PART I: Kyle and Mara

In 1997, I was part of a small team working on a mission pack for the PC game Outlaws. During that time, the marketing department looked at the sales for Outlaws and came to a disappointing conclusion. "We haven't done enough sales to make a mission pack profitable," they told us. (Mission packs do a predictable 30-40% of the original game's numbers.)

"BUT..." they said, "how would you like to work on the mission pack to Jedi Knight?"

Jedi Knight (aka JK) hadn't even been released yet at that point. The designers were still putting the final polish on what we all knew was going to be a GREAT game. It was a quantum leap forward for LucasArts and for Kyle Katarn himself-- our first foray into 3D FPS, and Kyle's "first step into a much larger world." Featuring Force powers, giant sprawling missions, branching storylines, full-motion cutscenes... this was the Star Wars experience we'd all been craving for years.

We finished four missions for Outlaws: Fistful of Missions (which was distributed as a freebie for registered users), said goodbye to the world of Spittin' Jack Sanchez and Marshal James Anderson... and started work on the Jedi Knight missions pack.

But what a task! At the end of Jedi Knight, the player (as Kyle) is either a consummately powerful warrior, having vanquished the evil Dark Jedi Jerec in face-to-face combat... or a figure of almost Palpatine-like power, as a Dark Jedi in charge of the Imperial Remnant. How could we address both endings, without a horrible retcon like: "It was all dream?" Gah!

At first we tried to avoid Kyle altogether. The team shared a common love of bounty hunters, and at that point, the JK multiplayer team had recently unveiled its cool "Boba Fett" avatar, so we thought what about a bounty hunter game?? We imagined a series of unconnected missions, set all throughout the galaxy, where the player could pursue bounties as a customizable bounty hunter character! (Luckily, this free-form idea was later revisited in the awesome Jedi Academy.) The team was admittedly frothing-at-the-mouth insane at this point, but luckily, cooler heads prevailed, and someone said "Wait a minute-- Isn't this a JEDI KNIGHT mission pack?"

Oh. Yeah. Ahem.

So we refocused on Kyle and tried to figure out how to address the next logical chapter in his story. First we decided there was no way we could address the "Dark Side" ending. It put Kyle's story too far out of the EU canon. It was really and truly a separate "alternate universe" ending, irreconcilable with the rest of the EU.

The "light side" ending was much easier to swallow. Kyle could be a Jedi, could have had his own private battle with Jerec, and yet, still might fit in with the Alliance/New Republic storylines of the books and comics.

So, with that decided, we put our heads together and tried to figure out what would happen next. "Remember," we were told by management, "this is not a sequel. You don't have the budget or the time to pursue a real sequel to the game." Okay, we accepted that. It meant telling a smaller story. Something important but less epic than one might expect from a true sequel.

My friend and co-level designer Kevin Schmitt and I, along with artist Clint Young, were huge fans of the Thrawn trilogy, and especially of that foxy little number named Mara Jade. I forget who suggested her first, but once we began talking about Mara, we knew we had to work her into the story.

One day, Kevin, Clint and I were outside LEC taking one of our little breaks. Typically, we would b.s. about Star Wars and the game. At one point, I had a brainwave, and I blurted out: "What if Kyle trained Mara?"

The other guys looked at me like I was insane. Then they got the smiles... It made sense, in a weird way. Kyle was a renegade, Mara was a renegade. Kyle had touched the dark side, Mara certainly had. And both of them had bad attitudes and kicked much booty when they needed to. It did indeed make sense.

We ran back inside like a bunch of hyper 10 year old girls and told the whole idea to Project Leader Steve Shaw, who agreed that it could work. It would be a nice way to vary up the gameplay and allow some complexity to the story, without committing to a whole sequel's worth of ideas and content.

Now... how to do it?

Next:
Part II: Zombies of the Dark Side