Triumvirate Review - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
The Spinchoon Three give their final reviews of Jedi: Fallen Order, the game that has dominated our last three months. Better late than never.
Anthony
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is the first Star Wars game to give me those old familiar Star Wars chills since Shadows of the Empire. It encapsulates everything I know and love about the franchise in its own, unique narrative, with characters that fit perfectly into a long-standing and well-defined universe. Defects aside — with equal parts engaging story, character chemistry, tight mechanics, and charm — Respawn nails the execution — 8/10 —
Find balance in the force
Mastering the appropriate combination of lightsaber attacks, blocks, parries, force powers, healing, and hacking makes for an incredibly deep and well-structured combat system. While some occasional hiccups and hitches would cost me a battle, they were few and far between. I would say that 90% of the time I lost a battle, it was my fault. The combat was incredibly engaging, and thankfully, I was never bored between battles. I very much enjoyed the traversal and environmental puzzles. Discovering new, blocked areas, and coming back to uncover them as I became closer to being one with the force, was incredibly satisfying.
A long time ago
The story, while not groundbreaking, is compelling. Exploring a dark time as a young former Jedi Padawan with PTSD — associated with the atrocities of Order 66 — made for some very emotional story beats. While the conclusion of the main storyline is a bit predictable, the journey is incredibly entertaining. The longest childhood flashback completely floored me.
*Major Spoilers in these videos*
In a galaxy far far away
Each planet you visit is mysterious, dangerous, and terrifying in its own uncharted territory sort-of way. While the enemies you face throughout your journey only come in a handful of varieties, coupling them with the dangerous wildlife (unique to each planet) makes every encounter seem slightly different than the last.
This is the droid you’re looking for
BD-1 is perhaps the most Star Wars-y piece of JFO, and thus deserves his own, shout out. He encapsulates everything you have come to expect from your leading droid. It is incredible how attached you can get to a character that communicates through a series of beeps and boops along with cutesy animations and reactions. I often found myself just pressing down on the D-Pad so Cal would talk to him. The pair have such an endearing relationship.
This is no cave
JFO does a pretty good job of allowing the player to easily distinguish between what you can and can’t explore.
That is until you reach Dathomir.
The entire planet goes against the design language of the rest of the game. On every other planet, when you see a low ledge, you can jump on it; when you see a slightly wider than normal gap, you can squeeze between it. Dathomir had me running into walls and jumping for nothing over and over again. In future re-plays, I wish I could just skip to the main battles of the planet, which generally make up for its issues.
It’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere
I am, of course, talking about Wookiee hair. I don’t know how to put this other than what in the uncooked-spaghetti-fuck happened here? My only guess is that the portion of the game centered around Wookiees was completely tacked on and the design team had no time to polish the models. It’s… unsettling.
Life day celebration
I don’t play through a ton of games; I often have my fill before playing through to completion. JFO is the first game in a while that I have not only completed, but completed twice. I haven’t double dipped for a playthrough on increased difficulty since Halo (my all-time favorite). Not only did I complete the game again, but I also collected all the achievements. Collecting that 1000 GamerScore felt like getting my own medal from Leia (get wrecked Chewie).
Brian
Well, I am confident that I am the least hot on this game of the Spinchoon Three. I can see the greatness in the game, but for me, it fell short in many areas. It’s a game of very high highs, and even lower lows, and the lows dragged my final score down to — 6/10 —
Big Picture
From my perspective, this was a mash up of games, with exploration and traversal like Uncharted and the rebooted Tomb Raider, with the slow and weighty combat of games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. Uncharted and Tomb Raider are games I love, but the inspiration that this game drew from those never felt as fluid. Climbing around often felt clunky, and don't even get me started on the sliding. If you take away the sliding in this game, my score may go up a point on that alone. The sliding brought me back to my childhood ,where it almost ruined a different game for me: Super Mario 64 (remember those sliding levels?). Like the one that's on ice? Now picture that but it controls worse.
OK moving on.
Combat
The exploration I expected to love, and didn’t, but the combat was the opposite. I was afraid to try this game knowing that those similar combat games never clicked for me. Now, this combat didn't really click for me either, but I did enjoy it. I was TERRIBLE at it. When I pulled off a perfect parry or dodge, it just felt so good. I was easily overwhelmed in combat but practice got me through it.
