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- Dec 29, 2000
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So on Black Friday, I decided to pick this up because it came with a $15 dollar coupon from Fandango, and since I see movies a lot, it's the same as buying it marked down.
I decided to buy the game based on the positive word of mouth. I was initially leery because of Electronic Arts and how I really don't like their business model and also because I really don't like the direction Lucasfilm was taking Star Wars in. Still, I figured that it if was frustrating like everything else coming from Disney Wars these days, I could just pass it on to someone else.
Boy, am I glad I bought and played this game through.
This may (or may not) come as a big surprise to you, but this is REAL Star Wars.
After playing this game and seeing how much heart it has, how much soul its characters have and how each of them, even the droid BD-1 (who shits all over BB-8), goes on a journey from being lost to finding themselves and how much the devs LOVE Star Wars, I am left with one nagging, frustrating thought.
Why weren't we getting THIS from the start?
So the game takes place five years after Revenge of the Sith and the star is a fugitive padawan named Cal Kestis. He's working on a planet that's being used as an Imperial scrap yard for old Clone War military technology. As the game opens up and you gave out over the horizon, it's littered with Republic cruisers and they even lower a Trade Federation droid control ship while you're watching. Cal's friend remarks on how he hasn't seen one of those in years, which I think is a dig at the 'Star Wars Writing Team' for sweeping over the past eras in favor of their miserable soft reboot.
Now, I'm not going to wax TOO nostalgic about the prequels. We all know what we think of them and I wasn't a big fan at the time. I really hated them after a while, but seeing all these nods to that trilogy in the beginning of Fallen Order made me realize two things:
1.) It's been twenty years since The Phantom Menace. Wow.
2.) I think the ideas of the prequel trilogy have actually endured quite well, even if the analysis and synopses of those films show their many flaws. I'll make another post about this point eventually, but the bottom line is that, really, some pretty damn good shit came out of those prequels. Like the final season of Game of Thrones, those movies are a failure of execution and not necessarily concept.
At any rate, the fun begins (to reference one of the most famous lines in the first film) when the Empire discovers Cal and he has to escape. He;'s been trying to live without being a padawan because the memory of Order 66 is just too painful for him. He's all but forgotten his padawan training and in order to survive as he runs from the Imperials, he begins to remember how to use the Force, albeit in a clumsy and not very effective manner.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The opening part of the game teaches you the platforming under far less stressful situations. Cal and his coworker are ordered to go to a specific place in the salvage yard to do some work and after an accident, Cal is cut off from taking the 'easy' path and has to do the requisite jumping, ledge hanging and balancing. Right when he gets reunited with his friend, they both fall off their perch and Cal has to use the Force, at great difficulty, to save both of them. He tries to do this without his friend noticing but, as with a lot of great superhero sidekick origin stories, the friend has discovered Cal's secret and is excited about it. When the Empire lines them all up and demands that the fugitive step forth, the friend pretends to be the runaway so that Cal can run. Of course, Second Sister (the antagonist of the story) sees right through it and the adventure begins. Cal still has his master's lightsaber, and he uses it here but only as part of his desperate escape plan.
Cal eventually comes across a pair of freelancers that bail him out after an opening stage that has you just trying to get away and you eventually learn that Cere, one of the pair, was a former Jedi master that cut herself off from the Force for reasons that I really don't want to spoil. They comprise a compelling arc that forms the backbone of the entire game's narrative.
Once you're off and running in the gameplay, you are brought to a planet with a Jedi temple in order to find out why Cere needs you. This first planet also serves as a training stage, but more in the area of exploration, unlocking shortcuts and so forth. Between the opening stage and this one, you are given all the basic tools of how to proceed. After you enter the temple and learn what the game is going to expect of you, you're back on Greez's ship, the Talon, which serves as a transportation hub, and you are on your way proper.
The gameplay of Fallen Order is best described as a Dark Souls-lite, complete with 'meditation circles' in place of bonfires so that you can spend earned XP to buy up your abilities and referesh your Stim Packs, this game's version of Estus Flasks, if you so choose. But if you 'rest', which heals you and refills your healing, the enemies respawn. It's an odd mechanic that has to be accepted since there's no narrative explanation given for this. You could argue that resting results in new Imperials showing up to secure the area after you've cleared it and new monsters roaming in after the previous apex predators have been killed but really, it's not necessary to fill in the hole. It's not that important.
