Star Wars Outlaws has been out for just about a week now, and I’m sure lots of folks are still poring over the details of its various worlds and wrapping up quests in Kay Vess’ adventure. However, if that game has left you wanting a more typical lightsaber-swinging odyssey across the stars, boy, have I got the games for you. Respawn Entertainment, which is best known for shooters like Apex Legends and the Titanfall series, has also spent the past several years developing the Star Wars Jedi third-person action-adventure games, and you can snag them on sale on PlayStation right now.
At the moment, you can pick up the first game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, for just $US10 on both PS4 and PS5. The sequel, Jedi: Survivor, is also on sale for $US31.49. If you happen to be a PlayStation Plus subscriber you also get access to the game through EA Play, but when all these subscriptions fall away, you’ll regret not owning what could be your next favorite game. For this low of a price, picking them up is just insurance.
Jedi: Fallen Order surprised me when I finally played it. I think I was a year or two late to the party, playing it in the midst of an emotional and mental rut smack in the throes of the first year of the pandemic. I needed any game to just kind of make me feel anything, and I was throwing wanton money at sales trying to find the thing that would jolt me awake and actually enthrall me. I knew to expect more from it than the average licensed game based on the pedigree of the team working on it, but also I simply didn’t know Respawn had that dog in them.
Respawn’s Jedi games are sometimes compared to From Software’s Dark Souls series thanks to a handful of mechanics and principles they adapt. For example, combat in the Jedi games primarily centers around smaller and more intimate skirmishes, where you are forced to dodge, parry, and pick your moments. You spend the game learning new lightsaber and force techniques, but at the end of the day, you won’t get far unless you learn to parry and riposte early on. Much like Souls, and perhaps to a greater extent Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the Jedi games feature a give-and-take kind of approach to combat. Yeah, there are nameless grunts with blasters that you can just cut through, but there are also a number of opponents with similar weapons to yours who will push back on you till you throw everything you have at them.
These games are also structured in a similar way to the Souls series. There are meditation points that function as bonfires, and you can level up there and even fast-travel, but using one also resets the enemy spawns in the area. When you fall in battle, you leave a Force impression of your XP behind, and unsurprisingly, it must be picked up before your next death or it’ll disappear entirely. Even the way that Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel dole out shortcuts in their huge environments is similar to the Metroidvania-style approach to level design found in both the Souls games and the games that I think both series are ultimately more akin to: 3D Zelda titles.
The Jedi games aren’t nearly as hard as some of those comparisons let on though, unless you specifically adjust the difficulty to the highest levels. I wouldn’t recommend it though, because whereas their inspirations are designed around difficulty more thoughtfully, upping the challenge in the Jedi series simply tweaks knobs in the back end to make the games more brutal and unfair. Take it from someone who has completed both on higher settings, I got nothing but headaches from trying to force the Jedi games into being Souls games, which is why I think they’re better thought of as 3D Zelda wrapped in a Star Wars skin and story.
To that end, Fallen Order and Survivor both have a greater degree of platforming, puzzle-solving, and traditional dungeons than your typical Souls game, giving them a much more vintage vibe as opposed to the modern feeling of other contemporary action adventure games. That doesn’t make them feel dated though. They feel like relics of a bygone era of games, which I do mean in the most complimentary sense. There aren’t actually many huge AAA games that commit to both open worlds and these small, focused gauntlets that break up the monotony of nonstop combat and constantly expanding maps. You’d think the popularity of Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and these Jedi games would spawn more of them.
The two games released so far—with a third game currently in development—tell one of the more entertaining stories in the current incarnation of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Centering the padawan-turned-runaway Cal Kestis, who’s played by Shameless’ Cameron Monaghan, the series takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Cal, a survivor of the Great Jedi Purge, is on the run from the Empire when he meets the crew of the Stinger Mantis, including the pilot Greez and its captain, Cere Junda, played by the inimitable Debra Wilson.
I think these titles, more so than most of the current glut of shows and movies, capture the spirit of Star Wars, or at least what it’s traditionally meant to me. Cal is far from a perfect protagonist, and as he’s grown he’s had to deal with his imperfections and occasional inclinations to the dark side of the force. Greez is easily the most fun sidekick-style character introduced in a long time, and even BD-1, Cal’s robotic companion, feels leagues better than BB-8. Cere and Merrin, a Nightsister who becomes entwined in Cal’s journey, could have fulfilled very archetypal roles (and to some extent still do, because Star Wars loves a tried-and-true trope) but they are also great sources of conflict in Cal’s saga. They actually push on him, even grate against his sensibilities, and challenge him to be a better Jedi, and moreover, a better person. This cast and these games are as heady as they are whimsical, and that’s Star Wars for me.
Along their journeys, they take on a number of high-ranking officers of the Empire including a great deal of Inquisitors, and even come to blows with Darth Vader himself. The Jedi games span several planets, covering sights both familiar and completely foreign to Star Wars fans. And while it mostly stays relegated to its own corner of that far, far away galaxy, I can feel the ambitions of the story (especially that of Survivor) beginning to creep into territory of the books, shows, and movies. It is, by my measure, one of the better investments you can currently make in the beleaguered Star Wars universe, and one that’s well worth the relatively low asking price right now.
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