Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Developers Talk Cal Kestis' Future, Combat Improvements, and More

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is nearly here and we got to sit down with some members of the development team to ask some of our burning questions. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is one of the biggest games releasing in 2023. It's a very highly anticipated sequel after Respawn showed it could break way from FPS games and make not only a solid third-person action game, but also make a successful addition to the Star Wars canon. The game was a massive hit and based on what we've played of Jedi: Survivor, it seems like that success allotted Respawn the opportunity to make something much riskier and bigger.

At a preview event for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, we got to sit down and speak with design director Jeff Majors and senior producer Blair Brown to talk about how Respawn improved the combat, the darker tone of the story, and much more. There were some things that these two were not at liberty to speak very freely about (either due to secrecy or simply not knowing Lucasfilm's larger plans), but there's still some interesting new nuggets of information within our conversation.

Will this, the Jedi series as a whole, tie into the FPS Star Wars game that Respawn is making? Are there any connections to that?

Jeff Majors: Really, we want players to find that sort of stuff out on their own. We are focused on this game and really any property, any other potential tie-ins with other films or games, books or comics or TV shows, we want players to find out on their own.

Obviously, the last game ends on a pretty big note with Darth Vader showing up. How does Darth Vader impact Cal's story going forward? Whether Darth Vader shows up again or not, that's a scary guy to walk into and not get changed by.

Blair Brown: It is. I think it is the worst time to be a Jedi. And Darth Vader's presence – as fans, I think we also know this – but obviously Cal after having met him feels it too. "Oh no, this guy is really bad news. The Empire is out to get me, and everybody else apparently." The inquisitor is chasing him.

I think you're starting to hit up against it in the demo you're playing of Cal questioning, "Why am I doing this? Is this important? I just feel like I'm always losing." And Survivor will take you through that, his emotions, his thought process in his story as he comes up against those things. But yeah, no, you're not going to know if anybody's in the game or not.

JM: But Darth Vader, bad news.

BB: Bad news, bad news. That's your headline.

[Game director] Stig [Asmussen] has spoken about the idea that this could be a trilogy. Would you consider this the Empire Strikes Back of the Jedi series?

JM: I think to Blair's point earlier, this is a dark time to be a Jedi, so it is a darker story we're telling. Similar to how Empire is a darker story than A New Hope. I think that there's no one-to-one parallel or anything like that in these things. But as far as Cal's journey, he's in a darker place than bright-eyed Padawan was in the last game.

He's got a beard now. That's always a sign of some grit. He seen some things.

BB:

He's mature.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, the TV show, featured the location at the end of Jedi: Fallen Order. What was that like, you got to contribute to the canon in a really big way. The Obi-Wan Kenobi show is not just a random spinoff, that is real, true, Star Wars canon.

JM: Also The Mandalorian with BD droids! Yeah, it's cool. It's awesome to see these designs and places that we contributed to the Star Wars universe popping up in other media, it's great.

BB: Working in the Star Wars universe, we don't get to make any of these decisions. Lucasfilm handles a lot of that, and we have a really great partnership with them after working with them for eight years. So, as a fan of Star Wars and making things in the authentic universe, it's really cool and humbling to see when our things pop up places. But it's also fun to be like, "Ooh, could we get androids in our game?" How does that make sense, though? And then you start working with Lucasfilm and our narrative team and designers, do we even want these androids? You met the Rancor.

BB: It's really fun as a fan, as somebody who grew up on this stuff, to be able to pull these things into your game as well as seeing them start to go the other way, which is really cool.

Do they come to you and say, "Hey, we're thinking about doing this?" Are you giving any notes like, "This is how it has to be?" Or are you not really allowed to be that protective since Star Wars is bigger than everyone?

JM: Really, all of that takes place within the Lucasfilm group, they own the IP, they are the ones really seeing all of the different entries and print properties into the universe. So, their job is to coordinate all that stuff and let us know when we're trying to do an idea or something that might step on the toes of some other TV show or something that's in the works that we don't even know about, and vice versa as well. So they do a really good job managing all of that stuff and we get to just focus on making the game.

Back to the idea of this is a trilogy. Did you go into this one in particular with more confidence and an idea of the larger story as opposed to the first one where it was like who knows where this will go? 