The gameplay is strangely familiar and different all at once. It's action heavy and based on precision and evasion. I liken it to Bloodborne in terms of its pacing. Parrying and counterstriking are key to victory, especially when you have to fight Inquisitors, former padawan converted into Jedi hunters by cruel experimentation forced upon them by the Empire. They, along with scout troopers, are equipped with melee weapons similar to what the Magnaguards from Revenge of the Sith and even The Force Awakens (electro billy clubs or whatever) might have utilized. They also have blasters, rocket launchers and even grenades to stun and blind you. In time, as your powers with the Force grow, you can grab enemies and stab them, push them over precipices, reflect their shots (even the grenade launchers) back at them, slow multiple enemies, throw your lightsaber and switch back and forth between single blade and dual blade (a la Darth Maul). Story beats on the different planets you must visit unlock abilities by way of flashback to your padawan days as Cal remembers training he forgot. Stuff like wall running, double jumping, Force pushing and pulling and so forth. All of your Force powers, once unlocked, can be enhanced, as can your combat skills, with more XP, which is gained by killing enemies and finding database entries and other hidden secrets.
Enemies are also made up of the various fauna of the worlds you visit or, in the case of Dathomir, zabrak night brothers. No rancors, but perhaps that's for the best since that monster is pretty played out these days and, according to the new canon, rancors may not even be native to Dathomir anymore. Not sure about that. The different planets have different cultures and you learn about the ancient, dead civilizations and how they interpret the Force differently from how the Galactic Core and the Jedi and Sith understood it. There is a very strong pulp 'ancient lost civilization adventurism' feel to everything, and I love this part of the game. As with Bloodborne, dying results in a loss of XP until you go back and fact the enemy that killed you. However, you don't have to win the fight; you only have to damage the enemy and it's restored.
You can find items that can customize the look of your lightsaber, your companion droid BD-1, your outfit and the paint scheme of the Talon. Interacting with the characters when you have the opportunity reveals more of the story about each of them as you learn that they're actually ALL people running from a troubling past. In this way, the events of the game are informed by the pasts of these characters and it drives the action in many instances. This is a marvelous aspect of the game, as characters with depth and history are sorely missing from the Disney trilogy (except for Finn, who they wasted) and, like the classic trilogy, their experiences and joined growth morph them into a group that you can't separate in your mind. It's the same kind of character intimacy that the classic trilogy core possesses.
BD-1, who may be my favorite character of the bunch after Cal, can be enhanced as the game goes on when you find the various workbenches with the necessary components. He can eventually hack doors, electrically charge panels and even, after they have received enough damage in combat, overwrite the programming of security droids and probe droids so that they fight against enemies in the vicinity. This droid is every bit as heroic and useful as R2-D2 was in the movies. He'll race off to scan items of interest to fill his database, which is the game's way of introducing you to the lore of the worlds if you're interested. Otherwise, he's clinging to your back like a miniature AT-ST, chirping and whirring and being a true buddy (BD) the whole way through. I LOVED this droid.
Another interesting development is the random appearance of bounty hunters. There is a point in the game where Cal is rendered unconscious and taken to an arena where an old acquaintance of Greez's (the pilot and owner of the Talon) has you fighting for the pleasure of the crowd. Escaping from this scenario results in being hunted. The appearance of these bounty hunters is this game's equivalent of being invaded in Dark Souls, and unlike the zone meditation resets, the game's narrative provides an excellent reason for these jabronis to appear. They are some pretty challenging fights, and at inconvenient times too. There are also alpha monsters you can fight on the different planets for big XP rewards and access to other secret areas. The bounty hunters, bosses and alpha monsters don't respawn like the common enemies do.
