of the Coast RPG adventure seed, Jan Ors recruits former main characters Jaden Korr and Mara Jade Skywalker (along with random Jedi and Intelligence agents to be played by the PCs) to rescue a missing Kyle.
• Recurring Location: Nar Shadaa is a location that Kyle visits quite frequently, usually with the intent of getting information, a task that tends to go south and devolve into an extended gunfight. In fact, each game where Kyle is the main protagonist (Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast) has at least one level taking place there, and the one game that doesn't still at least mentions it, in a level set on Coruscant that has similar gameplay to previous Nar Shaddaa levels.
• Retcon: Jerec being a Miraluka, a human-like species who are all completely without eyes, was only established several years after Jedi Knight came out. Before that, he was treated as a blind human, with official artwork all showing a facial shape consistent with having eyes behind his narrow coverings, while Miraluka only have smooth skin where eyes would be.
• Right-Handed Left-Handed Guns: In the original game, the model for the Bryar pistol features a magazine off of its left side, making it impossible to place loaded in the holster that's often shown to be on Kyle's right leg. Later games removed the offset magazine in the gun's design.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: It is a PC game series, so weapons and force powers are switched on the fly.
• Secondary Fire: Most weapons come with this function, such as a Charged Attack, something used by a BFG to make it more suitable for close quarters work, or multiple shots at a time.
• Simultaneous Warning and Action: Played hilariously straight. Often, after an Imperial officer commands his troops to attack you, a stormtrooper will say something like "Let's see some ID!" and then open up on full-auto.
• Situational Sword: Some weapons are best used for specialist functions than as primary weapons:
  • The Packered Mortar Gun from the first game lobs mortars in an arc that makes it ill suited to both close range and long range combat due to the arc's short range and Splash Damage, so is best used to clear IM mines.
  • Speaking of IM mines and the later Sequencer Charges from the sequel, these are far more useful in multiplayer, as they're better used on the defensive than on the offensive that single player entails.
  • In Jedi Knight, the lightsaber of all things isn't the be all and end all that it is in Outcast and Academy. It's best kept for bosses which are duels where Guns Are Worthless.
• Skill Scores and Perks: Beginning with Jedi Knight, the series features a number of upgradeable Force Powers. In the first game, Mysteries of the Sith and Jedi Academy, the player character (be it Kyle Katarn, Mara Jade or Jaden Korr) gains skill points after every mission (Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith give bonus points, or "Force Stars", for finding secret locations, while JA has optional missions to gain extra points) and can spend them on any power that's been unlocked. In Jedi Outcast, on the other hand, Force powers are upgraded automatically according to a fixed progression after every mission (though in multiplayer, the player can still distribute points freely). The powers are further subdivided into Neutral, Light, and Dark, and in Academy, Jaden's mentors will have comments if he prefers one Side over the other.
• Skyscraper City: Nar Shaddaa, which is visited several times throughout the series. Coruscant also makes an appearance in Academy.
• Stuff Blowing Up: A lot of Kyle's exploits seem to involve this.
  (after part of an Imperial base has blown up)
  Jan: What was that?
  Kyle: Just another day at work, Jan.
• Superpowered Mooks: Jedi Outcast features Reborn (in five varieties) and Shadow Troopers (wearing cortosis armor), the lightsaber-wielding, Dark Side-using followers of Desann, which regularly come out to attack Kyle. Jedi Academy features Sith Cultists, Dark Side-using (and sometimes lightsaber-wielding) members of the Disciples of Ragnos. They can all be tough, but aren't anywhere near as strong as Tavion, Desann or Marka Ragnos.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: Gran armed with thermal detonators appear in every game. In fact, aside from the humble stormtrooper, they may well be the only enemy to appear throughout the franchise.
• Title Confusion: See Colon Cancer.
• Unusual Euphemism: Borrowed from other parts of the old Expanded Universe.
  Aw, sithspit...
• Unskilled, but Strong: Reborn and Shadowtroopers. Despite a complete lack of training with the Force, they're capable of holding their own against your average Jedi. Unfortunately for them, Kyle is not your average Jedi.
• Unstoppable Rage: Force Rage.
• Variable Mix: From Jedi Knight II and onward, whenever you get into combat in a level, the music changes to more action based music, straight from the Star Wars OST. There is also a special tidbit whenever your character ever dies. Additionally, Dark Forces has 2 tracks for each mission — one that plays when several enemies are aware of you, and another that plays in non- or low-combat situations
• Videogame Cruelty Potential:
  • Force Grip + Malevolent Architecture = Pure Bastardosity. And speaking of Force Grip, who can resist grabbing a Remnant officer and saying "You Have Failed Me... for the last time!"
  • If there aren't any convenient pits nearby, it is also possible to use Lv.3 Force Grip to lift an enemy off the ground, hold them up towards the ceiling/sky, and Force Push them high into the air. You can also Force Jump above them, then use Force Pull for the exact same thing. And that's not even getting into painful electrocution via Force Lightning or making them kill their friends and allies with their own hands, while they're unable to control their own bodies. Suffice it to say that a creative player can be very sadistic with or without the dark side.
  • Not to mention, with the use of a physics engine in Outcast and Academy, it's entirely possible to lift an enemy into the air with a Lvl.3 Force Grip, then swing the camera wildly and release them to send them hurtling face-first into a solid steel bulkhead like they've been shot from a cannon.
  • The Secondary Fire for the Rail Detonator doesn't detonate instantly, instead sticking to its target while its timed fuse counts down and then explodes. Hit a stormtrooper with one and watch him panic, while he knows his death is inevitable.
• Walking Armory: Not only can you carry a ridiculous amount of weaponry around, but thanks to the Force, you can use it even more effectively than anyone else.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Especially from Outcast onwards, where you can overhear several conversations between enemies who haven't noticed you yet. There's, of course, a small few where the characters just confirm they're exactly as evil as they appear, but for the most part they're regular people doing a job, talking about their hobbies and what they're going to do after their shift or after they leave, etc.

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