Is it reasonable to say that I like Star Wars a healthy amount? I like it, but I don’t love it like my older brother does and I definitely don’t love it as much as die hard Star Wars fans do. So it may not surprise you to learn that the first time I played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was four years after its release, despite the sequel already having been out for some time, and only because it had finally come to PlayStation Plus. It also suffices to say that I wasn’t going in with major expectations. I wanted the minimum: a good-looking game with a compelling story, which is fun to play.
Fallen Order delivers on the minimum, and there is a lot to love about the game. There are gorgeous planets with environments that are fun to explore (until you have to use the map to track down an objective or collectable, the ‘map’ being a hologram with confusing perspectives and an abhorrent lack of placeable waypoint markers – something I have previously declared a cardinal gaming-map sin). The music is fantastic, gently treading the line between nostalgic and laying-it-on too thick. In fact, this is something the game does well in general; it uses elements of the franchise to create excitement and play with our recognition by building atmosphere through scattered references, rather than inserting them without purpose. The trade off, however, is the distinct lack of heart the game seems to suffer from. All around flat voice acting meant I cared very little about the characters (beyond the delightful BD-1) or the events of the story. Not every game can create an entirely lovable cast, but when they do the impact is significant. Cal is cute, but we could have done with a leading man that has a little more charisma – either a little more of the wry Han Solo charm, or the pure hearted-ness of Luke. Cal falls somewhere in between but never makes much of an impression.
One could argue that the heart of this game is not with its story or cast, but with its combat. It’s a Star Wars game – we want punchy lightsaber fights, flashy acrobatics and hair raising set pieces. This is delivered – fights are generally fun and I came to enjoy the fact that enemies respawn after resting because it was another excuse to shove a stormtrooper off a ravine. Despite this, combat is frustratingly inconsistent, in no small part due to the lock-on feature. Namely, if you do not lock on to enemies, dodging becomes significantly more ineffective as you fail to get out the enemies zone of damage most times. However if you do lock on, Cal’s ability to actually hit an enemy is greatly reduced, and you can look forward to hitting mostly air. ‘Unreliable’ is the term that comes to mind here, and this certainly applies elsewhere, chiefly the sheer amount of bugs, glitches and general weirdness in this game. From getting stuck on terrain, to falling through levels and what might be one of my favourite oddities in a game, something I have termed ‘Resting Glitch Face’.
I experienced these drawbacks throughout my playthrough, and around two-thirds of the way in I accepted that this game would be a solid 3 out of 5. A fun experience but lacking in polish and the ability to captivate. The last 30 minutes of this game therefore kind of floored me – this is what the entire game should have been, I thought, as I saw each of my little complaints dissolve into space.
Major spoilers ahead.
From the moment I landed on the final planet of the game and entered the Inquisitor Fortress, cut-scenes and gameplay were smooth and impressive. This location is easily one of the coolest, in no small part due to the ominous atmosphere and tension which builds with every new room entered. The base getting flooded with water, walking into a balconied prison room teeming with motionless but expectant stormtroopers, all of these created the most cinematic section of the game.
The final set piece of running away from Darth Vader while he utterly destroyed the room, smashing things up quickly and easily while Cal frantically scrambled into an elevator, only for that iconic red light saber to slice through the door was incredible, genuine jaw dropping fun. And while the facial animations for the last few scenes were still a little wonky, there was no glitching through terrain or otherwise, leaving me to soak up these wonderfully executed sequences.
As for inconsistent combat, this is where we are made to feel most like a bad-ass. It is the first section after Cal is made a fully fledged jedi, and maybe this was just a subconscious confidence boost, but I felt unstoppable at this point. The game really drove this home by trapping Cal in a room and throwing wave after wave of increasingly harder enemies at me. I’ve never been a fan of ‘boss rushes’ or anything equivalent at the end of games, they usually just frustrate the hell out of me. However the idea to really test my mettle, with plenty of ledges to shove troopers off into lava, and walls to run along to perform neat little jedi jumps, was great. It felt like the true culmination of every tactic I had learnt and every skill I had unlocked. By this point in the game, to get past the boss fight with Malicos I had already grinded a tiny bit and built up my stim storage, making me perfectly levelled for this.
I never cared for the characters in this game more than I did in the last 30 minutes. Before the events leading up to the finale, I honestly couldn’t have cared less whether Master Cere lived or not. By the end, I was so relieved to see her come out okay, and that is mainly due to her relationship with Trilla – seeing the climactic end of their relationship, following the details we gradually learnt about Cere’s backstory, made this extremely satisfying and I was invested (although very sad that Trilla is out of the picture). As mentioned, BD-1 had really been the only character I was fond of, and the little guy sure did deliver when he zapped Darth Vader in our final fight (the brave little guy!). Otherwise, it seems like Cal finally catches a personality, delivering some actually humorous one-liners and genuine emotion in his dialogue, not to mention an excellent final line to close out the game.
It’s a little frustrating, looking back on it, to realise that this great game could have been an outstanding game, if only the entire experience felt as well grounded as the finale. It might be tricky to say, without knowing the particulars of the development process, why exactly the final act soars so far above the rest of its roughly 25-hour run time. Given that the studio did not force mandatory crunch periods onto its team (which I am very glad to see), I am willing to bet it comes down to the common issue of time constraints. There are lots of elements that I felt may have originally be intended to be more fleshed out, from the plant collecting/terrarium side quest, to the very last minute addition of Merrin to the crew, who absolutely should have been introduced earlier in the story. All of this makes me very hopeful for when I do finally play the next instalment of the Star Wars Jedi series – and maybe a little more inclined to play it sooner rather than later.
What did you think of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order? Did you enjoy the finale as much as me? Let me know in the comments below.
