Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Is Exactly What They Said It Would Be
When EA and Respawn Entertainment provided the first details for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order well ahead of its actual reveal, they explained how it would be a third-person single-player action game where players assumed the role of a Jedi. They also detailed how it will occur during perhaps the darkest time for the Jedi, between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The first demo shown at this weekend’s definitely-not-E3 EA Play event showed how it’s just what they implied it would be: It’s very much a AAA action game. Whether that’s for better or worse depends on how tired you are of them, and its potential beyond what it showed.
The demo begins with a cutscene featuring protagonist Cal Kestis meeting with Saw Gerrea from Rogue One and Star Wars Rebels (with Forest Whittaker reprising the role). What follows is a demonstration of how Fallen Order’s light platforming and core action work.
Cal can climb and run along walls to reach places, maneuverability features games are still thanking Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for nearly 16 years later. He can also double jump. None of the features are demonstrated to anywhere near their full potential here thanks to the level’s ease, but there could be good use for them in later sections. Notably, this level is around three hours into the game.
The focus here is on combat, with Cal having an array of options with which to defeat various enemies that approach him, or vice versa. He can use basic combos, but can also parry and counter, dodge, toss the lightsaber, and use force attacks to fight groups of enemies. With that feature set, there’s good potential for this to be a worthwhile action game, but whether it can achieve that will depend on the encounter design. The battles present in the demo didn’t leave that impression.
Most enemies went down easily, with most standard soldiers falling in one hit, and the lightsaber-wielding variants taking only a few attacks to defeat. It’s easy to see the inspiration from FromSoftware’s Souls titles, with the rolling and semi-weighty attacks, albeit with an easier difficulty level. But combat is good in From’s titles because they’re difficult, and force players to strategically utilize every technique in their repertoire. A Star Wars game nearly that difficult would never leave EA’s headquarters these days, but there’s potential for the main game to have encounters showing how it’s not the half-hearted compromise the demo makes it out to be.
The level design in the demo was very linear, which isn’t entirely a bad thing in an intensely open world-focused AAA landscape. There were hints at its potential openness, as possible secret areas were visible when the camera turned in certain directions. It was strange when the demo’s player felt the need to show the map at one point, which emphasized just how straightforward the section was; but surely it’s there for good reason.
I sound down on the game here, but it doesn’t look bad. The game borrows action elements and tropes from other games and drapes them in Star Wars aesthetics, but there seems to be little charm outside that. But that impression gets strange upon reading the Fallen Order cover story from July’s Game Informer issue, as writer Andrew Reiner’s description of the feature set and action makes it seem like he watched a different game than the one shown in the public demo.
In the article, Reiner mentions the Souls inspiration, but champions the usage of them. A big focus is on Cal catching enemies off guard with lightsaber and force attacks, particularly those that take more than one hit to topple. He notably watched encounters that pushed the player to use more unique powers, at least slightly similar to how they’re used in Souls games. Despite the linearity of the demo level, the game will have Metroidvania-style progression, similar to — you guessed it — a Souls game. The final game could wear those Souls inspirations on its sleeve, but that’s fine if it can utilize them well.
Respawn and EA might have undersold the game in the first demo, and should make it a priority to show it again very soon — ideally by the end of the month. First impressions are everything, and I’m far from the only one skeptical about whether it will be better than the average AAA action game.
There’s a good chance this game will sell regardless of what they do given the name attached to it and the overall thirst for a single-player Star Wars game, but EA potentially has a lot riding on it because of how they’re selling it. During the April semi-reveal, they advertised how this game won’t have a Season Pass or loot boxes, since we’ve reached the point where this is worth championing. I’m hoping it will be their most successful game in recent memory when it arrives on November 15th, given how hesitant EA is to develop single-player games at all. It will be even better if the quality is there too.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
