Earlier today MacCentral brought readers news about a new preview of Aspyr Media’s forthcoming 3D action game, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Westlake Interactive, which is handling the game’s Mac conversion, has news of its own. The company reports that Jedi Knight II has reached the Beta milestone.
“Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has reached Beta status,” wrote Westlake. “The [development] team was able to get higher-quality versions of the in-game cutscenes from LucasArts, so the Mac version should have much nicer looking versions of those. On the whole, JK2 is starting to come together really nicely.”
Beta is a development milestone that marks the point where Westlake has converted all of the game’s code to the Macintosh, and all features of the game have been implemented. At this point, Westlake is tracking and fixing bugs and has actively solicited a private team of testers to play the game to help shake down any problems that remain. When it’s finally released, the game will run natively in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, and it will support multiplayer gaming between PC and Mac versions as well.
The game is a first-person shooter (with an option to view in third-person mode) based on the Quake III Arena engine set in the Star Wars universe, a few years after the events that conclude the third movie in the original Star Wars trilogy, “Return of the Jedi.” Players assume the role of Kyle Katarn, a Jedi-turned-mercenary. Katarn must once again rise to the cause of justice as he helps to save the fledgling New Republic from certain doom. To that end, Katarn battles the last remnants of the Galactic Empire and a rogue Jedi who has turned to the Dark Side of the Force, rediscovering his own Jedi training along the way.
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is already available for Windows PCs and is currently in development for several game consoles. This is the second Star Wars-related property to make it to the Mac courtesy of publisher Aspyr Media, which has previously collaborated with LucasArts to bring Escape from Monkey Island and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds to the Mac as well.