GAME 420 Blog Post #1:
One key factor within the Star Wars universe is the ultra-powerful, god-like Force users. They are attuned to a naturally occurring power that grants them enhanced power, agility, and other abilities.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has a narrative surrounding Jedi Padawan Cal Kestis following the events of Order 66. Jedi Padawan are just a smaller part of the greater Jedi Order— Jedi in training, if you will. These Jedi have mastered most skills and are often able to handle sparring with Jedi Masters.
So why does Cal Kestis get his head handed to him by even the most basic of enemies? Throughout the universe of Star Wars, trained Force users are revered as the strongest— so how is Cal Kestis, a trained Jedi Padawan, bested by oversized caterpillars who do nothing more than lunge a short distance at him?
This confusion is brought about by a disconnect between the universe in which the game is set and the style of the game itself. Fallen Order is a Soulslike— a “genre” that is based on FromSoftware’s Souls series, brutally unforgiving and intentionally difficult to always put the player at a disadvantage— and all fights are an uphill battle. By attempting to merge the narrative universe of Star Wars and the unforgiving gameplay of a Souls game, there is a dissonance between the gameplay and the larger universe— although this does not imply a ludonarrative dissonance, as this is happening at a much higher level. There is a disconnect between playing as one of a group of the most powerful entities in the universe and being absolutely decimated at every turn— and a possible solution lies within this fallacy: don’t be a Jedi.
At this point, there will be spoilers. Beware. This also gets a little more like a review— but I do speak of the topic in relation to these things, I promise.
The narrative of Fallen Order is, at its peak, a mess— but ignoring the glaring issues with the plot of the large universe, it is a semi-solid story about a man relearning his Jedi tricks in order to attempt to save the galaxy and protect other Jedi. The game always touts that Cal is getting stronger, closer to becoming his prime self— a true Jedi. He is even knighted as a Jedi Knight in the last act of the game, another aspect which rampantly changes the insane disconnect mentioned earlier in this post.
The gameplay leaves much to be desired. Combat is defense-based, a staple of most Soulslikes and the Souls series— but this style of combat does not fit the typical “all in guns blazing” attitude presented by most Jedi in the Star Wars universe (we see scenes of his Master fighting during Order 66— his style is most definitely not defensive, and we can assume he did not learn a defensive style from him). There are a few different boss fights in the game, only one of which you are scripted to lose (maybe two? Does the end boss count since you technically lose that encounter?)— but throughout all these different boss fights, encounters, and set pieces, Cal is marred down by the Soulslike gameplay and the nearly unfair difficulty of these bosses. The first fight against the Second Sister is a scripted loss, but your second fight requires you to take down a small some of her health to watch a cutscene of your fight being broken up by chance— and this fight has a very small margin for error on normal difficulty, but it will take every chance it can get to punish even the smallest mistakes. There are some attacks that have variant combos out of them that you can’t avoid unless you guess exactly what string is coming— something that especially does not lend itself to Soulslike gameplay when the main boss enemies all have some form of super armor and unblockable attacks, the latter of which are your only opportunity to score some hits after avoiding them. On this regard, I could write for a couple hundred more words and sentences but the ultimate message is this: Cal Kestis does not feel like a Jedi, and the game feels like it would lend itself better to having some form of non-godlike person in the spotlight.
tl;dr: I really wish we had gotten 1313 or the untitled RPG from Visceral, I’m kinda sick of Jedi games after this one.
C. B. Irby 