Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Q&A

GameSpy spoke to Lead Designer Christopher Foster and Lead Artist Les Dorscheid about Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy to see what they could find about it:

GameSpy: Since the game engine is heavily based on Jedi Knight II, what sort of enhancements can we expect from Jedi Academy? Les, what enhancements can you talk about from an art perspective?

Les Dorscheid: Well, we've got the ability to do so much more with [the] animations to the characters than we did before. We're able to synch the animations up with the environments so much better than we could do before. An example we use a lot is that Rancor can actually touch the wall! We're actually animating the character within the constraints of the environment. So, when he (Rancor) reaches up and puts his hand on the wall, he's actually touching the wall! We never could do that before -- we had to stay away from doing those kinds of things. Now the animation is so much more powerful, it's a new generation, another step.