Area exploration is challenging at times and many of the secret chests and databank entries are pretty well hidden. If you want 100 percent collection, you'll have to revisit the zones after you've unlocked base powers to reach previously inaccessible areas. In this respect, the 'nonlinear' aspect of the game is similar to Metroid or Symphony of the Night. The collectibles are mostly cosmetic but as you get XP for finding them, they are worth it to those that want to be maxed out on health, Force meter and abilities when they reach the game's finale.
The controls aren't perfect and take some getting used to, especially during the 'sliding' zones where control and camera are difficult to manipulate. The combat is also frustrating at times, as enemies don't die from lightsaber hits as you might think they would (it IS a game, after all) in a story, and a lot of the monsters will snap at you 2 or 3 times with little recovery time between attacks. It can be pretty annoying at first but once you understand how each of the monsters fights and you've built up enough ability and have more health and Force meter, they are much easier to handle. Inquisitors can be particulary maddening, as you have to parry three or four consecutive attacks and their unblockables (when they turn red) have massive pursuit advantage, forcing you to dodge far to avoid and limiting your opportunity to punish. When you parry and counterstrike, it will often appear as though enemies are blocking your attacks but they're taking damage all the same. This is the game's meta-mechanic for explaining how humans are 'surviving' lightsaber strikes. It can be visually confusing, since most games of this type reward your success by forcing the enemies into recoil and stagger animations. I kept being reminded of the way hit points work in Dungeons and Dragons, which aren't necessarily a measure of how much damage one can take in a fight as it is an abstraction of how much one can endure in battle before falling; a person may have 600 HP in D&D but based on the storytelling of the fight, they might only actually take one blow at the end and the rest of the HP loss is dodging, blocking, rolling, evading, glancing blows and so forth.
I wouldn't call the game perfectly but I'd describe this game, as a whole, as having perfect intentions. This game LOVES Star Wars and it LOVES Star Wars fans. There is no multiplayer, no loot boxes, no reliance on 'always online' or any of that nonsense. There is a 'deluxe edition' that has some extra skins but absolutely nothing that locks you off from playing this game or experiencing any of the zones or the abilities you can learn. This is, like God of War a game that has been released as a single player experience designed specifically to show Star Wars fans that they (we) haven't been forgotten.
In short, in my opinion, this is REAL Star Wars, not the fakery masquerading as Star Wars on the big screen currently. In fact, like many fans, I've pretty much dismissed the Disney films as fan fiction. To me, and to many others, there are only six movies.
Between Jedi: Fallen Order, which is a love letter to the idea of Star Wars and The Mandalorian, and more content LIKE this and less that steals the legacy of the Lucas films but, instead, honors it, Star Wars could make a full recovery.
This game had me THINKING about Star Wars again. LOVING Star Wars again. Imagining adventures yet unseen A Long Time Ago...in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
I haven't been this EXCITED about Star Wars since before the prequels. We're talking Shadows of the Empire levels of pure love and affection for this franchise.
When I saw Star Wars as a boy in 1977, my brain knew a part of me would never grew up. As I grew older, I began to see the many storytelling problems with even the classic trilogy. Why is there a monster in the trash compactor? Why can the heroes avoid a biometric scan by hiding under the floor? What does a 'space slug' live on? How do ewoks take out a legion of Palpatine's 'finest troops'?
But the reality is that none of that matters when the heart of the thing is pure, honest and desires only to please and entertain. Was Star Wars growing commercial by the time Jedi came out? Sure as hell it was. But it was still a story with heart, soul, vim and vigor. A story with a legacy that the prequels bungled. But even with the prequels, my love for the idea of Star Wars never waned. Even with the Special Editions and Greedo shooting first and contemporary jazz numbers in Jabba's palace and awkward celebration CGI overwriting 'yub yub', I still loved the idea of Star Wars. It took a monolith of no less media presence than Mickey Mouse himself to all but kill that in me. It felt like the Emperor had finally triumphed over my rebellious desire to love something as simple but earnest as Star Wars.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has given me New Hope.
And from Electronic Arts, too. Such an unlikely hero.
Like the best of Star Wars, Fallen Order isn't perfect but it is perfectly trying. And to an aging, disgruntled old fan like me that feels all but abandoned by the franchise that made him, that means something.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Fan Rating: 6 out of 5 (Great shot, kid. That was one in a million.)
