T w e n t y S i d e d

The game ends with our heroes on the ship. They just destroyed the holocron. Their mission is over. The final line of the story is when Cal asks, “So where to next?”

Now, that’s a fine enough ending I suppose. I don’t mind that they’re setting up a sequel. My concern is that they seem to be setting up a sequel specifically for Cal.

The first game establishes your starting point, while the second one establishes your direction. If you make the second game about Cal, then the audience will assume this franchise belongs to Cal, just like Tomb Raider belongs to Lara and God of War belongs to Kratos. Stick with him now, and it’ll be harder to change later. More importantly, sticking with Cal constrains you in so many ways. 

First, we’ve learned his backstory and experienced his big character arc. Order 66 was the most important event in his life, and he’s now dealt with it. There really isn’t room for more big surprises in his story. Sure, you can add flashbacks to awkwardly sandwich fresh skeletons into his mental closet, but how long can you keep doing that? How many games can claim, “Oh, here’s yet another life-defining moment he needs to deal with and that’s never been mentioned before.” The dude just isn’t that old. You can’t do that forever. Eventually he becomes a stable adult with a clear moral compass, it becomes harder to take him in a new direction. Sure, you can bend him a little, but he’ll never be as malleable as a new character. 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 26: The Next Jedi”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I should note that this entry was written months before EA lost their exclusive rights to Star Wars video games. Oh yeah, and in case you didn’t hear:  EA lost their exclusive rights to Star Wars video games. That’s an important thing to note.

At any rate, I imagine the pitch meeting for this game went something like this…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 25: Pitch Meeting”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Before I can analyze the ending of this game, I need to step back to the point when Cal exited his vision of the Sith conquering his Jedi school. The holocron then appeared and Trilla entered the sceneIf you don’t remember, I covered this back in Part 19 and 20..

This is a very vulnerable moment. He’s finally fulfilled his quest, but his enemy is here to snatch it away from him.

Even if Cal is 99% sure that he can beat TrillaNot that he has any REASON for such confidence at this point in the story, but let’s humor him., that 1% chance of failure is so bad that he can’t possibly afford to risk it. Having an entire generation of Force users rounded up when they’re young, brainwashed through ghastly and ruthless techniques, and then unleashed on the galaxy as a legion of dangerously powerful agents of evil and oppression is an outcome so dire that nothing is worth the risk. Maybe we have a dozen active Sith nowOkay, actually we have “as many as we need to keep the Expanded Universe properties going”, but I think it’s an unspoken rule among SW writers that you should at least pretend the numbers are low to avoid flagrantly contradicting the movies., but what happens if there are hundreds of them? What happens when we effectively have a government of super-powered beings ruling over a helpless galaxy? What happens when their ruthless ideals permeate the galactic culture?

(I mean, aside from the fact that it might make for some really cool “What If?” style spinoff stories.) 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 24: Do The Right Thing”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.