Jedi: Fallen Order Feels Cool, But Untimely
As the galaxy gets ever bigger, the world of Star Wars games stays safe and small
Sometimes, when following media you love, you experience whiplash. Particularly when it’s something big and sprawling like Star Wars, you can find yourself on one end of some spectrum here, only to be yanked back to the other end at a moment’s notice. Maybe the spectrum is tonal, maybe it’s thematic, maybe it’s in the genre, but Star Wars is embedded deeply in popular culture, and even canon interpretations can seem to blot out the sun.
A lot of folks I know experienced whiplash, good or bad, when the Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker trailer premiered a little while back. I’m sure we’ll see plenty of takes on how the movie will be a regression of the progress and daring of The Last Jedi, and just as many lauding the way J.J. Abrams has saved Star Wars from Rian Johnson’s meddlesome hands. Fortunately for me and for you, I’m not here to register my own take, because Star Wars Celebration was ready and waiting to give me whiplash on another front — through the unveiling of Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment’s Jedi: Fallen Order.
A game technically announced by an exec in an offhanded comment back in 2018, the Star Wars Celebration panel was the first real chance we’ve had to get a look at the game. As the third major Star Wars game release since Disney’s purchase of the franchise over six years ago, a few friends and I made plans to watch it together, curious to see what might be in store. With Respawn’s track record for well-designed, well-paced games (showcased in particular in the campaign of 2016’s Titanfall 2), I was pretty excited. But, after seeing what they had to offer, although nothing disabused me of my assumptions about Respawn’s competence, I was also slapped in the face by mingled déjà vu and disappointment. A series of questions stuck themselves in my head: “Why couldn’t this have game have come out two, three, even four years ago? Shouldn’t we have already done this? Shouldn’t we have already moved on from this?” Fallen Order dragged me into the past, where the protagonists of big properties are always cis white men and where the story of the Jedi on the run hasn’t been played out ad infinitum.
What rankles most about this for me is that I’ve seen the potential Star Wars and its new canon has. Canonical shows like The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Resistance all showcase more diverse casts and more original stories, notwithstanding those which this narrative seems to be directly mirroring. The recent comics and novels have made truly ambitious strides, tackling things I was afraid Star Wars would perpetually avoid. While I can’t speak to the details of the story, when even the rightfully maligned Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is willing to put an Indian woman in the pilot’s seat, Respawn’s choice can’t help but feel like a regression; a fallback to a safety net where they can appeal to the lowest common denominator. I recently read a piece over on PC Gamer, referring to the game’s protagonist as a ‘wasted opportunity’ and pointing out all the fun aliens they could have used instead, and while they’re right, it’s not merely an aesthetic thing. After the reactionary response to The Last Jedi, and the post-Gamergate knowledge of how loathsome gamers can be, this decision rings with an unpleasant resonance.
In terms of alternate paths to follow, they’re easy to find. Gay men like Sinjir Rath Velus from the Aftermath books (the first stories contending directly with the events after Return of the Jedi in the new EU), and Dr. Aphra, a daring ne'er do well and lesbian of color introduced in comics, blazed the trail for LGBT stories in Star Wars. The Clone Wars initially frustrated many fans with its introduction of the plucky Ahsoka Tano, a 14 year old alien girl apprenticed to Anakin Skywalker, but she soon became a fan favorite as stories about her deepened and broadened, serving as a fascinating and much needed window into little explored parts of the prequel era’s mythos. In the new Star Wars Resistance, nearly the entire cast consists of people of color, including the protagonist. Even the sequel trilogy itself casts a woman and two men of color as its primary trio.
More than anything, though, Fallen Order seems both in step with and stepping on the toes of Star Wars Rebels. Beginning in 2014 and ending in early 2018, it is a show about a found family of rebels doing their part to throw off the yoke of the Empire. This crew includes not one but two Jedi: Ezra, a young man of mixed human descent just beginning to grow his connection to the Force, and Kanan, a former Padawan during the fall of the Republic trying to reestablish his connection. Though Ezra stands as another example of a protagonist falling outside Star Wars’ traditional comfort zone, Kanan interests me more, here. Throughout a novel, a comics run, and the show, the story of his dramatic escape from the Jedi purge, followed by his going into hiding as an ordinary worker, then rise as a Rebel, then a Jedi, is told with clarity. It’s a decently well-told arc, and one that I feel concluded satisfactorily. Frankly, it doesn’t need to be told again with Cal Kestis, another white man with just as few distinguishing characteristics. Writ large, with the use of the the imperial inquisitor “the Second Sister” as a primary antagonist (a convention taken from Rebels), the similar deployment of found family dynamics, and the similar (well-trodden) time period, Fallen Order simply doesn’t seem like it’s doing much in the way of innovation aside from being a video game. With my strongly held belief that the expanded universe should be a place where weirdness and experimentation take precedence, it’s unfortunate.
It’s very early. I could come around on Cal; they could reveal something new and exciting about the story’s pitch or the universe or whatever else. And, as I said at the top, this game is likely going to be a good game. I have faith in Respawn to make a game I’ll like to play, with innovative and intuitive mechanics, tight pacing, and satisfying progression.
But they had an opportunity. Regardless of anything else, they did not have to go with the safest, most middle-of-the-lane video game protagonist concept imaginable. And to do that, in 2019, after most Star Wars media has already moved past that stage, is disappointing. While I’m not here to hope for the game’s downfall, I do hope that fans make it clear that playing it safe is no longer something they’ll accept.
