On April 3, previews of the upcoming game in the Star Wars universe, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, appeared online. The game from Respawn has acquired a new layer of information, and Western bloggers and journalists have revealed more interesting facts. Why does the main character need a blaster, how huge will the open world be, will the player be able to collect partners like in Mass Effect 2 – we answered these, and not only, questions in our article.
Attention! The article contains plot spoilers and reveals new gameplay mechanics. Read the text carefully so as not to spoil your impressions.
Background and plot of Jedi: Survivor
Five years passed between the events of the original and the sequel. Cal Kastis personally controls the ship “Mantis-1”, and the crew has split – Greez, Cere and Merrin are now busy with their own affairs. According to journalists, the game begins on the planet Kobo, where Mantis 1 crashes.
The planet, fortunately, is not abandoned, and one of the protagonist’s friends and the former captain of the Mantis ship, Griz, lives on it. The four-armed alien settled in his own cantina and offered Cal help in repairing the ship. Kobo will not only be the starting point of the adventure, but also a key planet in the plot – the developers and those who played Jedi: Survivor have already confirmed that this will be the protagonist’s base. The game will also feature the imperial capital of Coruscant, and the trailers contain hints of Cal’s journey to the Sith planet of Korriban.
If you are interested in finding out what happened between Fallen Order and Survivor, what adventures the Mantis-1 team experienced, the book Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars appeared on March 7, so far only in English. However, the answer to the question “Why did Cal and his comrades run away?” no inside. The book is rather a continuation of “Fallen Order” and tells about the fight against the Empire between the two games.
But don’t worry – your former comrades will be in the game. In the story trailer for Jedi: Survivor, we were shown Cere Janda, who cut her hair bald, tried on a robe and seemed to be restoring the Jedi archives, as well as Merrin, the Sister of the Night, who will become the protagonist’s partner during the course of the plot. And yes, you shouldn’t expect a love story between Cal Castis and the girl. In the book Battle Scars, Marrin was in an unconventional relationship with another girl, an Imperial deserter. It’s a shame, considering that in the original game the love story had a beginning.
I wouldn’t like to guess at the tea leaves and I’d like to believe that at Respawn Entertainment the writers have creative freedom, but! Given the twist LucasArts took on Cal and Marrin’s romance, players should expect an unconventional relationship between Castis and the adventurer Bod. Alas, this is the “Western agenda” and this should not be written off. Moreover, Cameron Monaghan, the actor who gave the appearance, voice and movements to the main character, has already tried on the role of a gay man in the TV series Shameless.
The identity of the white-haired man in the flask who appeared in the Jedi: Survivor announcement trailer has also been revealed. This is a Jedi from the era of the Rise of the Republic, a new media project from LucasArts that launched in 2021. The Jedi of the past spent 300 years in a coma, and does not understand what happened to the majestic Republic and how the Empire broke it. The story trailer shows that the warrior of light is hostile to Cal Castis.
Semi-open world
Jedi: Survivor will be bigger than the first part. The semi-open world with metroidvania elements that Fallen Order promoted was pumped up – while The Revenant remained the same story-driven adventure as the first part, if the player is not interested in exploring the world.
The starting planet Kobo is a couple of times larger than any location from Fallen Order, which is confirmed by game journalists in the preview. On the planet there is a place for side activities, secrets, and Jedi temples with tests. The latter, by the way, are described by journalists as “similar to temples from The Legend of Zelda” – let’s hope that Respawn adopted the principles of open world exploration from Nintendo. There is hope for the latter, because according to the developers, they created locations with a different approach than in Fallen Order.
There are more ways to move around the world. Cal Castis now has a tool for attracting to special points on the surface – you can use it both while jumping and during parkour. The system of taming animals for flying or riding, already shown in the trailers, will not go away – not every animal can be tamed for traveling through locations, but on Kobo there are at least a couple of species. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to fly or ride friendly fauna anywhere—there will be restrictions. Also in the sequel there will be movement between meditation points.
There will also be more enemies in the game. In Fallen Order, the young Jedi’s main opponents were mainly the Imperial troops and the fauna of hostile planets. Jedi: Survivor will add more hostile elements:
- Droids of the Separatist army from the times of the clonic wars. Moreover, there will be both standard B1 and B2, and IG-100 “Magna Guardians”.
- Headhunters. They were also in Fallen Order, in the form of bosses, but now they will become a full-fledged hostile element. They will control battle droids and fight with them side by side.
- The number of aggressive animal species has increased. Kobo is home to womps, four-legged large armored dinosaurs, and smaller chicken-like feathered beasts. Some can have their body parts chopped off, like the toad’s tongue in Fallen Order.
Respawn also gave journalists and bloggers a try against the rancor. Everyone unanimously said that the battle with him was done superbly, in some previews this was noted separately.
Greez’s cantina, which will serve as a base for Castis, will have to be put in order: hire NPCs to trade or play music; monitor the seedlings – there is more land for plants than there was on the “Mantis”; help local residents and cantina guests who will give Cal additional tasks.
Techniques and leveling up of the Jedi
The main character will not suffer from a typical video game disease – the loss of all abilities. Respawn specifically noted that Cal has only become stronger than in the first game.
