Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II/Storyline

The opening cinematic features the destruction of a rebel ship and the capture of a Jedi named Qu Rahn by the Seven Dark Jedi. Upon refusal to divulge the location of the Valley of the Jedi to Jerec, the leader, Rahn is killed. However, Jerec knows that Morgan Katarn, Kyle Katarn's father, possesses the location of the Valley, and thus Morgan becomes his next target.

The story's protagonists are the mercenary duo Kyle Katarn and Jan Ors. The game begins in the wake of Morgan's death; he was killed by Jerec in his search for the location of the Valley of the Jedi. Morgan had in his possession a map to the Valley, which was very expertly engraved into the stone tiles that made up the ceiling of his workshop. The family droid, Weegee, was given Rahn's lightsaber for safekeeping until Kyle returned to claim it, and would only awaken and eject the lightsaber after playing a message Morgan left for Kyle on a unique data disk. This disk, however, was found by the Seven Dark Jedi when they killed Morgan, and is in the possession of 8t88, the droid who is sent to carry out Jerec's handiwork and lure Kyle into an eventual trap so that he can be killed as well.

Kyle's journey begins in a bar on Nar Shaddaa, where he is mourning his father. He is approached by 8t88, who informs him that he doesn't factor into Jerec's plans, and is then held at gunpoint. 8t88 tries to coerce Kyle into telling him what the data disk is, claiming he is unable to crack its code. Kyle refuses and, after successfully killing and/or scaring off the aliens holding him at gunpoint, chases 8t88 through the city, eventually catching up to him as he is boarding a shuttle and blasting his arm off. 8t88's arm, holding the disk, tumbles over the edge of the landing platform, and Kyle retrieves it. After fighting his way to the rooftops of Nar Shaddaa to be picked up by Jan, he is badly injured and spends some time recovering on a medical ship. Rahn comes to him in a vision and informs him of Jerec and his goal. After Kyle recovers, he takes the data disk to his father's home, retrieves Rahn's lightsaber, and begins fulfilling his destiny to become affiliated with the force and stop the Seven Dark Jedi. It is revealed in a cutscene that the Dark Jedi have discovered the map to the Valley in Morgan's ceiling tiles, so they load them up into the shuttle. Kyle arrives outside his father's home as the shuttle takes off.

The entire first half of the game is a giant rat race. Kyle's main focus is chasing 8t88 from place to place, who has since uploaded the map into his memory and delivered it to Jerec. 8t88 relinquishes the map to Kyle, but it is promptly destroyed by one of the Dark Jedi. After chasing 8t88 a bit more, Kyle sneaks onto a cargo freighter and eventually catches up to him to find that he has been decommissioned. After dispatching two more Dark Jedi, Kyle works his way back out of the cargo freighter, where Jan picks him up and follows the freighter to the Valley of the Jedi.

The second half of the game is more directed towards Kyle's focused efforts to stop Jerec from accessing the ancient Jedi burial grounds found deeper within the planet, which hold all of the collective force power of every Jedi buried there. It is spent at the Valley of the Jedi as Kyle meanders through the Imperial facilities that have been established. During this process, Jerec's goons find and capture Jan and present her to Kyle to be either killed or spared. Doing one or the other decides the path Kyle takes. Either way, Jerec grows weary of Kyle's persistence and forces him back onto the cargo freighter, which is essentially turned off and begins plummeting to the planet's surface with the intent of killing Kyle. Kyle escapes and finds that the ship's impact has stripped away much of the outer infrastructure, allowing him to venture deeper underneath the planet's surface and eventually to the drilling site that has unearthed the burial ground. When he reaches the core of the burial ground, the final showdown with Jerec begins. His goal on the light side is to stop the Seven Dark Jedi so that the burial ground's power can remain untouched, while his goal on the dark side is to stop Jerec so that he himself can harness the force power and become the new emperor.