I decided to buy the game based on the positive word of mouth. I was initially leery because of Electronic Arts and how I really don't like their business model and also because I really don't like the direction Lucasfilm was taking Star Wars in. Still, I figured that it if was frustrating like everything else coming from Disney Wars these days, I could just pass it on to someone else.
Boy, am I glad I bought and played this game through.
This may (or may not) come as a big surprise to you, but this is REAL Star Wars.
After playing this game and seeing how much heart it has, how much soul its characters have and how each of them, even the droid BD-1 (who shits all over BB-8), goes on a journey from being lost to finding themselves and how much the devs LOVE Star Wars, I am left with one nagging, frustrating thought.
Why weren't we getting THIS from the start?
So the game takes place five years after Revenge of the Sith and the star is a fugitive padawan named Cal Kestis. He's working on a planet that's being used as an Imperial scrap yard for old Clone War military technology. As the game opens up and you gave out over the horizon, it's littered with Republic cruisers and they even lower a Trade Federation droid control ship while you're watching. Cal's friend remarks on how he hasn't seen one of those in years, which I think is a dig at the 'Star Wars Writing Team' for sweeping over the past eras in favor of their miserable soft reboot.
Now, I'm not going to wax TOO nostalgic about the prequels. We all know what we think of them and I wasn't a big fan at the time. I really hated them after a while, but seeing all these nods to that trilogy in the beginning of Fallen Order made me realize two things:
1.) It's been twenty years since The Phantom Menace. Wow.
2.) I think the ideas of the prequel trilogy have actually endured quite well, even if the analysis and synopses of those films show their many flaws. I'll make another post about this point eventually, but the bottom line is that, really, some pretty damn good shit came out of those prequels. Like the final season of Game of Thrones, those movies are a failure of execution and not necessarily concept.
At any rate, the fun begins (to reference one of the most famous lines in the first film) when the Empire discovers Cal and he has to escape. He;'s been trying to live without being a padawan because the memory of Order 66 is just too painful for him. He's all but forgotten his padawan training and in order to survive as he runs from the Imperials, he begins to remember how to use the Force, albeit in a clumsy and not very effective manner.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The opening part of the game teaches you the platforming under far less stressful situations. Cal and his coworker are ordered to go to a specific place in the salvage yard to do some work and after an accident, Cal is cut off from taking the 'easy' path and has to do the requisite jumping, ledge hanging and balancing. Right when he gets reunited with his friend, they both fall off their perch and Cal has to use the Force, at great difficulty, to save both of them. He tries to do this without his friend noticing but, as with a lot of great superhero sidekick origin stories, the friend has discovered Cal's secret and is excited about it. When the Empire lines them all up and demands that the fugitive step forth, the friend pretends to be the runaway so that Cal can run. Of course, Second Sister (the antagonist of the story) sees right through it and the adventure begins. Cal still has his master's lightsaber, and he uses it here but only as part of his desperate escape plan.
Cal eventually comes across a pair of freelancers that bail him out after an opening stage that has you just trying to get away and you eventually learn that Cere, one of the pair, was a former Jedi master that cut herself off from the Force for reasons that I really don't want to spoil. They comprise a compelling arc that forms the backbone of the entire game's narrative.
Once you're off and running in the gameplay, you are brought to a planet with a Jedi temple in order to find out why Cere needs you. This first planet also serves as a training stage, but more in the area of exploration, unlocking shortcuts and so forth. Between the opening stage and this one, you are given all the basic tools of how to proceed. After you enter the temple and learn what the game is going to expect of you, you're back on Greez's ship, the Talon, which serves as a transportation hub, and you are on your way proper.
The gameplay of Fallen Order is best described as a Dark Souls-lite, complete with 'meditation circles' in place of bonfires so that you can spend earned XP to buy up your abilities and referesh your Stim Packs, this game's version of Estus Flasks, if you so choose. But if you 'rest', which heals you and refills your healing, the enemies respawn. It's an odd mechanic that has to be accepted since there's no narrative explanation given for this. You could argue that resting results in new Imperials showing up to secure the area after you've cleared it and new monsters roaming in after the previous apex predators have been killed but really, it's not necessary to fill in the hole. It's not that important.
