T w e n t y S i d e d

BD-1 and Cal are on the tutorial planet Bogano. There’s some sort of ruin / temple in the distance, and Cal figures that’s where he’s supposed to go. We get the rest of our tutorials out of the way, fight some local wildlife, and do some extremely gentle puzzles. 

These levels are interesting. While the traversal system is very much in the lineage of Prince of Persia / Uncharted / Tomb Raider, this game sets itself apart with its sheer verticality and complexity. The Tomb Raider games usually feature a linear path through an environment. They might branch a bit for cul-de-sacs with secrets, and sometimes you’ll climb up or down, but the main path can usually be visualized in a straightforward manner. 

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 5: Crazy Cordova”

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.

Once the bad guys have killed Prauf and blind luckDid I say “blind luck”? My mistake. I meant “The Force”. saved Cal from picking a fight he can’t possibly win, we end up in an Uncharted-style set-piece chase sequence. Cal has to make his way to the front of a speeding train while a fighter ship flies by and pounds the train with blaster fire. Inside the train he’s got stormtroopers shooting at himThis is the lightsaber vs. trooper combat tutorial. and on the outside he has to contend with the ever-changing geography of this train as it gradually disintegrates from the attack. Eventually we wind up with cars hanging the wrong way off the track, forcing Cal to continually improvise. There’s also another ship in the area, flying close and trying to help him, but he doesn’t know who they are or how they fit into this chaos.

The whole thing is really impressive. I imagine scenes like this are where a lot of those lavish EA dollars got spent.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 4: Buddy Droid One”

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.

Like I said in the last entry, this game doesn’t start with the standard opening crawl. Instead it has a huge ship flying overhead at a low angle. Is this a repeat of the opening shot of A New Hope? Nope! It’s a fake-out. This ship is a hollowed-out junker, being hauled off to be disassembled. The camera pulls back to reveal a vast scrapyard. 

Perhaps worried that people will freak out over the lack of opening crawl, the designer decided to make this vista as “Star Wars”-y as physically possible. Tie fighters scream by and we pan down to see the outlines of various recognizable capital ships from the movies. Then a probe droid drifts by and we follow it to meet our characters. The only way to make this shot more reassuringly Star Wars would be to have the droid humming the cantina music and carrying a wookiee sidekick with a lightsaber.

Don’t freak out kids! You didn’t get an opening crawl, but this is still Star Wars!

We meet Prauf, a burly alien dude and his buddy Cal. They seem to be low-level scrap workers of some kind. We can tell right away that Cal is our protagonist because…

1. He’s a fit, vaguely photogenic young adult named “Cal”. 
2. He’s the only human around in this vast landscape of droids and aliens, and everyone knows that only humans are special enough to be the protagonist.
3. His face is on the goddamn box. Are you blind?

The foreman (or whatever) orders our duo to go to some dangerous place and fix some random thing so we can get our movement tutorials out of the way.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Jedi Fallen Order Part 3: A Scrappy Duo”

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.