Visuals
Graphically, except for the Wookies mentioned above by Anthony, the game looked great, even on my launch PS4. I was constantly surprised by how great the character models and environments looked. However, it didn't matter how pretty the environments looked, getting lost in them almost made me quit the game multiple times. I get that the game is in the exploration, but I really wish they had some fast travel points. When I traveled too far from the ship and was stuck, I wish I had the option to just travel back to the ship to either go somewhere else or just start over. I felt lost and stranded a lot and that's not how you want to feel in a game.
Story
The story was the driving force; it felt interesting to me from start to finish. Also, like Anthony mentioned it’s definitely predictable, but that doesn't take anything away from the overall experience. The characters were all great and very well acted. The only voice acting that didn't hit for me is a character at the end that I won't spoil. Even that performance wasn't bad, it just wasn't what I was expecting.
Closing
EA is running out of time with their Star Wars license agreement (only three years left). Let's hope Respawn can use the remaining time to put out a great sequel to end this agreement. Which leads me to a question, who should get the license? Should EA get it again? I'll explore these options soon.
Al
As i mentioned in our Game of the Year piece, this is by far the best new game I played in 2019, and for a few years before that as well. While imperfect, it was a perfect extension of the Star Wars canon (in a time of troubled extensions of the Star Wars canon), and a damn fun game. Thankfully, after playing through it 3 (!) times, I can reliably say the majority of complaints I have are really just minor gripes, and having completed it on Grand Master Difficulty I believe I’m qualified to make that judgement. I award it — 9/10 —
Prologue
While I won’t report on this chronologically, I thought it was important to highlight how the game starts. The word “Jedi” is in the title, and if you saw any trailers you’re well aware that Cal was a Padawan in the Order in better times, but the Prologue mission starts you off as just a guy. After teaching you all the basics of traversal (run, jump, climb, swing) — in a low stakes way — you get thrown into an impossible situation: let your friend die or save him with The Force.
Such humble beginnings, and calls to action, are standard fare for a Hero’s Journey (not to mention a Star War). And, as referenced by both Brian and Anthony before me, this story is fairly standard; what sets it apart is how they chose to tell it. That starts off right after you expose yourself as a Jedi in hiding.
After a traumatic conclusion to that train ride, you get thrown into the game for real: you get a full blown tutorial on combat (lightsaber strike, block, parry, dodge, evade, Force Slow). I realized after this tutorial mission how many games take it for granted, and how valuable a strong tutorial can be for a game as difficult as this.
Make no mistake: this game is difficult, despite it’s relative simplicity; 2 attack buttons, one block button, and 3 force buttons combine for a surprisingly deep combat suite. But you won’t be able to utilize it without an intuitive understanding of the basics.
The Hero’s Journey (a.k.a. Becoming a Jedi Knight)
A curious riff in JFO’s take on the Hero’s Journey is the fact that Cal’s journey had started years earlier, and was put on hold, due to trauma in his youth. In hiding for years, exposing himself as a Force wielder forces (pun intended) Cal’s hand, and he is compelled to reconnect himself to The Living Force, a situation explored a few times now in the current era of Star Wars. Essentially coping with Jedi PTSD, Cal’s fractured psyche — and connection to the Force — is juxtaposed against his new master Cere Junda, who like Luke Skywalker in the Sequel Trilogy, has willingly severed her connection to The Force, as penance for her previous transgressions. Cal admits to the pain he suffers connecting to The Force, while acknowledging the need to do so, in order to complete their mission.
As you heal Cal’s connection, he relearns the Force skills he lost in the years since he ended his training, as well as face the things he fears from his past. While I typically find such handicaps imposed on player characters as overly contrived — every game that starts with a highly skilled operative “learning” his skills again to justify teaching the player hurts me personally — giving real narrative reasons makes the experience tolerable, if not actually enjoyable. That’s the case in JFO: as thresholds are crossed to enable Cal to learn a skill, it is taught through flashbacks to his original training during the Clone Wars, under the tutelage of his master, Jaro Tapal. These sequences then justify their existence in the story, functioning equally as skill tutorial and narrative device, pointing at the source of Cal’s pain by highlighting the relationship between him and his deceased master.
Gameplay
The gameplay, or at least the combat, can largely be summed up thus: dodge, block, attack, repeat. That’s really it… and yet totally misses the point at the same time. There is a natural flow to this game that has to be identified in order for you to thrive.
