Hello, aficionados of Jedi Knight,
I am honored to be at the door steps of the Temple again. I've played a bunch of the levels made by other Massassians, and have been a fan of Jedi Knight since 1997 during my childhood.
Out of curiosity, what was everyone's expectations for Jedi Outcast before it came out, and were there any shortcomings the game might have generated amongst some fans?
I asked, because while I liked the incorporation of Prequel-styled Jedi battles in the game (which the Obi-Wan promised for the PC, but was released for X-Box instead), I was hoping for more incorporation of elements from other games such as Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, and much of the material from the expanded universe novels.
When I first glanced at the game features, such as a stun baton as one of the weapons and the inclusion of stealth missions, I thought that Jedi Outcast would borrow a lot of Deus Ex elements, because in Deus Ex, you used a riot prod to stun and incapacitate enemies, and it had fun stealth missions. Maybe if JO brought less linear level design, more varied approaches to the game's situations, and easily duped AI (except for the Jedi bosses), it might have had more in common with Deus Ex.
If the AI of the enemies was much smarter, you might have had a Half-Life quality (or Unreal quality, depending on your AI preferences) game.
I've seen videos of Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force which suggested that Raven exemplified in stealth based missions, so I'm even more surprised by the poor quality of the stealth missions in JO.
I also expected a better quality plot, rather than a story which centers itself loosely on the events of Jedi Knight.
What were you're expectations for JO before it was released? What were you're reactions to JO when it was released?

Sort of vaguely funnily enough I didn't really have any expectations for JO. I did have a dream where I was able to play JK/MotS levels with upgraded graphics on JO but even during the dream I knew it was only going to be possible then. Oh to be 8 years younger!

It was so long ago I don't remember what I expected. I really liked the game, though it could have been better (like every game). I do, however, remember being stoked for Jedi Academy thinking it was going to be that way better Jedi Outcast, and being severely disappointed.

I am going to be in the severe minority here, but I actually really liked JA and even stayed with the multiplayer community up until around 2008.

JA multiplayer was great. Everything else about JO and JA sucks.

I really liked JA single player.

JO multiplayer was awesome, JA sucked.

I want to go back and re-experience JO and I hate to admit I never played the JO Multiplayer yet. I know what a shame.

(dusting off the cd-roms now.)

I played it first time a year ago.
I expected it to be like JK, or MoTS. But instead I got a buggy, terribly designed, mess of a game.
Snipers at insane distances? check.
Stupid crate rooms? check.
Lack of plosh? check.
frustratingly retarded hallway shooting? check.
Game sucks.

I avoided JO in favor of JA because Kyle is stupid.

I hated JO & JA MP. I enjoyed the SP of both (especially JO). I feel that they improved the aesthetics of the series but ruined the gameplay that made JK unique. I think the newer games felt too much like Quake w/ a Lightsaber. If I wanted to play that I'd stick w/ id software. I haven't really enjoyed playing games since LEC ****ed me in the ass & stole my money. Is this the type of stuff you're looking for?

P.S. LEC & Raven can burn in hell.

This times infinity. Yes there were tons of weird bugs, but the bugs actually made it more fun to play.

JA MP not only fixed the bugs, they made everyone wield 500 sabers at once, run around and do practically no damage with the sabers, but also being nigh invincible at the same time. They were long, boring, spamfests of battles.

My favorite level for JO was the demo, the one thing they didn't include in the game.

To be fair to that, though, the demo level was released after the game.

I thought JO was awesome. It was a little weird to fight a dinosaur sith but other than that it managed to update the franchise quite well blending in some of the more sophisticated aspects of the prequel trilogy with regards to Jedi combat. Don't have any experience with the multiplayer aspects of any of these games.

JO was the first one I played, so no expectations at all

I did like JO SP even though the mouth animations were horrible even for the day, hell, RTCW had smoother animations and it was released about a year earlier. Everybody hated the Nar Shaddaa levels with the annoying snipers, as did I until I played through the level so many zillion times I practically remembered where all the snipers were. Of course nowadays I don't so it annoys me again! And as far as the story goes, well, it did annoy me a bit back in the day but now in retrospect I think it's one of the better SW EU stories (especially considering what came "EU-chronologically" after it, urgh).

JA SP was really just more of the same except with some useful engine updates. The plot was weaker than JO's and it had elements of "hey Kyle's fresh-from-the-factory apprentice becomes TEH BEST JEDI EVAR IN A MONTH" or whatever but in any case it served its purpose.

Starting from last year I've also found out that there are actually quite many good SP levels for both of those games (before 2009 I only thought there was only like DF Mod). And great MP levels as well, at least architecture-wise.

I wasted so much of my life on JO multiplayer lol.. Good times though.

I didn't like any of them for multiplayer, I thoroughly enjoyed JO and JA though.
I tried to play JK, but it was way after it's prime, and had no nostalgic attachment for me or anything... I couldn't get into it.

I don't really blame anyone whose first time playing JK was several years after release and they couldn't get into it. Unless it was TODOA.