From the start of the game, the player has access to everything that was in the previous game: three stances with a lightsaber – two swords separately, a double-bladed sword and a one-handed grip – and mastery of the Force. With the help of the latter, you will be able to attract and repel enemies, slowing them down in space. The second jump, running along walls, and being pulled to vines and ropes didn’t go anywhere.
However, existing skills were expanded. Each lightsaber stance now develops separately, and you can only switch between two active ones in battle. It is unknown whether you will have to choose stances for individual types of enemies, as in Nioh, but at the starting location there was no point in this – those who played say that they were allowed to experiment and go through the demo the way they would like.
But two new stances will also appear: a one-handed grip of a sword in conjunction with a blaster, as well as a two-handed grip of a light blade with an extended blade. Unfortunately, Electronic Arts did not provide gameplay with them, but no one spoke negatively about these innovations. Most of all, journalists were impressed by the combination of a blaster and a lightsaber, with which you can “juggle” enemies and keep your distance.
Among the abilities of the Force, they showed a couple of new ones. Cal can now pick up objects in the air and throw them – it is unknown whether this will only be used when solving puzzles or will also allow him to behave aggressively in battle. Subordination of the will of animals and setting fauna against enemies has been confirmed – a demonstration of this ability is even present in some video previews.
We already mentioned it above, but it’s worth saying it again – the game will have a partner system. At least two are confirmed – Nightsister Marin, who mastered the Force and a long pole for battle, and adventurer Bod. Everyone will act in battle in accordance with their own fighting style, and sometimes the player will observe joint finishing off of opponents by Cal and his partner.
The Force will also be heavily used to enhance lightsaber attacks – just like in Fallen Order. After journalists and bloggers played the Survivor demo, the combat designer picked up a gamepad and showed what Cal Castis would be able to do at the end of the game – something that was also featured in all the previews. The players were delighted, because there were three to four times more available techniques compared to Fallen Order. Some bloggers were pleased with the spin jump like Darth Sidious in the third episode of Star Wars.
Customization of appearance
The BD-1 droid will not lag behind its fashionable owner. If previously the droid’s body and color changed slightly, now the little assistant will be assembled piece by piece: lenses, upper body, body, legs and antennas. It is unknown, however, how many replacement parts the BD-1 will have, but it seems no less than in the first part.
The lightsaber will also be customizable at workbenches, just like in Fallen Order. Even the basics of customization remain the same: they allow you to change the color, components of the hilt and handle, as well as the materials from which the blade is made.
Technical features
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is released only on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S – the previous generation of consoles is no longer available. The game will also be available through EA Play Pro, a subscription exclusive to PC. Unfortunately, the project will not have a translation into Russian.
When creating The Revenant, the developers relied only on new-generation hardware, despite the fact that the game’s engine is still the same – Unreal Engine 4. Knowing the problems of the toolkit, Respawn have already confirmed that they have included shader precompilation in the PC version – this will avoid most problems with freezing and loading of locations during gameplay. But will the game work well on its own? The question is open.
Those who saw the preview version of the game said that Jedi: Survivor looks great at maximum graphics settings. However, we also ran the game on powerful hardware – Ryzen 9 7900x and RX 7900 XTX! At the same time, some journalists complained about the same stutters and frame rate drops, especially when viewing a redesigned terrain map – there the picture frequency sometimes dropped to 5-10 frames per second.
It’s difficult to say how the game will work on weaker machines. To run the game on minimum settings, you will need a Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core i7-7700, 8 gigabytes of RAM, as well as a GTX 1070 or Radeon RX 580. The recommended settings are more demanding: the game will require a Ryzen 5 5600X or i5 11600K, 16 gigabytes of RAM and RTX 2070 or RX 6700 XT. In both cases, you will need a video card with eight gigabytes of video memory!
I would like to believe that closer to release the system requirements will be updated and the game will be polished better. On the other hand, Jedi: Survivor was created with an emphasis on the new hardware of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles, which means the PC version will be power hungry.
By the way, little is known about the console versions, but development director Stig Asmussen confirmed the presence of DualSense support on the PlayStation 5: “ […] It was very interesting to see how it works with the Force abilities. […] If you press hard on the triggers, it will give a different reaction. If you press them lightly, something different will happen. These nuances allowed our team to translate the feeling of what is happening in the game world into your hands .”
Analysis
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was created over three years, but took into account both feedback from players in Fallen Order and criticism from journalists. The developers knew the weaknesses of the original game and tried to eliminate them. Based on the gameplay seen in the preview, it seems that they succeeded.
The game has become bigger and better: new abilities and combat stances; taming animals and traveling on them through locations; more types of enemies and bosses; customization of the hero and his partner. Some journalists compare Jedi: Survivor with Assassin’s Creed 2 – the game has made a huge step forward compared to the first part and improved all the weak points. Others with the God of War reboot – the game became more about exploration rather than overcoming in the style of Dark Souls and Sekiro.
We will be able to see whether the journalists were right and whether the new game from Respawn Entertainment was over-praised at the end of the month – April 28.