That isn’t to say that every fight unfolds the same way; the myriad combinations of enemy types introduces a healthy amount of randomness to encounters. Furthermore, the difficulty level dictates the tempo of attacks by the enemies you face. But even when you account for those factors, the flow of battle ultimately relies on two factors, both decided on by the player: what skills you prioritize and how well you learned the sequences of combat employed by enemies.
To know your enemy is possibly the greatest weapon in your arsenal. It’s still possible to succeed without regard to the flow of combat, but purely fighting on your own terms can be a choppy experience.
There’s nothing wrong with this; I played the majority of my first playthrough like this (on Jedi Knight difficulty). But there is unquestionably a better way, earned through experience. If you tailor your approach to the enemies you face, it makes beautiful music.
There’s more to it than just hacking through crowds of nameless, faceless storm troopers, though. Well, technically you don’t have to swing your lightsaber a single time if you don’t want to, though that’s not what I mean.
While there are some cool encounters with creatures (and even bigger creatures, looking at you Oggdo Bogdo), the truest test of your abilities are the periodic fights with other Force wielding, lightsaber carrying “dignitaries.” Fighting fallen Jedi is a thrill.
If you think you’ll tire of all that (plus some things I chose not to spoil), think again. JFO isn’t afraid to go all in and just make up an entire section of the game based on an entirely different style of play. Enjoy.
Storytelling and Character Development
As mentioned before, the story itself is mostly straightforward, but it is enhanced by a variety of narrative techniques. There’s that Force…dream (?) from the Prologue, plus the flashbacks to Cal’s training, other Force Dreams™ (I’m claiming the term), plus conversations had between Cal and his crew — your master Cere Junda and Stinger Mantis captain Greez Dritus — as well as with your newfound droid companion BD-1. Just as important are the memory banks stored within BD-1, detailing the path of Jedi Master Eno Cordova, his former owner, and the bits of history gleaned from Cal’s unique Force ability: psychometry. Even while he must continue to heal his connection to The Force, he retained the ability to sense the history of people, places, and things that happened long ago.
Cal’s psychometry, and the conversations he partakes in and overhears, inform the past, present, and future of the world he lives in, as do the video logs of Cordova, whose path Cal must follow to accomplish his mission: reclaiming a hidden Jedi Holocron that contains a list of young Force-sensitives with which they hope to rebuild the Jedi Order. It’s that world building that really caught my attention; my love of the Mass Effect series of games is well known, and a big reason for that is the explicit and implicit storytelling and world building they employ.
Now, without getting too far into spoilers, this conversation stuck with me, deep in the recesses of my mind. I definitely didn’t know about the Haxion Brood before that scene, and I thought it was cool. It’s also the first real bit of back story you get on Greez; most of his character development takes place in the second half of the game, as opposed to the more balanced pace of Cal and Cere’s. Of course, if you’re Anthony, you may have missed (through no fault of his own it must be stated) this conversation and the crucial context — and foreshadowing — this provides for your playthrough. Though if you’re maximizing your experience, you may have spoken to Cere after landing on Zeffo…
Like I said, no spoilers on that front, but I hope you’ll take my word that whenever you think you have this game completely figured out it will do just enough to throw a monkey wrench in the mix.
Since I just mentioned landing, I’ll conclude my thoughts on storytelling with this totally inane thing that I appreciated. Not strictly speaking “storytelling,” but more the implicit world building stuff that has to do with immersion, I appreciated the seamless transitions on and off of the ship, and how travel through space is unbroken by actual loading screens.
A cursory search of the internet for an offhand remark from ten years ago defies my ability to remember who said it, but I remember — literally a decade ago — someone saying how the change from how you enter and exit the SSV Normandy in the first Mass Effect as opposed to the second was very immersion breaking. I hadn’t considered that, being that I was still a neophyte in the realm of playing RPGs, but it stuck with me ever since. It’s a completely trivial thing, but I really appreciate the reality of feeling like you’ve actually traveled to a new destination and will then be getting off your ship at that destination. It’s the attention to little details like that which can show you the care put into making Jedi: Fallen Order by Respawn.
We’re always trying out new things at The Spinchoon. If you liked this, check out more of our stuff, like a Retro Review, or maybe an In-Flight Review, or perhaps a Monthly Mobile Gaming Report. We have a podcast called Flix and a Six, about movies, beer, and basically whatever the hell we want to talk about. You can follow us on Twitter @TheSpinchoon, @AlessandroB1187, @Big_Broons & @AEJCostanzo.
