Nothing is too niche for modders to remaster, not even a '90s Star Wars FPS expansion pack where you play as Luke Skywalker's weird non-canon wife rescuing my favorite Expanded Universe dork
Luke Skywalker had a weird wife named Mara Jade who was a femme fatale ex-Sith assassin with a purple lightsaber. Chewbacca died at 225 years old when Star Wars' Aldi-brand Borg dropped a moon on him. The first Death Star plans were not stolen by a ragtag bunch of rebel soldiers that included beloved martial arts leading man Donnie Yen, but rather a dadish guy in a Henley who looks like he's heading to the last farmer's market of the season on a brisk Sunday in the fall.
Yes, the old Star Wars Expanded Universe was a bit of an odd duck, and you can maybe see why Disney shunted it to the side in favor of a new continuity. All the same, that astounding (non) canon of books, comics, and especially games still has a stranglehold on my psyche, and it's always heartening to see its more funky outgrowths still get some love. Enter Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith Remastered by a modding team led by General Tantor on ModDB, which recently got a big 3.0 update.
For those not as plugged into Star Wars' weirdest era, Mysteries of the Sith is probably the most overlooked entry in the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series. You may recall NightDive's recent remaster of the original Dark Forces, the first Star Wars FPS. That game was followed by Jedi Knight, another great shooter in its own right that introduced lightsaber combat to the series. Raven Software (now of CoD: Warzone fame) would continue the series with Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, still the best lightsaber dueling games ever made in my book.
Mysteries of the Sith was a standalone expansion to Jedi Knight where you play as Mara Jade, Luke Skywalker's aforementioned weird wife, sent to rescue series protagonist and Henley enthusiast Kyle Katarn after he falls to the dark side because he was hanging out in the wrong swamp. It was a perfectly fine, weird little side story, and more Jedi Knight is never a bad thing.
It can certainly be rough on the eyes though, in a similar way to many early 3D games. Like with General Tantor's remaster of the base Jedi Knight game, Mysteries of the Sith Remastered gives the game a generational model and texture facelift, bringing it more or less in line with the later Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy graphically.
The 3.0 update now fixes a bug that caused the new, higher poly models to revert to their chunky original selves during cutscenes, and this version also brings an upscaled UI and custom-modeled lightsaber for Mara Jade to boot.
Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith Remastered are a great way to pretty up these old games if you want to see them in a new light, but if you're looking for something more light-touch, you can always just stick to the OpenJKDF2 source port General Tantor's mods are built on: that'll let you play the game at crisp, modern resolutions while still keeping a classic '90s feel.
