Jedi Survivor: "Shouldn't be sold?"

 The dark side is strong in this one

So the follow-up to the ever-anticipated singlular Star Wars game we're getting for the next two years, has finally been released; and given the delay-into-oblivion that KOTOR got- Jedi Survivor could very be all I have to fill the void in my heart for the Galaxy Far Far Away before I'm too old to get excited for this flagging franchise anymore. A sobering thought, but a realistic one given that EA and Disney have, between them, been squeezing this franchise to it's absolute breaking point in two of it's key-most demographics. The shows are been completely scatter-shot in quality, the movies have been announced and cancelled so often they've entered the common life cycle of a Twitter denizen and the games have been run so thin we're lucky to get a release of a new, quality, Star Wars game once every half decade- whereas once upon a time we could expect at least one good release every year. Which is why it's such a pain whenever anything isn't up to snuff with the few Star Wars games we do get.

The last Jedi game featuring Cal Kestis was itself a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one! A souls-like action adventure story driven tale that did not itself attempt to break narrative grounds but provided a very solid story with a likable protagonist and decent combat that felt easy to pick up with some complex nuance to try and master on the flip-side. It was by all accounts a great game and one that I personally felt was scratching on the surface of being a masterpiece with just a few forward steps in innovation and perhaps a step-up in funding and development time. Given the success of the last game I figure that the funding wish definitely got fulfilled, but I can't be the only one who was surprised how quickly this new follow up game was announced and then quickly pushed out.

And that quite ignoble and pedestrian verbiage I've coined there with 'pushed out' might be closer to the bone than the devs want to admit; because by all accounts it seems that Jedi Survivor as it currently exists is not a finished product. That is to say, the content of the game is done and people who can abide by the roughness call it better than good- their accounts imply we may have reached close to that 'masterpiece' standard I dreamt about, but that ideal is weighed down by the ten-ton weights of the somewhat insane degree of technical issues surrounding the way the game actually plays. It's not that the game is somewhat rough around the edges for certain systems, itself a pretty unacceptable standard but shamefully common in modern game development, it's that this game is seemingly unoptimized for all systems. Even console players need to persist with the uglier face of the game if they want to enjoy their time.

Although by all reports, the PC game is where the title really bears its full backside for all to grimace at. It runs poorly, there are consistent freezes at danger points in the game, button prompts sometimes don't function if you plug in a controller, arrow keys can't be used for movement (apparently that's an intentional omission for some reason), the souls-like mechanic of getting back experience doesn't always function, triggers don't function, players get stuck- the game just doesn't seem to run smoothly for anyone of any hardware benchmark. This isn't just a case of 'new game makes old computers cry'- experts on these sort of matter over at Digital Foundry seem convinced that the software itself has deep problems that can only really be avoided with luck- the real responsibility for fixing can only fall on the software providers themselves. EA and Respawn has some patch-work they need to get started on!

Of course, before getting started on that work you might think it something of a public service for Respawn to deliver something to it's customers. You know, like some sort of 'apology' or 'recompense' for delivering a pathetically buggy mess under a full price tag on launch and expecting that to fly? And indeed Respawn did reach out... to down play the whole situation with a painfully underhanded Twitter post. Apparently despite Digital Foundry's very well laid out article detailing the universal problems effecting the performance of this game from a fundamental level- Respawn consider these niche issues effecting a 'percentage of players' specially those with 'high end PCs' or 'Specific settings'. Do you hear that? It's the sound of cowards passing the blame wherever they think it'll stick.

Seriously, it's actually a little bit insulting that they not only refused to apologise for the game, but subtly passed on the excuse to some vague 'specific settings' and 'high end systems'- whilst simultaneously ignoring the issues that console players are having with performance too. The PC is definitely getting the worst end of this crappy stick, but they aren't even an entity in EA's mind right now. Also, I'm pretty sure that those with the 'high end systems' in question are the only people getting even passing frame-rates out of this game, everyone else is getting served low 20's and 10's with repeated freezing as garnish. But I guess we lower end PC owners are, yet again, not real people in the eyes of the developers. Sometimes a simple foot-in-mouth response is more aggravating than total radio silence, all publicity is not, in fact, good publicity. At least some work is being done on the game to make it a fully viable sellable product at some point in the, perhaps distant, future. 

But this is the precedent we've accepted and lauded for ourselves, isn't it? A precedent where a game like this clearly isn't done, but 'polish' wasn't listed down on the scroll of 'Minimum Viable Product'. To the eyes of EA- as long as the executable activated, that was good enough to ship, and the consequence has been the reputation of this title. Like I've said, those who've stuck it out report that this game plays increadibly, surpassing it's predecessor, but only whilst squinting through the fiery mess of performance around it. And that chaos is overshadowing all the hard work from the talented devs and artists who made the content of the game- tainting the entire product's legacy. Heck, I was going to be a week one buyer of this game but now I've thinking I'm better off getting around to Resident Evil 4 whilst Respawn get their patches on straight- I wonder how many other prospective customers they lost in similar fashion.

So here we are, one of the biggest releases of the year is already being sized up as a disappointment-of-the-year for reasons totally unrelated to everything we should be focusing on when it comes to assessing games. But no matter how often these situations arise, and how often people lambast developers for allowing it to happen, there's always another 'Jedi Survivor' around the corner. We can punish these companies again and again but still the EA's of the world will fire half-born abominations and throw up the confused John Travolta meme when the Internet gets upset. Welcome back to the world of AAA gaming everybody, I hope the one or two quality launches we've seen this year didn't fool you into thinking standards were rising. 'Cause they ain't!

