A short while after its debut, the gamer community crowned Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast “the best game created in the Star Wars universe”. Jedi Outcast took the control of a sword to new heights, well beyond the one in Die by the Sword and pushed the Quake III engine to its limits, and due to its excellent multiplayer, managed to create a very powerful gamer community. Despite this, at the end of 2002, when the game press award titles for the best games of the year, Jedi Outcast passed unnoticed. The reason for this is thought to have been the spring date release of the game, which plunged the game into oblivion. Therefore, Raven Software decided to give it another try, and after 8 months of waiting, Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy has hit the store shelves.

This time around, the main character is not Kyle Katarn, but the young (him or she) Jaden Korr, which arrives on Yavin VI to answer the call of Luke Skywalker to start the training at the Jedi Academy. Despite not being yet a Jedi, Jaden already has a light saber, which he made it himself, this serving as a pretext fro the player to have a saber from the start of the game. This is a departure from Jedi Outcast, where the player would receive a light saber only after a good deal of the game had been completed. Following the crash landing of the transport shuttle, Jaden finds himself involved in discovering the secrets behind a secret cult, called the Cult of Ragnos.
I said “him or she”, because at the start of the game you can select your gender and race, clothing, looks and your saber hilt. Except the fact that the voice of the character changes according to the chosen gender, the other visual customizations do not affect the story in any way, which except the tutorial and the ending chapter, is comprised of mission packs which you can complete in any order you like. The disadvantage of this is that some missions are not related to the main story, therefore the epic line being less cohesive than it was in Jedi Outcast.