Respawn makes you feel ludicrously powerful in the opening hours of Star War Jedi: Survivor. Cal Kestis’ introductory jaunt on Coruscant has him dismembering Stormtroopers like it’s going out of style before darting across neon-drenched billboards to navigate the undercity. With two lightsabers and a litany of force powers already at your disposal, it becomes abundantly clear that this game wants you to feel like a badass, and has no interest in taking that away.
All of the abilities I earn throughout Fallen Order are here to stay. I can double jump without restriction, hurl objects at my enemies, and dart about the place like the most agile twink in the galaxy. I feared this power fantasy was temporary, and a predictable plot twist or late title card was waiting to drop a tragedy and tear my badassery asunder. Games do this all the time, and I assumed a sequel to a Star Wars action title wouldn’t be a rare exception.
I’ve lost count of how many sequels need to justify their existence and future adventures by tearing away our previous progression to make way for a path that is entirely identical. God of War 2 and InFamous 2 had a new villain show his face and immediately prove too strong for our heroes to take down, a convenient object popping up to drain our powers and throw us back to the very beginning. We are weak and powerless, forced to lick our wounds while figuring out what to do next. This is ideal for a video game that needs to leverage a player’s investment through upgrades and exploration, but it also lacks any form of consistency.
It prevents main characters from growing, or forces them to repeat moral lessons learned and dissonant tutorials that make little sense in the context of fictional worlds when we all know they’ve learned this stuff before. But video games need to video game, so we often ignore it and accept that there’s no other path forward. So who expected Star Wars would suddenly step up and break trends in a medium that adores chasing ones that have long gone out of style? Cal Kestis is a Jedi Knight, and isn’t reverted to Padawan merely because the sequel gremlins demand it. Instead, Respawn builds this game around how he has grown as both a Jedi and a character. In turn, the game is far more interesting.
Level design is more vast and complicated, requiring more precise yet experimental moves where you need to expertly mix together different commands as opposed to leaping blandly from one obstacle to the next.
Running along a wall only to hookshot across a chasm before double jumping into a melee execution feels incredible, and in the first two hours alone Survivor is crammed with cool little moments like this. Cal’s prowess translates over to combat too with a greater number of enemies on screen and battlefields designed to accommodate them. Most of your previous skills are here to toy around with, and an added ferocity to our demeanour makes it clear that the sequel is going for a darker, edgier tone.
I’m still in the early stages of Koboh, although it already feels like the new skill trees and stance upgrades compliment my existing repertoire instead of overshadowing it, and the environmental puzzle design further builds on Cal’s arsenal in ways that always consider what Fallen Order did well and what it could seek to improve. Respawn understands that each game is a journey unto itself, yet also exists as part of a wider tapestry where ways in which its characters evolve and grow matters, especially in how they act or feel to control.
Jedi: Survivor is a great sequel, and a big reason for this is because it doesn’t repeat the same obvious mistakes made by many of its forebears. It wants players to feel powerful and for the world and characters it creates to have a real sense of agency as the narrative moves forward to places that are going to change people. To see that ambition reflected so blatantly in the opening hours makes me excited for what’s to come in Survivor and those that follow.