Space of the last frontier. These are the journeys of a scruffy redhead and his little mechanic sidekick. – Game News recently had the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to play a part in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to the in some places, if disappointing cinematic Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Our practice session took place about an hour after the main story and started, like many things, with Cal Kestis in an upset spot.
Cal destroyed the holocron detailing the whereabouts of the Force-sensitive youths at the end of Fallen Order, and like them, he stands alone. His overall mission is a mystery, but we do know that it’s just him and BD-1 (still cute as always) aboard the Mantis on the release date of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. After a mess with the Empire, his ship needs repairs and he knows his old partner Greez Dritus will have the necessary parts.
This is where Jedi: Survivor starts to get interesting. Cal and BD-1 are forced to land on a planet called Koboh and search for their former pilot who has taken up residence there. Landing far from Greez’s cantina, I left with my droid and began to explore the almost The open world of Koboh.
The first noticeable difference between this and Fallen Order was the space I was given when exploring the environment. The Metroidvania elements are still there, but instead of branching off into narrow paths, there are areas I was allowed to wander into with nothing more than a vague direction of my aim. The Fallen Order map remains the same, but now you can use BD-1 as binoculars to scan and plot routes, placing markers in hopes of uncovering Koboh’s many secrets.
This time around, Cal also has some traversal tricks up his sleeve, with Mario-style wall jumps available from the start and, most exciting of all, the ability to grab a climbable surface without player intervention. It feels a bit more dynamic in Jedi: Survivor, and exploration is satisfying because of it.
The narrow, puzzle-filled paths are still there, but they look most interesting when, to cite the Koboh landscape as an example, they’re combined with a large settlement or a large stretch of grassland. Accessory combat is also different with Jedi: Survivor. Squads of stormtroopers patrol the landscape in believable fashion, and the openness of their surroundings allows you to start fights on your terms rather than just being obstacles in your way. As such, combat is a fun distraction from exploration, while still feeling natural and challenging.
While there’s also the usual variety of Faun that attack Cal at all times, skirmishes on Koboh seemed to be a little more biased towards the humanoid variety. I was thrilled to see this, because crying into a mass of misshapen meat is never as satisfying as forcibly pushing someone away and hearing them insult me as I poke them with the pointy end. The barking of the various enemies, especially the Clone Wars droids, was varied and surprisingly funny. I’m not sure about the chatter mileage, but it didn’t bother me during my time with the game.
Combat has seen a lot of expansion since the first game. In Fallen Order you had two combat stances for most of the game, single and double bladed, using both types of lightsabers, with the dueling stance coming towards the end of the story. Jedi: Survivor will allow you to unlock a total of five stances: single, dual blade, dual wield, fender, and blaster. Each of them has their own skill tree, and in my experience, each feels unique and earns its place in the lineup.
The combat itself seems to evolve as the environment opens up; you have more creative freedom to choose your own path and also to choose the type of destruction you want to unleash. The new stances (dual wield, cross guard, and blaster) each serve a unique function and offer compelling reasons to learn them, other than the fact that they all look cool. The dual wield stance is hyper-aggressive, while the cross guard is by far the slowest, but hits the hardest, requiring a much more methodical approach to combat.
Speaking with Jason de Heras, design director for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I asked how the team was trying to juggle the extra creative freedom in combat without making the game too complex:
“It’s always the design, the big problem with macro design, when you do things like that. Well, first of all, there’s five poses, but we decided early on that you could only wear two poses at a time. It’s a way to get the player to invest in up to two (positions), and they could figure out which one works for them and which one doesn’t for their playstyle.”
Using the d-pad, you can switch between your two positions at will. This makes for some interesting combos and forces you to think about your particular build before going into battle: do you go for Cross Guard and Dual Blade so you can deal with any volume of enemies, or combine Do you dual wield with the blaster, knocking down Hit your enemies from afar before finishing the job with a flurry of blows?
Of course, the combat is as complex as you make it out to be. You can get away with mashing the attack button with the occasional block, but you’re rewarded with a real show if you manage to master some of the more advanced moves. One move in particular stood out from a demo at the end of our demo when Cal approached a group of Stormtroopers, lifted them all into the air with the Force, and loaded his blaster to target each one. He then proceeded to dispatch them all in one volley, before flipping his blaster and stowing it in true gunslinger style. Not very Jedi, but cool all the same.
The additions to combat and the increased scope of exploration are welcome additions and feel like a natural progression from Fallen Order, but ultimately, like most everything from Disney’s Star Wars, it doesn’t. much to push the boundaries of what we’ve seen. Before. I know for many, myself included, this will probably be enough to see them through the story and hopefully find Cal’s place in the larger world of Star Wars.
It won’t be long before you can get your hands on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, so take the time now to check out the system requirements to make sure you’re ready for every Star Wars Jedi: Survivor battle against enemies and bosses presented to him. . If you can’t wait to continue Cal’s story, check out our list of the best Star Wars games on PC or even the best space games to get your intergalactic fix before the release date.