Pretty much this.

My only expectations for JO was that it would be great looking Star Wars game with really good lightsaber combat. And it succeeded at both.

I've only ever played up to the Nar Shadaa level. I should have probably tried to not hate that level with a passion but... eh. I remember liking the first couple of levels. I suppose in that respect I would have liked the levels to be more like Jedi Knight.

Most of my time playing JO consisted of loading a multiplayer level and spawning in dinoface and whats-her-name, turning on realistic sabers and having the best lightsaber battles ever to be playable in a Star Wars game.

And I love the **** out of JA. I've played through the single player of that game a dozen times. It's the balls.

In my opinion, JO is OT style saber fighting (Empire Strikes Back) with more athleticism. JA is PT style saber fighting on steroids.

I didn't expect JO to be like JK but I liked JO a lot. I played the multiplayer a fair amount. Hydroball was awesome. Good times. I think the only thing I DID assume from JK was that the mods and levels would be on the same scale (if not better) of awesome/random/creative and that Massassi would continue to be the hub for that and it turned out not to be the case.

I don't think I really played the SP, or if I did, I don't remember finishing it. I used to never play FPS single player modes. I thought they were afterthoughts and bought game for their multiplayer-ness.

Unfortunately I lost my JO CD in China so I stopped playing it <_<

God damn I really wanna JO right now....

I'll JO with you.

I CAN JO I HAVE JO

Have you ever JO yourself at school sometime?

JO:

Wait, what do you mean, is it some of us to have that?

Time and place. Give them to me.

I remember being really excited when they released the first screenshot for JO, which was Kyle in the demo level. The cold color tones made me picture a really dark game where Kyle has gone solo and is involved in some sort of deep adrenalin pumping mystery which takes you to the brink of insanity.

When the game came out I sure had fun with it, but I was disappointed by game engine rendered cinematics, but whatever.
I hated the first three levels due to the lack of force powers and lightsaber. But I loved the plot of the game. Though a purple dinosaur being the main villain seemed kinda insignificant compared to the evil of Jerec.
But the best part was near the end of the game when you have almost maxed powers and you can just blow through hundreds of stormtroopers without getting a scratch. The slow-motion parts in the game were also an unexpected pleasure.

All in all it's still one of my favorite star wars games. I really want to play it again.
And JA was fun. Hated the hell out of Rosh though.

Really? You could unlock it on the Gamecube version of JO if you beat Desann on the hardest difficulty.

This thread has made me pop the disc back in for another play-through. I sort of cheated by using the code that gives you the lightsaber at the first level, but that is it.

I was hoping JO would be more mod friendly....I know they released a Mp SDK and everything but JK was so (and still is with all these unofficial updates) modable there was always something new to try out. JO didnt really have that....The lightsaber combat was a let down it could have been alot better. I am still extremely annoyed about Obiwan being moved to the Xbox..the least they could have done was released a playable demo of the PC version or somthing.

I was hoping JO (the SP missions - I didn't like the MP) would have a great story and improved lightsaber action. The story ended up being ok (not great), but I was really impressed with the lightsaber. I loved it. It was so much better than the flickering sticks in JK and MotS. I always felt using sabers in JK/MotS put the player at too much of a disadvantage even though it should be an kick-*** weapon.

I actually like the story in JA better (even if they ripped off Anthony Piggott's mutant Rancor), and I like the huge variety of environments and such in JA over JO. JO SP got repetitive to me. Battle through a ship... battle through some more of the ship... stealth through ship... battle through ship some more...

In JO, I just got tired of being in the same place for such long periods of time.

JO felt and played like mush. I appreciate the responsiveness of JK's controls. I also felt like the lightsaber was a defacto death making the hit detection irrelivant.

JA ruined sabers by going the direct opposite, making them do no damage, taking all value out of hit detection.

When will we have knight sword fights like in the OT? Asian martial arts are overdone.

Wait wait wait... JA sabers do no damage?

I liked the story in JO until Jan turned out to be alive.

I don't recall what expectations I had for JO, but I must have had some as I felt disappointed with it. JO didn't really do anything for me.

If I remember right, I was looking forward to JA because of its focus on lightsabers (which is why I got into JK in the first place) and felt the whole of the game delivered. It would have been nice to have a "realistic mode" option. My only REAL disappointment is that the two games didn't take off like JK/MotS did (because vanilla JK/MotS only did so much for me actually too).

I thought JO was good and JA was even better, both SP and MP. JA MP was some of my favorite ever. Siege was just so much fun.

I, too, was disappointed by the lack of FMVs. I liked the game, though.

There was that console command. g_saberrealisticcombat or something like that. Set it to 4 and the saber will kill anything instantly with one slash.

Although if you're fighting someone with a saber it basically turns every fight into a who-hits-the-other-first affair.

I used to turn that command on, spawn like twenty of those reborn fellas and then just have at it. Most fun ever.

IIRC that command didn't work in JA, which Geb was talking about.