Part II: Zombies of the Dark Side

Kyle Katarn and Mara Jade... what in the galaxy are these guys going to say to each other?

We decided to make Kyle into a mentor, a teacher, because it seemed like the next evolution of his character. Plus it would give him and Mara an instantly-understandable relationship, and one that we wouldn't need to address romantically.

Why would Kyle take Mara as his apprentice? He's a loner, and a renegade. But in JK he took on the mantle of Jedi Knight. It was a tough choice for him, and I think that he saw something of himself in Mara. She too had to evolve from a violent loner into a Force-user, and a valuable member of the New Republic.

The first thing we did was age Kyle a bit. I must admit it was fun to give him "salt-and-pepper" on his sideburns and a little goatee. We called this the "evil-twin" goatee... heh.

The first missions we developed for Kyle were a blast to design. My friend Kevin Schmitt threw everything in our design toolkit into the soup. My favorite trick was how he got Rebel troopers into the level, helping you fight against the Imperial invasion. It was absolutely awesome to run down a hallway with your lightsaber, with those helmeted rebels next to you, blasting away at stormtroopers.

For the asteroid-based levels, we were taking inspiration again from Zahn, with the notion of an asteroid gun.

After Kyle defeated the Imperial threat, he decided to go off and investigate some ruins on Dromund Kaas. I always imagined that Kyle had discovered these ruins long, long ago, during an ill-fated pirate raid. But at the time, not being a Force user, he didn't know what to make of them.

As he grew in knowledge and power, he realized they were Sith ruins. But some part of him was drawn to their dark call. So, without telling Mara why, he went off to investigate. He knew Mara would ask uncomfortable questions, and his selfish intentions might be revealed. Plus, even though he was now "respectable", Kyle still chafed at having to answer to anyone for anything.

Now we turned the game over to Mara Jade. I have to admit, I liked watching the back of Mara a bit more than the back of Kyle. Call me crazy.

Concept designers Clint Young and Cory Alleimeier had given Mara a cool jacket, based on Luke's jacket in the awards sequence of ANH, plus some tight-fitting Corellian flight pants. Hawt! And she had that cool purple lightsaber-this is way before Mace Windu, people.

Mara's first challenge was to break into Ka'Pa the Hutt's palace. We wanted Mara to interact with a Hutt, because they are so tied into the "underworld" and that felt like the right place to put her. Obviously poor Jabba was somewhat dead, and we didn't feel comfortable using some of the other Hutts from continuity (some of their stories were a bit muddy and hard to pin down). So we invented "Ka'Pa." I must admit I've taken every opportunity to promote Ka'Pa wherever I can and I take special delight when he's mentioned in the EU.

Level designer Trey Turner took the Hutt mission and ran with it. He crafted a whole society using only the artificial intelligence (AI) parameters of the game. There were a gang of Tuskens who lived in the underground parts of the palace, and some Weequay that hated them. The other aliens were more neutral. And the player could put on a Tusken disguise and walk among them with little difficulty. It was a great mission, with lots of changing situations and alliances.

My favorite cutscene occurs when Mara crashes through the stained-glass ceiling of Ka'Pa's throne room and aims her blaster at his big fat head. We got Ben Burtt himself to translate the dialogue into Huttese, which was really exciting!

Mara then heads off to the spaceport city of Katraasii to hunt a guy named Abron Mar. This was my level, and I had a reputation among the designers for building missions so large they had to be split in two to fit into memory. I VOWED I would not do that this time.

Three months later I was working with Katraasii A and Katraasii B. What can I say?

I love building big city levels, and I had lots of fun hiding "easter eggs" all over this one. At one point, Mara busts into a docking bay, and we see a familiar YT-1300 taking off. She says "Is that who I think it is?"

I got to put no less than THREE cantinas in the mission (and this is where I discovered that there are no "bars" in Star Wars... only cantinas.)

Mara eventually gets ambushed by a crime boss named "Takara" (and yes he's named after a particular brand of sake) and hauled off to his dungeon. Designer Don Sielke did a great job with this prison level, forcing Mara to go mano a mano with Gamorrean guards. Ouch!

But the real gem of the level was a battle with a rancor! Luke had to rely on nothing but his brains and a kriffing rock to kill Jabba's rancor, so Mara had an advantage with her saber. But still, it was an exciting duel, and I ended up getting munched plenty of times.

Having finished her business with Takara, Mara's next mission took place aboard a New Republic Corellian corvette. The designer Steve Hwang actually took a schematic and laid the mission out EXACTLY conforming to shape and space of the corvette. There's no faking on this one.

The dread pirate Kaerobani (and that's me being clever with the word Caribbean) steals a Sith holocron and Mara has to chase him to his hideout.

Finally, Mara and Kyle are brought together again when she travels to Dromund Kaas to find out why Kyle hasn't returned anyone's calls in so long.

The swamp world of Dromund Kaas was a great opportunity for us to throw all our Dark Side "what-ifs" at the player. One of the bosses is the "Dark Mara," who we imagined as being something like Luke's vision of Vader in the tree on Dagobah. Only this one wouldn't go down so easily. Dark Mara had all the player's powers and was exceptionally good at using them.

Mara finds and enters the ancient Sith temple and discovers that Kyle has gone a little bonkers with dark side power. She has to chase him to the center, but first--- ZOMBIES!

That's right. I don't know how we got this one past Licensing, but there is an area of the temple called The Catacombs, where the undead Sith will rise and fight you. Yep, Sith Zombies, people. It was great. They shot lightning from their hands and were generally pretty pesty.

And it's canon. Zombies are canon.

Finally, we had Mara and Kyle meet in the core of the temple. But how would they fight? So much had led up to this moment, we couldn't settle for a regular boss encounter.

The designer on this mission was Tim Longo, a guy I greatly liked and respected. (He would later go on to lead the excellent Republic Commando as director.) Tim and I put our heads together and tried to figure out the best way for Mara and Kyle to fight. And our answer was: "Not to fight at all."

We remembered how both Obi-Wan and Luke had dropped their defenses and sacrificed themselves in their conflict with Vader (who had been corrupted by the dark side, as Kyle had.) We realized that we had a great hook for our final battle-players would have to surrender to the possibility of utter defeat, power down their lightsabers, and draw on the goodness that was still within Kyle.

It worked. Mara's surrender causes Kyle to realize he can't kill her in cold blood. He gives up and realizes he's gone too far in his quest for power.

This near-fall to darkness was the impetus for Kyle shutting himself off from the Force, an issue that would again come to fruition in Jedi Outcast. But that was several years away, and we knew nothing of it at the time.

Working on Mysteries of the Sith was a lot of fun, and was my first real chance to design for Star Wars, and an experience I'll never forget. Working alongside such amazingly creative designers and programmers... that was a privilege and an education.

But the capper would come later in 1998, when we read one of the early drafts of this new Star Wars movie known only as "Episode 1." At one point, a character called Mace Windu says: "This is the clue we need to unravel the mystery of the Sith"

Okay okay... maybe he wasn't thinking of our game, but... I can dream, can't I?