Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - action adventure from Respawn Entertainment

[mediocrepoet]

Please don't let the new game's subtitle be "Rising Order," there's enough games with "Rising" as it is.

You're in luck?
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/star-wars-jedi-survivor-sequel-to-fallen-order.143187/

 

[Riddler]

Got this on a sale and played through reaching the temple.

Is the writing going to be this retarded the entire game? I'm not sure I can stand it.

 

[Yosharian]

Got this on a sale and played through reaching the temple.

Is the writing going to be this retarded the entire game? I'm not sure I can stand it.

Yes. And it gets worse.

Edit: WORSE godamm autocorrect

 

[Riddler]

Got this on a sale and played through reaching the temple.

Is the writing going to be this retarded the entire game? I'm not sure I can stand it.

Yes. And it gets work.

I struggle to see how that is even possible. Are they purposefully trying to write as stupid a plot and dialogue as possible?

For such an otherwise competently made game to have so bad writing feels bizarre. It's like they took a bland idea and set out to make it as retarded and "memberberries" as possible.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah it's terrible but somehow the game managed to keep me engaged till the end. I just hated the retarded plot developments. Like the one bit in particular with the water... Fucking UGH.

 

[Lemming42]

Played this not long ago and I liked it, fun action-adventure game. I hate Star Wars, and the plot here didn't seem any more or less retarded than the usual shit.

I gave the writers a bit more credit than they actually deserve though because I assumed Debra Wilson was going to turn out to be sketchy. Like I was 100% convinced she was using the others to reach this list of kids' names so she could snatch it and go "muahahaha" and run off with it, because she'd gone FULLY DARK SIDE. A twist like that would really throw Star Wars fans, most of whom are seven years old, for a loop. As it stands, the story ends up just feeling like a padded-out version of the sort of plot this type of game would have had in the 90s - a string of paper-thin reasons to go to different locales and run around masscaring people until you find some random shit that gives you an excuse to move to the next planet. Only real difference being that, because this is an American game made around 2020, you have to listen to people talk about their feelings and offer each other pop psychology soundbites on your way to the next destination.

I also thought that blue lady from the zombie world was going to actually do something at some point, but after you recruit her she seems to just make herself at home and lounge on your sofa. Setting stuff up for a sequel I suppose.

Speaking of which, it's hilarious how Cal never kills anyone in any of the cutscenes - even the bosses seem to be killed due to some external circumstance that's out of his control. Then in the actual gameplay itself you're just stabbing people in the fucking back and butchering them while they panic and beg for mercy. One of the worst examples I've ever seen of the plot and the game itself being at odds with each other.

 

[Yosharian]

I thought Trilla was really cool. She was one of the only characters that I found interesting.

 

[Lemming42]

She had potential, I was surprised they killed her off at the end when everything up til that point seemed to be setting it up so that she'd join your crew for the sequel.

If they needed to have Darth Vader kill a named character to prove he's scary, maybe it should have been Cal - he's totally boring and doesn't make much of an impression one way or the other over the course of the whole game. But still, having the player character get unceremoniously and abruptly killed in the finale of the first instalment of a series would be a really unusual and bold move for a videogame. Could even have Trilla be the player character in the sequel that way - she couldn't be much blander than Cal.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Cal is bland, but as far as SW Jedi protags go he’s fine. No worse than Luke, and certainly far better than Hayden Christiansen or Mary Rey Sue.

I do think the last act of Fallen Order is very weak narratively though. It’s all dropped plot-threads and sequel-bait. Feels like the writers didn’t really want to set their game in that era of SW, but were forced to do so by suits and so they just sort of shrugged and said fuck it.

 

[Yosharian]

Yes I agree, the last act was the one that really had me yelling at the screen in disbelief.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

You all complain about the story which I think was functional enough. SW atmoshpehre was really strong in this one. My problems stems from the gameplay, like a low number of enemy movesets, too much platforming, backtracking and how heavy our character felt.

 

[NecroLord]

 

[JDR13]

Could even have Trilla be the player character in the sequel that way

Yeah, because the first game wasn't woke enough?

 

[Lemming42]

It is a game about a man with a sword made of light who fights big creatures.

 

[toro]

It is a game about a man with a sword made of light who fights big creatures.

... and his struggle to kill anything.

 

[Riddler]

You all complain about the story which I think was functional enough. SW atmoshpehre was really strong in this one. My problems stems from the gameplay, like a low number of enemy movesets, too much platforming, backtracking and how heavy our character felt.

The core plot is functional if very bland.

It's the writing itself and the scene construction that is bad. I mean, the whole scene when you're taken off the train in the start... Fucking shoot me now. It's like it's made by an AI.

