items to be turned into action figures. Katarn was made non-canon in 2014, following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney. However, he was later recanonized by Star Wars: The Card Game in 2016. On November 24, 2021, Katarn was released as a playable character in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Development and depiction Originally, the protagonist of Dark Forces was to be Luke Skywalker. However the developers of the game realized that this would add constraints to gameplay and storyline, and instead a new character, Kyle Katarn, was created. For Jedi Academy, an early decision made during development was whether or not to have Kyle Katarn as the playable character. This was due to the character already being a powerful Jedi Knight, and, as such, starting off with the force skills would affect the gameplay. To resolve this issue, the developers chose to make the playable character a student in the Jedi Academy. Katarn was then made an instructor in the academy and integral to the plot to ensure that Jedi Academy built upon the existing Jedi Knight series storyline. Katarn was voiced by Nick Jameson in Star Wars: Dark Forces. He was portrayed by Jason Court in the full motion video sequences of Dark Forces II. The in-game model was modeled after Court to maintain consistency. In Mysteries of the Sith, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, Katarn's appearance is exclusively a polygonal model, without any FMV scenes, in which he is designed to look like a slightly older Court. In Mysteries of the Sith, he is voiced by Rino Romano, and in the two subsequent games by Jeff Bennett. For the audio dramatizations, he is portrayed by Randal Berger. In Pendant Productions' Blue Harvest, Katarn is voiced by Scott Barry. Reception Previewing the PlayStation version of Star Wars: Dark Forces, Electronic Gaming Monthly called Katarn "a perfect character to star in a first-person shoot-'em-up in the Star Wars universe", and said the character has the same rogue-with-a-heart appeal as Han Solo. GameDaily's Robert Workman listed Katarn as one of his favourite Star Wars video game characters. IGN placed him as their 22nd top Star Wars character, praising him as "a gamer's reliable blank state," a feature which they felt made him one of the most "human" Star Wars characters. They also stated that Katarn's endearance with fans was because of his "mishmash of quirks and dispositions." In 2009, IGN's