Jedi Survivor intrigues me...

 And worries me...

I still remember well the days when we could expect a brand new Star Wars game at least once every year thanks to the decently accepting licences that Lucas Arts maintained, before the bad days of 'The Disney Occupancy'. In that time it didn't matter for a gamer if the Star Wars franchise was putting out a new movie, because we could create our own games in our heads with the countless dozens of pieces of media surrounding the space opera and the magic space wizards. Which of course means that I remember how jarring a time it was when no new Stars Wars media was being created whatsoever, leaving us hopefuls waiting in the dust for anything new. For the single player fans, it really wasn't until the 'Star Wars: Jedi' series that we had anything to hold onto. (So thanks for that EA!)

But what a wait it was, because 'Fallen Order' has to be one of my favourite action adventure games of the past generation for how well it handled fun-feeling combat, exploration puzzles and great stand-out set-piece moments: I really do see how the gaming public managed to latch themselves onto this game as their Star Wars trilogy. Personally, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually infused by the direction of the narrative and where they're going to take the story next to make Cal Kestis' survival throughout the age of the Jedi purge relevant in the grand scope of Star Wars storytelling. The narrative of an action adventure game has my attention- that's how you know these devs have crafted something special here to work on across the next decade.

Of course, with that attention to narrative comes a cast of characters I'm seriously excited to get to know more about. One of my only real hang-ups with the Fallen Order story was the fact that because Cal and Cere got the majority of the attention, side characters tended to just be around. I feel like we only scratched the surface of characters like Dreez and Merrin; both of which have the opportunity to really take centre stage a little more now that they've been set loose on the universe to be their own people. It even looks like Merrin may be becoming something of a late-life Jedi Padawan from some of the early footage we've seen, which would place her at a central point in the narrative moving forward as we explore this new rebel shootoff of the Jedi.

And the real reason I want more games to come out of this franchise; is to expand the world of modern Star Wars outside of the excessive constrained, and actually somewhat boring, scope of what Disney have been messing around with. Even their purported far-shoot from the main timeline, the High Republic, hasn't yet got that star power entry of this is must-watch content; leaving those bored with the events of the Skywalker sage feeling burnt out. Even the Mandalorian managed to tie in the Skywalkers- only Andor and the 'Star Wars: Jedi' series are interested expanding out the lore in any distinct and interesting direction; so I hold onto both of them like lightning rods keeping this franchise from becoming stale. Just as with Harry Potter, I want the property to outgrow the owners and become it's own thing; that's how media becomes evergreen.

But with my anticipation comes a considerable amount of trepidation, because with the greatest expectations comes hand-in-hand the greatest potential for a fall from grace. The higher the pedestal, the more gruesome the splat at the bottom end. One such issue I have would be related to the God of War problem, namely that I wonder if this franchise had given itself enough time between entries to really formulate new ideas or if it's just recycling more of the same but in a bigger prettier package. God of War was said to be a near perfect game, so people accepted it when that game's sequel didn't go in any great strides to push the game formula forward, but I for one will say that Jedi Fallen Order had some weak points that could have done with some touch-ups. I just hope the team aren't resting on the laurels of what they had already made.

For one I think that the boss fights of 'Jedi: Fallen Order', at least those on the critical path, were largely just ok- with one stand-out exception being the tree-top duel with the Seventh Sister. That fight alone had several stages, attack-switch ups, variant timing and all that great stuff witch makes a challenging and memorable Souls-like duel. Compared to her, even the final boss fight is disappointingly straight-forward and generic- even for all of the pomp and grandeur around the setting of those later fights. I need the main-line fights to respect life-bar stages going forward, to keep the fight feeling dynamic and ever shifting, and perhaps to include more creative elements akin to what Sekiro does- tying specific actions to solve certain fights. Imagine if 'Jedi Survivor' pulls off a fight with the scope and versatility of the 'Divine Dragon'; that would be a heart stopper moment!

And one last worry point, it's the amount of new characters that we're going to see out of Jedi Survivor. Rather than keep the team together as they were at the end of 'Fallen Order', 'Survivor' has scattered them to the wind and given the players a new set of friends to become familiar with. But as I mentioned, I still think there's considerable growing the base team still has yet to do. It's not like Mass Effect where every crew mate has enough character building to be chucked out into the wild and still be legends in their own right, I genuinely think that certain crewmates from the first game were still in their foetal stage of narrative progression, and I wonder if we'll feel like we've missed them growing up in the jarring transition from where they had just started blooming to where they've already fully blossomed in the modern world.

But my concerns and worries are brought out of a place of love. Love for this franchise and the development studio that didn't forget about the sizable amount of Star Wars fans that just don't get the same thrill out of online games that they do from fantastic single player masterpieces. I just want this trilogy of Star Wars games to be absolutely perfect and satisfying in the way that the recent trilogy of Star Wars movies just wasn't, and if I even catch a whiff of problems I'm going to hunt it down like a bloodhound. But I was just as sceptical of that first game when it first reared it's atypical head, and I'll likely be just as weary of the third game when it's around that time; I guess I'll never miss a chance to be pleasantly surprised by a game that ultimately outperforms my expectations. So go ahead, Respawn: Outperform!