 

[Lemming42]

I think what's weird about it is that the story's so thin, which isn't necessarily a problem in a videogame, but they also make you watch so many cutscenes of it, and they hire actual recognisable actors like Debra Wilson (I know she's in literally every videogame these days, but still). So there's this weird setup where, for all intents and purposes, you're sat watching a high-budget movie, but it's a movie with the plot of a videogame. Which is to say nothing makes much sense, characters are one-dimensional cutouts who are just there to explain the next mission to you, events exist only as excuses to let Cal go running around some more dungeons, etc.

There's clearly meant to be a segregation going on between the game itself and the story told in the cutscenes, hence Cal thoughtlessly killing hundreds of people and sliding around on rails like Crash Bandicoot during gameplay segments, but refusing to use violence and seemingly not having superhuman athletic abilities during cutscenes. Back in the day people seemed to acknowledge this - take Jedi Knight, where the cutscenes are very brief and embrace the fact that the game doesn't have much of a story. Because they're so short and so clearly distinct from the gameplay, you can easily separate them in your mind, and accept that what you're doing in the game probably isn't meant to be 100% representative of the story - presumably Kyle Katarn isn't "canonically" glitching through walls, leaping three hundred feet into the air to discover secret areas, and killing hundreds of identical people in cities with nonsensical layouts, and the gameplay is therefore just an abstract representation of events. But for some reason nowadays devs insist not only on creating like two hours of mocapped cutscenes with professional actors, but also making those cutscenes seamlessly activate during gameplay itself. You can't really segregate the gameplay and the story in your mind anymore, and as a result both aspects have to feel bland to fit into each other as best as possible, and it's still jarring.

It's a problem with a lot of videogames these days, they adopt the pacing and production values of films but keep the writing of videogames, and it ends up being awkward, a mismatch between two different mediums. It'd be like if someone tried to write a 300-page novel of Wolfenstein 3D, with verbose prose and the typical construction and style of a novel, but the plot was still just "a man is running down corridors with a gun".

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

But for some reason nowadays devs insist not only on creating like two hours of mocapped cutscenes with professional actors, but also making those cutscenes seamlessly activate during gameplay itself

Games being big budget, looking professional, polished and realistic is the end in itself. Many shallow people are impressed by that, and when you are a billion dollar corporation you are enamored with an idea that you can buy the audience.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

It wasn't a Star Wars game for much of its production.

edit:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/jedi-fallen-order-didnt-start-out-as-a-star-wars-g/1100-6467511/

"Before working on Star Wars we were working on a different game and it had basically the same pillars that we have in this game, which is thoughtful combat, agile exploration--you know, beyond human--and Metroidvania level design," he said.

"And that's something that when we were working on this other game and we demoed it, people [at] EA saw it and said, there's something in there that you could see easily see it turning into a Star Wars game. My background is melee action, so when they came to us and were like, 'We really like the game you're working out and we want to do at some point, but how would you guys feel about doing Star Wars?' we were like, great.

"And [a lot] of the core functionality that we were building for the other game, a lot of the fundamentals, were able to transition over. So we always start with, 'What is the game? How does it feel? How does it play? What are the mechanics?' before really figuring out the story. It just so happened this thing that we were working on translated really well."

 

[Zurbo]

I'm truly amazed with how they made stormtroopers so eager to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the Empire, that they shoot to me from a rocket launcher when I'm half a meter away from them, resulting in them dying from explosion and me loosing like 4/5 of HP bar.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm finally playing this for free on Game Pass and it's surprisingly competent. I don't give a shit about the story and skip pretty much everything, but the exploration seems pretty good so far (with an actual map!) - too bad the rewards are trash like some fucking ugly poncho part or a bit for my lightsaber that I'll never see ingame.

Combat is kind of shitty, they were obviously going for the Souls thing but IMO it fails miserably at that. Collision is very wonky and the animations are kind of bad. Plus it seems way too easy, but I'm still like 5 hours in.

However, I think the game deserves praise for actually letting you control your character (you can fucking jump!) to a greater extent than most modern games. Of course the Prince of Persia-like sections are underbaked, but I've definitely played worse, and much much worse from big-name AAA studios. I'd play this over Sony's self-important modern God of War games any day of the week.

Regarding performance, it's weird - I get 120fps locked most of the time at 4k, but there are these hitches that seem like shader stutters every once in awhile. It's pretty annoying.

Will try to finish it, but it'll probably bore me too much before the end.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Collision is very wonky and the animations are kind of bad

It's because the game when it wants you to parry, it does not want you to press the parry button at the last moment before the enemy attack connects, it wants you to press it at some arbitrary point of time before you would parry in other games. Go and test it yourself, I was surprised and dumbfounded when I discovered this. I still can't comprehend why someone thought it was a good idea to mess the timing up.

 

[Skinwalker]

I am enjoying this quite a bit, despite the bugginess, too many "cinematic" sequences in the beginning, and a hideous old sheboon being your guide on the quest. The core gameplay mechanics are fun, and I feel excited to explore and find new stuff in the world.

 

[Skinwalker]

they just had to throw in a Darth Vader cameo at the end, didn't they