Fans are growing increasingly convinced that Star Wars: Outlaws is bringing back arguably the franchise's most iconic gaming protagonist: Kyle Katarn.
In the cinematic reveal trailer for Outlaws, the game's protagonist Kay Vess is approached by a man named Jaylen, who says "Give me a chance. You're going to have to trust me. It'll be dangerous. Risky. But if you pull this off, you'll never look over your shoulder again." Intercut with shots of Kay entering a massive vault, it seems clear that Jaylen is asking her to take part in a heist.
But more important than what Jaylen says is what he looks like. Brown boots, a light tan shirt, a scruffy beard, and a head topped with dark hair going gray around the sides… That's darn near a carbon copy of Kyle Katarn as he looked in Jedi Academy. The one major difference is the cape over his shoulder, but even that looks a whole lot like Kyle's pauldron. The more everybody looks at Jaylen, the more they seem to become convinced that it's Kyle in disguise.
How the fuck is anyone looking at this guy and not instantly assuming it's Kyle Katarn pic.twitter.com/LNlYHoD2G1June 12, 2023
Yeah this is gonna be Kyle Katarn in #StarWarsOutlaws, calling it now ! & I couldn't be more excited! Let's wait and see 😌🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/HBithrDzi1June 11, 2023
Alright screw it. I’m a ‘This is Kyle Katarn’ truther. #StarWarsOutlaws pic.twitter.com/Ir9SNOC92uJune 11, 2023
Clearly someone on the team at Ubisoft is a Kyle Katarn fan, too. I'm not sure I actually believe that this is Jaylen's true identity, but at this point I desperately want to believe.
The Senior Quest Designer for Star Wars Outlaws made a Kyle Katarn fancam. https://t.co/Sp6mN9kVLTJune 12, 2023
Kyle Katarn was created for the 1995 FPS game Dark Forces, which spawned a long-running series that eventually saw the mercenary anti-hero become a Jedi. He became a major part of the core Star Wars canon in books, though all the material he's been in has been relegated to 'Legends' since Disney's buyout of the franchise. While numerous other figures from old Star Wars stories have been slowly reintroduced to modern canon over the years, Kyle is not among them.
That's not to say all elements of the Dark Forces series have been absent in modern canon, however. The Dark Troopers that appeared in Mandalorian season 2 are originally from Dark Forces, and the pistol the titular hero of Andor uses was wielded by Kyle throughout his game series.
A different sort of Star Wars legend is bringing Nix to life in Outlaws.
