Surprisingly little attention, even among Star Wars-centered media, has received the information about a Star Wars video game planned to be released next summer.
Its name is Jedi: Fallen Order. The announcement was made during EA Play event in Los Angeles by Vince Zampella from Respawn, the company that is working on the new title. Respawn Entertainment is known as the maker of multiplayer FPS series Titanfall and Zampella himself is one of the figures behind original Call of Duty series.
But what do we know about Jedi: Fallen Order this far? It will be a third-person action/adventure set between the events of Episode III and IV. Its name clearly alludes to the Revenge of the Sith events, when the entire Jedi Order has been wiped out. Or nearly: the player will take on a role of a Jedi survivor of the purge, which gives ample opportunity to use the old, proven scheme of a lone Jedi having to learn everything by themselves using limited resources.
Heir to Jedi Knight and Force Unleashed?
The official knowledge so far does not go beyond the game’s name, the timeline and the fact that the player will be wielding a lightsaber. Starwars.com has also showed pieces of footage from capturing lightsaber battles via motion-capture technique. With all that, we can safely assume the game will follow the footsteps of popular Jedi Knight and Force Unleashed series from the past decades. It would be a waste not to include the elements that made these games so succesful: the options to learn different Force powers, focus on lightsaber combat tricks and combos, maybe even the option to customise your lightsaber (and use two or a double-bladed one).
As for the actual story, we can only speculate. Searching for other Jedi survivors in order to complete one’s training might be a reasonable plot element. Otherwise I would imagine it moving between avoiding the Empire while trying to help innocent people. The less linear the game is, the better: it would be great if, for example, the player had the chance to go “Dark Side” – I mean by becoming selfish and sacrificing others for personal survival, not necessarily in terms of joining the Empire (even though, I could imagine even that – at some crucial, later stage of the game, and completing the rest of the story not by trying to look for other Jedi survivors to learn from them, but to exterminate them).
The enemies might include criminals and bounty hunters as well as stormtroopers and even elite Jedi hunter clones following the Order 66. Given the focus on lightsaber dueling (and frankly, missing on it would be a waste, too), I could imagine the Inquisitors we have seen in SW: Rebels making an appearance. Speaking of that, I am pretty sure the game should make use of cameos of some known characters – who could be anybody alive during the “dark times”, from Obi-Wan through Cassian Andor, Ahsoka and Hera Syndulla to Enfys Nest.
In any case, when you start to think about it, the game offers countless possibilities. Given that there hasn’t been much on the front of Jedi simulators for many years, the creators have a great opportunity to make something remarkable. Let’s hope they use it to the fullest.
