EA’s E3 presentation substitute, EA Play, gave fans a glimpse of the first Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gameplay footage, with plenty of detail packed into a short 15 minutes. Let’s get started.
The footage takes place a few hours into the game, when Kal’s already built up some skills — and, of course, can show off some of the game’s combat
Restart the Jedi Order, Kashyyk being exploited for its resources to drive the Imperial war machine, and Cal gets caught up in it all. Chief among the resources the Empire wants is tree sap, for… unknown purposes. However, the sap refineries also double as prison camps where the Wookies are being held.
The footage shows Cal moving in a way rather similar to Respawn’s Titanfall series, running sideways along walls and climbing up grates, along with some platforming action involving vine swinging.
But this is Star Wars, and platforming won’t be basic in any way. Cal makes use of Force powers to blast his way through metal doors and find paths his non-Jedi comrades can’t access.
Soon after, we get the first taste of combat, featuring a plethora of fancy Jedi moves. These range from the basic, like using a lightsaber to deflect blaster shots, to Force pushes and boomerang saber throws (not dissimilar from the old SNES Star Wars games).
As can be seen in the official Jedi: Fallen Order gameplay demo above, Cal acquires skill points through defeating enemies, and while the initial basic Stormtroopers and later variants go down like nothing, the footage showed off one of the Inquisitors that make up the game’s primary opposition. These fights required a great deal more in the way of skill use and smooth footwork.
Cal’s partner droid, BD-1 (Buddy Droid One), apparently offers health restoration at certain points as well, which even the expert player who’d trained for this segment needed to make use of after the Inquisitor fight. The droid acts a lot like Samus’s visor from Metroid Prime, activating machinery and giving Cal insight into the areas around him.
Even the short segment shown off included plenty of nods to the mainline films, from Cal’s familiar quip, “Are you sure you want to plug into this thing?” to the fanservice of getting to see more of Kashyyk than ever before.
That footage included giant spider-like monsters (think Shelob, but slightly smaller) who packed more of a punch than the Stormtroopers, which suggests Fallen Order is going to live up to Zampella’s promise of being “thoughtful” combat-oriented, with plenty of foes and ways to make good use of Cal’s myriad Jedi powers.
The biggest surprise here is that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order‘s story will be considered canon in the Star Wars universe, making this a must-play title for Star Wars fans hungry for more lore.
Oh, and it’s worth noting the final montage showed an actual combat sequence between Cal and an AT-AT.
