While 2017’s Star Wars Battlefront II was marred by hideous loot-boxes and predatory monetization systems, 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, on the other hand, launched to critical acclaim and very few noticeable issues.
Of course, DICE’s first-person shooter has arguably turned around the tide of fan backlash thanks to ongoing patches and support, but it’s still fair to say that Respawn Entertainment’s cinematic action title is the modern gold standard for games set in that galaxy far, far away.
Interestingly though, Jedi: Fallen Order‘s focus on the iconic sci-fi series’ Jedi and lightsabers almost didn’t even make it into the final game. Talking to the AIAS Game Maker’s podcast (courtesy of GameSpot), Jedi: Fallen Order director Stig Asmussen revealed that he and his team had to jump through a ton of hurdles to convince Lucasfilm to give them the opportunity to make a game centered around a would-be Jedi.
Lucasfilm weren’t super comfortable with the idea… I pitched, ‘Hey what if we do a game about Jedi and Force powers, and they were not super comfortable with that. They threw it back and said, ‘What about blasters and bounty hunters?’ That’s not the background of the team we’ve built; you might as well ask me and us to start building a racing game at this point. I don’t think anybody’s going to be happy with the results of that.
Clearly, it sounds like Asmussen and his team had a tough time trying to include Jedi and Force powers into their recently released third-person action-adventure experience. It seems that Lucasfilm are being very careful with how Jedi are implemented in new IP, too, as Asmussen continued:
What I came to learn is for them, Jedi is the Holy Grail. To make a game about Jedi, you gotta earn it. There was a little bit of a back and forth but they could see where I was coming from.
Thankfully, Lucasfilm ultimately greenlit the project, but only after making a small tweak: the main protagonist, Cal, wasn’t to be a super-powered Jedi straight off the bat, but instead grew into a Jedi by the end of the game.
With an official follow-up and a possible movie or TV series already allegedly in the works, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has been an unmitigated success for the sci-fi franchise, and a huge step in the right direction for the Star Wars video game brand as a whole.
But tell us, have you picked up Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order yet? If so, what did you think of it? Let us know down below.
