E3 2019: Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order Gameplay Breakdown

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?” – Yoda

Earlier today at EA’s State of Play event gameplay was shown for the highly anticipated Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order and what was shown at this year’s Star Wars: Celebration in Chicago was truly a tease compared to what was seen.

Prior to the gameplay demo Greg Miller talked with the head of Respawn Entertainment Vince Zampella and the game director of Jedi Fallen Order Stig Asmussen about the game and they talked about how they couldn’t wait to talk about the game and the fact there would be a fifteen minute gameplay demo. For those of you not in the know, Fallen Order is set after the events of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith post: Order 66 which was the great purge of the Jedi Order by the Clone Troopers and Darth Vader throughout the galaxy and the main Jedi temple on Coruscant.

The demo begins and it is roughly three hours into the game with Cal on Kashyyyk and we get a sense of the way force powers go hand in hand with platforming as Cal uses the force to pull a vine towards him and uses it to swing across a chasm. We then see how the wallrunning seen in Titanfall 2 works and is made or at least looks easier compared to Titanfall 2’s first person perspective. Cal then leaps toward a fallen bridge and climbs up and perfectly transitions into a cutscene with arguably the biggest character from Star Wars The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in the person of Saw Gerrera who had the likeness and seemingly the voice of Forest Whitaker. One of the big things in terms of Star Wars Legends lore returning is what looks to be the enslavement of the Wookiee’s as forced labor to help work on the Death Star and other Imperial projects. Which is how Han Solo met Chewbacca in the Legends continuity. But more about Chewie later

We then get a callback to The Force Unleashed as Cal uses the force to open a beat up door and we also get a creative use for the lightsaber as a way to see in the darkness. Once Cal gets to the imperial refinery we get a double jump as seen in virtually every Star Wars game where you play as a Jedi and then using the force to push over a pipe to make a bridge to proceed to the next area. After this we get our first glimpse of combat in Fallen Order as Cal swings into a group of Stormtroopers and takes them out easily. Something of note during this sequence was the life-bar for the stormtroopers which lines up with the Dark Souls element of the game as mentioned in the past. There’s a funny moment where an R2 unit gets force pushed into a stormtrooper and blows up on impact. It was quite funny to see. After some fighting we get to see an imperial magnaguard which again, if you don’t remember were (in Revenge of the Sith) the droids that wielded staffs with purple electricity at each end. It seems they brought that type of enemy back but with an Imperial version.

After that we proceed through some tight spaces and encounter the bugs of Kashyyyk that Imperial flame troopers are lighting up but the bugs tend to explode on impact which we see as a bug explodes right in front and takes out a stormtrooper. We then see the new force power called “Slow” which is the midpoint of force push and force pull and when used slows down time and its pretty much the stasis effect from Dead Space. Then we get to the point where my arachnophobia gets the better of me. The Kashyyyk wildlife get the better of the stormtroopers and you have a convincing battle between two giant spider creatures. After this section you are traversing and above you are two stormtroopers who get told that they may see combat and one of them remarks saying “well, at least we have the high ground.” The one thing I can definitely tell is that this game is a mixed blend of Uncharted/Assassin’s Creed/The Force Unleashed/Titanfall 2. And going back to the “Slow” force power we see that this is a force power Kylo Ren used in The Force Awakens to freeze Poe Dameron’s blaster shot. The demo ends with Cal getting ready to release Wookiee prisoners then a K2 model droid grabs Cal and launches him pretty far away. We get a reel of what can happen in the fight with the droid and combat against various enemies.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order releases on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 on November 15th.