Jedi Fallen Order Final Thoughts

Jedi Fallen Order was technically a game that I talked a bit about when it came out last year at roughly this same time. Prior to the Mandalorian, this game represented the single best piece of fiction set in the Star Wars universe that did not directly involve the main canon of characters. What it represents is a spreading out of the universe and the telling of other tales that just happened to be tangential to the main story through line of the Star Wars setting. I had a lot of fun playing this game in November of 2019, but I wound out stalling out very hard and never quite returning to it to finish things up. At that point I was playing with a controller, which is not my instrument of choice. For the last year I had wanted to restart this experience so that I could get a fresh start and also adapt to my more favored Keyboard and Mouse controls.

That happened over the break and even though this game came out last year… it is probably also going to go on my games of 2020 list because experiencing it with different controls made the experience so much better for me personally. I think pretty much all of my original points hold that this is a Dark Souls inspired game that doesn’t feel like Dark Souls thanks to the variable difficulty slider. I was mostly here for the story and the escapism of feeling like a Jedi, so I played on a lower difficulty setting. If you feel like you want to punish yourself, then you can absolutely crank the slider up to the maximum and start with Dathomir as your first planet and the game will allow you to bash your face against that wall for as long as you care to.

That is one of the major challenges that I have with Jedi Fallen Order is that it isn’t exactly great a messaging what you as the player should be doing. For example as mentioned above you are given a choice of a starting planet of either Zeffo, the correct choice or Dathomir, the masochistic choice. There is a SIGNIFICANT difference in the starting difficulty of both planets, and I personally chose Dathomir this go around because I had some knowledge of the game under my belt and it would allow me to unlock the Dual Saber faster. The thing is… even in doing this… you can only progress so far on Dathomir before you have to switch right back to Bogano because you lack the metroidvanian tools required to progress further at that point.

While playing the game it tells the story of you as Cal Kestis a Jedi Padawan who somehow escaped Order 66, but the emotional and mental toll of doing so damaged your connection to the force. Through interacting with the world you end up remembering bits and pieces of your training allowing you to access the classic Jedi powers like Force Push, Force Pull, and Double Jump as well as encountering a number of equipment upgrades like Rebreathers and Climbing Claws that assist in your traversal of the levels. These abilities are then used to solve puzzles in the same manner that you would have in a game like Zelda as you complete similar “Temples” to unlock the knowledge that you are seeking to fulfill the main quest of the game.

You are also aided by BD-1, a little robot friend that you find on the first planet of the game Bogano. BD-1 is the best companion character that I have seen in a game like this, and as you traverse the world you also improve its abilities to aid you in your challenges. An example is early on BD-1 will help you slide down zip lines, but eventually you find a tractor system for it which allows you to ascend those same lines opening new ways to traverse existing areas. In Star Wars the Robot companions are always the heart of the story, and BD-1 is essentially the “goodest” dog you could have ever encountered. I just sorta wish you could pet it, because it totally deserves head pats.

Another strong point of this game is the extremely solid cast of supporting characters. These characters are patterned after the appearance of the human actors which presents an interesting thought. Now that we are in this era of Disney Plus spinning off so many new shows set in the Star Wars Universe… Jedi Fallen Order could be adapted perfectly to the small screen. Cal Kestis is played by Cameron Monaghan of Shameless and Gotham, and Cere Junda is played by Debra Wilson who if you are old like me you will mostly know from Mad TV. In both cases the digital character is basically just them, and it would be super easy to translate those roles over to physical forms. It would be super interesting to have a oneshot series that takes place between Jedi Fallen Order and whatever the next game is that they are working on.

Maybe even more important than how well acted the main cast of Cal, Cere and Greez are… this game also has a phenomenal cast of antagonists. The best of these include the Second Sister, who is an Inquisitor that is constantly on the hunt for Cal Kestis and crew. Another stand out is the Night Sister that you encounter on Dathomir who is trying to keep you from progressing further on that planet. Both are exceptionally three dimensional characters that manage to be more than just an imposing person with a red lightsaber. Not going to go into much detail because spoilers, but suffice to say that the story takes some interesting turns and earns the adoration I am heaping upon it.

I said earlier that the game is bad at messaging what the player is supposed to do, and I feel like I need to dive into this further for a moment. When I started playing this game last year I hit a wall and that wall was me not understanding that the game was trying to tell me to leave the planet that I was currently on. During the quest you venture to Kashyyyk and help a band of freedom fighters to liberate the Wookies being enslaved there. Immediately following this repatriation you are given a subtle tip that maybe something interesting has happened on another planet… but the game doesn’t come out and tell you to freaking leave. Instead it explains how you would get to the next area of the planet… and I spent hours wandering around trying to figure out how to go down that path. You can’t get there yet and you really do need to leave the planet and go do something else for awhile before that path opens up.

In other ways the game does a really good job of telling you what you can and cannot do. Each Jedi Ability opens up new areas of the game much like a traditional Metroidvania, and these are generally messaged with terrain looking a specific way. This is called out when you first pick up the ability… for example in order to Wall Run, you need a specifically textured section of wall and once you notice this your mind starts to calculate what you should be doing in which sections. Eventually you learn that you can chain together a number of traversal elements which only serves to make you feel more like the Jedi Knight that you are becoming. It is only really when the Story wants you to go somewhere else that maybe it does a poor job of explaining itself.

The entire package however is extremely fun and while the game itself isn’t the longest I have played… it rides this line between being too short and overstaying its welcome. Nothing in the game feels like filler being used to pad the content or force you to jump through a series of hoops to slow down your progress. All of the content you experience is there for a story driven reason and as a result it feels like an extremely solid narrative experience. It doesn’t hurt that all of the set pieces are these epic views from the Star Wars universe as you roam around giant crashed hulks and ancient force user temples.

I went into this game expecting a fun romp that allowed me to pretend I was a Jedi. What I did not expect however was the sheer emotional prowess that the story wields in allowing you to feel like what it must have been to be a Padawan that barely escaped the purge. In fact there are moments within the game that allow you to relive the experience of barely escaping while Order 66 is being carried out. The game actually shows you several different sides of this same event that we are now familiar with thanks to the prequels. In all cases there is a sheer gravity of the action that sticks with you and I have to admit… the game extracted more than one tear from me as I lived through its tale.

Now that we are a year out from its release, you can pretty much pick the game up for around $20 on your platform of choice. If you have ever loved Star Wars at any point in your life… this is money well spent. I can only hope that we see a lot more of this cast of characters, because the game sets a few things up that it never quite delivers on, making me think we have many more adventures in our future. I want more games with the mechanical and emotional gravitas that this game provides.