They showed 15 minutes of gameplay of this at EA Play this afternoon/evening/morning*, and it looks… like a videogame.
Graphically, it looks like Star Wars Battlefront. Gameplay-wise, it looks like Uncharted with wallrunning and melee combat. Narratively, it looks bad.
So, two questions:
Did anyone else see it?
Does anyone really even care about Star Wars videogames at this point?
*timezone dependant
Yes.
Not really.
It's a little slow and rough atm but I guess that can clear up, the latter part at least. Lightsaber's don't cut apparently though so fuck this game.
I thought it looks great, never played Uncharted mind except on the Vita. Huge fan of Respawn.
Lightsabers only cut robots and other non-humanoid characters apparently.
Read the demo review on IGN, it seems okayish to the extent I was interested in a Star Wars game for a long time.
Another thread I know but the Avengers game looked fucking terrible.
Heard it a few places that the lights avers thing is a rule from Lucas/Disney. Only special characters can ever be shown be cut or decapitated and you need sign off for it.
Am I the only person who keeps calling this Jedi: Fallen Over? It accurately describes my playstyle but probably isn't what the devs were aiming for.
Anyway, I started this last night. I'm in a Star Wars mood and was looking for something fairly light to play that involves pressing up a lot and slicing up some bad guys. On that front it pretty much delivers. It's set in the years immediately following Revenge of the Sith with the nascent Empire chasing down the remaining Jedi following their purge. You play as Generic Whitedude, an escaped Padawan who's pretty much immediately identified at the start of the game and then has to go on the run.
As Ninchilla says, it's very much Videogame: The Videogame. Much of it plays out like Uncharted, with exactly the same navigation, jumping and climbing (plus wall running). Half the first level is set on a moving train, just in case you thought this game was going to have any original ideas whatsoever. The structure of the whole thing is totally a Metroidvania, with multiple planets to visit and areas where you're clearly going to have to come back to once you've gained a few abilities (naturally, your Jedi hero is an amnesiac who "lost his connection to the Force" so you have to slowly regain literally every ability you'd expect him to have from the beginning). And the combat is a parry-heavy riff on Dark Souls, complete with save points where healing also respawns your enemies, and tough enemies that steal your XP and progress if they defeat you.
Somehow it's also not quite got the Star Wars feel right - at least not yet. Coming from the Battlefront 2 campaign, which wasn't great but absolutely nailed the aesthetic, this doesn't quite hit the same heights. Your hero looks distinctly unheroic - with his puffy face and permanently confused expression he's oddly reminiscent of a ginger Matt Damon. The soundtrack has all the right instruments and none of the right themes. It all feels a bit like a different game entirely that's been given a Star Wars skin halfway through development. It's all very curious.
The above makes it sound like a bad game. It's not, at least not so far. It takes its inspiration from some very good games and doesn't screw it up. It looks great. It's too early to tell where the story's going to go but it's perfectly fine so far. I'm pressing up a lot and slicing up stormtroopers. Sometimes, that's exactly enough.
The sad thing is that if you say it with any kind of made-up accent, Gener'ic Witedood could actually be a Star Wars character.
Blando Caucassian
For your enjoyment, here's Generic Whitedude looking like an absolute wanker while playing some sort of Space Guitar. I've got to play the entire game as this twat.
I always liked the idea that they briefly considered making the hero any other ethnic group besides ‘Caucasian male’ (s/he could’ve been an alien, FFS), and when that was ruled out tried to at least give a little nod in that direction by making him a ginger.
It is quite a good mishmash, anyway - a Soulschartvania - with a few real highlights dragging up what is already a pretty good game. As with most games of its ilk(s), it does get better as it goes along, and you get more powers, and it’s only some odd pacing, sometimes wildly variable graphics and a nagging sense that it wasn’t quite done that lets it down a bit. If there’s a sequel that builds effectively on the foundations Respawn laid here it could be really, really good.
THAT bit is amazing, too.
(You’ll know it when it happens.)
I'm particularly enjoying all the crates scattered around remote mountainsides that for some reason contain ponchos.
'Why is this here? Actually how are any of these things here? How did other people used to get around this area/base? Could they all stop time and double-jump too?!' are questions you'll frequently ask yourself, yes, though it's hardly unique in that respect.
I did find the times where sometimes the game would just "subtly" tell you you couldn't go a certain way really jarring though, as well as the really variable effectiveness of the lightsaber. I appreciate the age rating (and difficulty, and physics engine) would've needed a bump if it behaved "properly", but it's still irritating and/or distracting at times.
Hit a cheaty late game boss that’s obstructing progress. Now I have to decide if I can be arsed going back through all the levels I’ve been to so far to try and find power ups, or just jack it in.
When it’s good, it’s good - but without any form of fast travel, that’s a LOT of slogging though levels I’ve already cleared in order to maybe find something that will maybe help me out.
So that's Jedi: Fallen Order: a mixture of three totally different games, none of which it's particularly good at. It's a reasonable Uncharted clone - exploration and navigation is fun, although the environments are weird and artificial and clearly designed around your precise skillset at the point you first encounter them. (It's maybe more Tomb Raider than Uncharted, as there's a lot of solitary exploration in this and it doesn't feel the need to interrupt you with characters jabbering every thirty seconds. I'm fine with that). It's an OK Dark Souls clone, although Stormtroopers respawning every time you meditate makes no fucking sense at all, and the combat system only really gets good once you've got all your abilities, pretty much at the end of the game. (Also, sorry, but if I block a goat's attack with my lightsaber it doesn't get to bounce off and have another go. It just doesn't). And it's a terrible Metroidvania, with huge, indistinct levels, a horrendously confusing map and no fast travel whatsoever, leaving you slogging repeatedly across the same areas to get to where you need to go.
A lot of the time it doesn't even feel much like Star Wars - there's no grand galaxy-spanning plot here, just one puffy-faced ginger bloke exploring remote rocks looking for ponchos. Towards the end though it starts to tie more directly into the events of Revenge of the Sith and to be fair it does that really really well. And it does other good things too: I like the fact that all the collectibles are in MASSIVE CRATES meaning you're not scouring every corner of every room looking for tiny items, as seems to be par for the course in most games these days. Your droid companion BD-1 is adorable. And JDub's absolutely right. THAT bit is amazing.
Overall I'd say it's a game with strong Uncharted 1 vibes: look past the jank and there's some really good stuff here, that a sequel could really deliver on (assuming it isn't rushed out like this one was to tie in with a movie release). And like Uncharted 1, it's worth your time. A solid 7 decapitated stormtroopers out of 10.
This apparently got a next-gen patch today, so owners of shiny new machines can now play it at 4K/60fps.
EDIT: not even remotely 4K/60fps as it turns out, but still a solid improvement.
Xbox Series S
Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS (up from 45 FPS)
Xbox Series X Performance mode
Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS
Dynamic resolution added in the range of 1080p to 1440p
Xbox Series X Normal mode (non-performance mode)
Postprocessing has been increased to 4K
Dynamic resolution in the range of 1512p to 2160p
PlayStation 5
Framerate has been increased to 60 FPS (up from 45 FPS)
Postprocessing increased to 1440p
Dynamic resolution has been disabled and the game is rendering at 1200p (up from 810-1080p)