The gameplay is strangely familiar and different all at once. It's action heavy and based on precision and evasion. I liken it to Bloodborne in terms of its pacing. Parrying and counterstriking are key to victory, especially when you have to fight Inquisitors, former padawan converted into Jedi hunters by cruel experimentation forced upon them by the Empire. They, along with scout troopers, are equipped with melee weapons similar to what the Magnaguards from Revenge of the Sith and even The Force Awakens (electro billy clubs or whatever) might have utilized. They also have blasters, rocket launchers and even grenades to stun and blind you. In time, as your powers with the Force grow, you can grab enemies and stab them, push them over precipices, reflect their shots (even the grenade launchers) back at them, slow multiple enemies, throw your lightsaber and switch back and forth between single blade and dual blade (a la Darth Maul). Story beats on the different planets you must visit unlock abilities by way of flashback to your padawan days as Cal remembers training he forgot. Stuff like wall running, double jumping, Force pushing and pulling and so forth. All of your Force powers, once unlocked, can be enhanced, as can your combat skills, with more XP, which is gained by killing enemies and finding database entries and other hidden secrets.
Enemies are also made up of the various fauna of the worlds you visit or, in the case of Dathomir, zabrak night brothers. No rancors, but perhaps that's for the best since that monster is pretty played out these days and, according to the new canon, rancors may not even be native to Dathomir anymore. Not sure about that. The different planets have different cultures and you learn about the ancient, dead civilizations and how they interpret the Force differently from how the Galactic Core and the Jedi and Sith understood it. There is a very strong pulp 'ancient lost civilization adventurism' feel to everything, and I love this part of the game. As with Bloodborne, dying results in a loss of XP until you go back and fact the enemy that killed you. However, you don't have to win the fight; you only have to damage the enemy and it's restored.
You can find items that can customize the look of your lightsaber, your companion droid BD-1, your outfit and the paint scheme of the Talon. Interacting with the characters when you have the opportunity reveals more of the story about each of them as you learn that they're actually ALL people running from a troubling past. In this way, the events of the game are informed by the pasts of these characters and it drives the action in many instances. This is a marvelous aspect of the game, as characters with depth and history are sorely missing from the Disney trilogy (except for Finn, who they wasted) and, like the classic trilogy, their experiences and joined growth morph them into a group that you can't separate in your mind. It's the same kind of character intimacy that the classic trilogy core possesses.
BD-1, who may be my favorite character of the bunch after Cal, can be enhanced as the game goes on when you find the various workbenches with the necessary components. He can eventually hack doors, electrically charge panels and even, after they have received enough damage in combat, overwrite the programming of security droids and probe droids so that they fight against enemies in the vicinity. This droid is every bit as heroic and useful as R2-D2 was in the movies. He'll race off to scan items of interest to fill his database, which is the game's way of introducing you to the lore of the worlds if you're interested. Otherwise, he's clinging to your back like a miniature AT-ST, chirping and whirring and being a true buddy (BD) the whole way through. I LOVED this droid.
Another interesting development is the random appearance of bounty hunters. There is a point in the game where Cal is rendered unconscious and taken to an arena where an old acquaintance of Greez's (the pilot and owner of the Talon) has you fighting for the pleasure of the crowd. Escaping from this scenario results in being hunted. The appearance of these bounty hunters is this game's equivalent of being invaded in Dark Souls, and unlike the zone meditation resets, the game's narrative provides an excellent reason for these jabronis to appear. They are some pretty challenging fights, and at inconvenient times too. There are also alpha monsters you can fight on the different planets for big XP rewards and access to other secret areas. The bounty hunters, bosses and alpha monsters don't respawn like the common enemies do.
Area exploration is challenging at times and many of the secret chests and databank entries are pretty well hidden. If you want 100 percent collection, you'll have to revisit the zones after you've unlocked base powers to reach previously inaccessible areas. In this respect, the 'nonlinear' aspect of the game is similar to Metroid or Symphony of the Night. The collectibles are mostly cosmetic but as you get XP for finding them, they are worth it to those that want to be maxed out on health, Force meter and abilities when they reach the game's finale.
