Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order interview – how Respawn integrated exploration into a combat-first lightsaber game

cre: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order interview – how Respawn integrated exploration into a combat-first lightsaber game

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order isn’t just a simple melee action game, but instead features open planets filled with secrets and Metroid-style exploration. Here are some people from Respawn explaining how it happened.

Jedi: Fallen Order isn’t exactly the obvious movie franchise spin-off game you’d expect. It would be easy to make another Star Wars action game where you fight your way through linear levels as a super-powered Jedi – but developer Respawn aims to do something different with this game. Those differences were pleasingly surprising, as detailed in our extensive hands-on impressions of Fallen Order – including a map and world design that seems to owe at least a bit to Metroid, puzzles that could have been in Tomb Raider, and even a death mechanic that closely resembles to the Soulsborne Bonfire system.

After our hands-on, we had the opportunity to sit down with some of the huge team behind the game – narrative lead Aaron Contreras and lead level designer and Jeff Magers. Here’s our conversation with them, where we discuss level design, character power levels, and the process behind choosing which Star Wars planets to visit.

VG247: What was your development approach to arrive at the type of design you have? Going into the game, depending on who was involved, I anticipated it would be a pure action game, you know? But then you walk in and it’s a little… Metroid-ish? How did this happen – and what impact does it have on narrative design?

Jeff Mager: When we approach level design, we simply want to create a game that we want to play from an exploration perspective. I really like exploration in games – I like going back through planets you’ve already visited. We thought that kind of gameplay structure fit really well with our core premise of “becoming a Jedi” and that kind of hero journey, and growing as a character throughout the game.

When you run through the game early, you find that you get stuck in certain areas. You can’t get everything. But as you gain new powers and abilities, Cal can now overcome obstacles that previously prevented him from fully exploring.

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Aaron Contreras: Yes, it is definitely more complicated. It made my job harder! But that’s really where Jeff and I and our teams focused on collaborating in Fallen Order – it’s the marriage of that design that involves a lot of re-traversing, a lot of secrets, a lot of doors, a lot of explorations and truly engaging with the world in order to reap more rewards – with a traditional Star Wars cinematic story. Getting those two things to work together was probably one of the most satisfying parts of working on this project for me.

VG247: How does it feel trying to balance the opening? I’ve noticed that you can leave a planet before you’re done to visit another, and I’ve noticed many secrets that I apparently need to return with more powers to recover…

Aaron Contreras: I think we have to be very careful about where we block you from advancing on the critical path and why. We’re also very intentional at times to try to push the player – kind of like, okay, maybe it’s a good time to go explore, or go back to somewhere you’ve been before and can -maybe there are more secrets out there.

It’s really informed how we meet the design, how we do the AI ​​voiceover… because you will come back through these places, the states of the world might change, the empire might be where they weren’t there before – and that plays into the kind of dialogues you’ll have. You may have noticed that there are optional conversations you can have with your crew members… all of that stuff is integral to allowing the player to engage as they wish when he moves around the world.

Jeff Mager: When we started working on this game, we really started with lightsaber first and foremost. Stig Asmussen, our game director, ran God of War 3, so our team had kind of a melee background and pedigree. When we had the opportunity to work on a Star Wars game, we first thought of the lightsaber, of course. It’s kind of a game designer’s dream to make a lightsaber game.

So that’s where we started, and we really wanted that feeling to be the right one, and then at Respawn, we’re really gameplay first in a lot of ways. Of course, it’s a Star Wars game with an authentic Star Wars story – the narrative is hugely important, and we’re driven by that as well, but we really wanted it to be really enjoyable to explore those levels and planets. Part of that, I think, is player agency. Part of it is the traversal on the sticks and it feels really responsive, and then part of it is, you know, a player unraveling those worlds.

VG247: Obviously when you have a character with abilities like a Jedi, well… they’re pretty damn powerful. So what’s it like trying to design, both in terms of storytelling and gameplay, for a character who can be so powerful? Honestly, I remember a big problem I had with The Force Unleashed was actually feeling too powerful, which led to a kind of dissonance…so how do you avoid that?

Jeff Mager: Going back to when we first started offering lightsaber combat, we really wanted it to feel authentically like a lightsaber. So what that meant for us was killing a stormtrooper with one shot. So that’s where we started, but in a melee game, it’s not always pleasant to mow everyone down in one go, because you can feel too overpowered.

So that’s where we introduce the block counter so you can find windows of opportunity to down an enemy with one shot, but also if you go in and swing your lightsaber, they have counters to that. We’ve also introduced many creatures that have thicker skin and can narratively justify taking more hits. The game is really about becoming a Jedi, so it starts at the bottom and builds up to be very powerful.

Aaron Contreras: Cal is our hero, and he’s a Padawan who survived Order 66. He’s not there yet. He is not a master when the game opens. So it’s really a hero’s journey of someone who comes from a very difficult start, he’s had a traumatic past, he has a difficult relationship with the force, that he has to overcome certain challenges with himself- meme and his belief throughout the game… it kind of ties into our gameplay story and our progression story as well – as Cal grows in this story the player grows and Cal’s abilities grow throughout the game.

VG247: When you’re creating and designing this, what the conversations with LucasFilm and Disney look like…there was a time when the lore was just crazy, full of super-powered characters, but then the Expanded Universe was reset. Did you have conversations with them about what Cal could and couldn’t be, and how powerful he could be compared to Luke and Rey and such?

Aaron Contreras: Find a place for Cal as a Jedi in the pantheon of other Jedi, right? You have Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Qui Gon, Rey – I can name them all, but I won’t! It was less about power in the conversation… Obviously, power is something very specific to video games. You can write a character to do whatever you want in a movie and then the next scene they can do something else. In a game, you kind of give that agency to the player and have them act out that fantasy, so it’s kind of more of an intentional thing that you’re doing.

It was really more about finding Cal’s story and making it unique, if that makes sense. So what is its relationship to the force? Where is he from ? Where is he going ? As soon as we figured out what that arc was and it resonated with the folks at LucasFilm and the team, we knew we were onto something special.

VG247: You have access to all of this vast lore – so how do you decide where you go, whether it’s original planets or places we’ve seen before?

Jeff Mager: Building these planets is a super collaborative effort between the entire team, from concept art to storytelling, level design to enemy design. We really wanted to take the two planets that you’ve seen in other media, in other Star Wars properties, and also shape our own planets. They both come with unique challenges and strengths.

Working on a planet that exists before, you have to feel authentic to what happened before on that planet, and people have a certain sense of the spirit. Whereas on the brand new planets, it’s about doing something totally new but making it authentic still in the universe. It was a fun balancing act, doing a bit of both.

Disclosure: This preview took place at an event hosted by publisher EA, with travel and accommodation provided.

source: gameplaytrick.com -

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