Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy's Galactic Legacy Is Working on a Faster Engine and Better Character Customization

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy came out in 2003, and people are still finding reasons to keep those lightsabers swinging. The combat holds up remarkably well, but the technology underneath it is another story. You can only ask so much of an engine built more than two decades ago.

The team behind Star Wars: Galactic Legacy isn't quite ready to accept those limitations. Its latest development report details experiments with Vulkan rendering and multithreading, with the goal of improving performance. There's also work underway on a searchable character-selection system, giving players more ways to sort through the project's growing collection of characters without endlessly scrolling through menus.

The character work extends beyond the selection screen, with custom configurations and expanded animation handling also receiving attention. None of this means a finished engine overhaul has suddenly landed, though. These are ongoing development efforts, and the team hasn't announced public release dates for the features shown in the report.

There's a bit of news behind the scenes, too. Arbiter has become a co-leader of the project, and the developers are looking toward returning to mission development. For a project built around expanding what Jedi Academy can offer, we're especially interested in seeing where that leads. New technology is nice, but having more Star Wars adventures to actually play with it would be even better.