The controls aren't perfect and take some getting used to, especially during the 'sliding' zones where control and camera are difficult to manipulate. The combat is also frustrating at times, as enemies don't die from lightsaber hits as you might think they would (it IS a game, after all) in a story, and a lot of the monsters will snap at you 2 or 3 times with little recovery time between attacks. It can be pretty annoying at first but once you understand how each of the monsters fights and you've built up enough ability and have more health and Force meter, they are much easier to handle. Inquisitors can be particulary maddening, as you have to parry three or four consecutive attacks and their unblockables (when they turn red) have massive pursuit advantage, forcing you to dodge far to avoid and limiting your opportunity to punish. When you parry and counterstrike, it will often appear as though enemies are blocking your attacks but they're taking damage all the same. This is the game's meta-mechanic for explaining how humans are 'surviving' lightsaber strikes. It can be visually confusing, since most games of this type reward your success by forcing the enemies into recoil and stagger animations. I kept being reminded of the way hit points work in Dungeons and Dragons, which aren't necessarily a measure of how much damage one can take in a fight as it is an abstraction of how much one can endure in battle before falling; a person may have 600 HP in D&D but based on the storytelling of the fight, they might only actually take one blow at the end and the rest of the HP loss is dodging, blocking, rolling, evading, glancing blows and so forth.
I wouldn't call the game perfectly but I'd describe this game, as a whole, as having perfect intentions. This game LOVES Star Wars and it LOVES Star Wars fans. There is no multiplayer, no loot boxes, no reliance on 'always online' or any of that nonsense. There is a 'deluxe edition' that has some extra skins but absolutely nothing that locks you off from playing this game or experiencing any of the zones or the abilities you can learn. This is, like God of War a game that has been released as a single player experience designed specifically to show Star Wars fans that they (we) haven't been forgotten.
In short, in my opinion, this is REAL Star Wars, not the fakery masquerading as Star Wars on the big screen currently. In fact, like many fans, I've pretty much dismissed the Disney films as fan fiction. To me, and to many others, there are only six movies.
Between Jedi: Fallen Order, which is a love letter to the idea of Star Wars and The Mandalorian, and more content LIKE this and less that steals the legacy of the Lucas films but, instead, honors it, Star Wars could make a full recovery.
This game had me THINKING about Star Wars again. LOVING Star Wars again. Imagining adventures yet unseen A Long Time Ago...in a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
I haven't been this EXCITED about Star Wars since before the prequels. We're talking Shadows of the Empire levels of pure love and affection for this franchise.
When I saw Star Wars as a boy in 1977, my brain knew a part of me would never grew up. As I grew older, I began to see the many storytelling problems with even the classic trilogy. Why is there a monster in the trash compactor? Why can the heroes avoid a biometric scan by hiding under the floor? What does a 'space slug' live on? How do ewoks take out a legion of Palpatine's 'finest troops'?
But the reality is that none of that matters when the heart of the thing is pure, honest and desires only to please and entertain. Was Star Wars growing commercial by the time Jedi came out? Sure as hell it was. But it was still a story with heart, soul, vim and vigor. A story with a legacy that the prequels bungled. But even with the prequels, my love for the idea of Star Wars never waned. Even with the Special Editions and Greedo shooting first and contemporary jazz numbers in Jabba's palace and awkward celebration CGI overwriting 'yub yub', I still loved the idea of Star Wars. It took a monolith of no less media presence than Mickey Mouse himself to all but kill that in me. It felt like the Emperor had finally triumphed over my rebellious desire to love something as simple but earnest as Star Wars.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has given me New Hope.
And from Electronic Arts, too. Such an unlikely hero.
Like the best of Star Wars, Fallen Order isn't perfect but it is perfectly trying. And to an aging, disgruntled old fan like me that feels all but abandoned by the franchise that made him, that means something.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Fan Rating: 6 out of 5 (Great shot, kid. That was one in a million.)