JM: It was very validating to the player's reactions and responses. It gave us that moving into the second game a really good touchstone. We didn't have to figure out who Cal is or what's his little droid buddy, or how combat works, or what's healing, so it gave us an opportunity to make a true sequel, which doesn't happen often in a game. Sometimes we get moved to a new engine or have to reboot the character, all these crazy things that make it more difficult.

For us on this one, it was awesome to just be like, "We have the team, we know where we're taking Cal, we know what from the last game what we want to greatly improve because people love this or that part about it," and then we just hit the ground running, which it was awesome. So, as you'll see, as you play, Cal feels better. It's like, "Yeah, because we didn't have to figure out how to run, we just had to make running better." We had two stances; let's just get deeper with that kind of stuff. We had the time and the team to do it with.

It is noticeable. I was telling someone yesterday,"In the first game, it feels like Cal is reacting to everything around him, whereas now he knows what to do having five years of experience doing this now."

JM: Yeah. I'm glad you're feeling that because that was a big focus, finding Cal 2.0 after these five years. He's an evolved Jedi knight, and we went through every mechanic, every traversal mechanic to try to make him feel more responsive, more grounded, make you feel more in control, make Cal feel more in control.

How have you guys improved lightsabers? It's a very tricky balancing act, I'm sure, because we all know lightsabers are like the deadliest tool in the galaxy. It kills everybody in one hit, slices hands off, but in a video game you can't do that. How did you improve upon them in this game?

JM: The stances are a big thing. So, last game we had single bladed and double bladed, and then towards the end we had the split-saber dual-wield special moves, which is great power fantasy moment at the end of the game. But originally, we had planned to make three full-fledged stances in Fallen Order, with dual-wield as a full stance. When we set out on this game, we thought, "Okay, let's finish that. Let's make that." As well as going back and polishing and refining and retuning single and double-bladed, let's make dual-wield a full stance. And then wouldn't it be cool if Cal had a blaster? From there we figure out how it works in the story. We worked with Lucasfilm, worked with our narrative team, and the combat team figures out what that means in our lightsaber-centric game. We also have this Crossguard Stance which hits really heavy.

So all these different stances make Cal feel... Well, it gives the player lots more options of how to play. It makes Cal feel your own. And depending on what stances you've got at any given time, you approach combat encounters completely differently, and it adds to replayability, too, because if you come back to an area and you've got different stances, there's a whole different depth of the combat system that's available to you, and you're learning new things about how to play.

BB: I think it was important for them to have strengths and weaknesses, but we've never wanted to lock-and key-stuff. "Oh, I have to bring staff to this fight because blah, blah, blah." You should, as a player, be like, "I love the fantasy of single-saber." You can play the whole game like that if that's what you want. And that was really important to us.

But again, how did we iterate on it and change it? It was just being able to have the full combat team ready to go right from the start. How do we make sabers more fun? And just being able to hit the ground running. We didn't have to figure out what the saber is.

JM: We want this game to work for casual Star Wars fans and hardcore gamers as well. So we've got Grandmaster for them, and we go all the way down to story mode. We added a Padawan difficulty mode in between Knight and Story this time, which gives us a little bit more nuance for different players. But as far as the lethality goes, one of our tenets of our difficulty modes is we don't ever add more hits, more health to enemies based on difficulty.

The difficulty is not derived from "Now the lightsaber takes 10 hits to kill this Stormtrooper. If you make contact with them, they're all going to take the same amount of hits [regardless of difficulty]. That's really important to us in terms of the lethality.

As you are putting on the finishing touches, you just mentioned in the first game there was stuff that you didn't get to do quite to the level you wanted to doIs there anything that had to go in this game that you're hoping you can return to down the line?

JM: Yeah. This time I feel like we left it all on the table. I think, of course, with production constraints, there's little cuts here and there, but there's nothing to the extent of an entire stance that we had to scrap. And it's not like, "Oh, Dual Stance was ready to go." It was an earlier decision. But no, I'm really happy and proud of the team and everything that we've put into Jedi: Survivor and it is a much more expansive game than Fallen where both the story and especially the optional content are much expanded from Fallen Order.

BB: I think Jeff said at the beginning, we left it all on the table. I'm sure when it comes out and we have some perspective, maybe six months after it, we'll be like, "Oh, we should've [done that]." But there was nothing like, "Oh, I'm really sad this didn't make it." Whereas on the last game, I think a really good example is customization came in really late. What can we do? We need rewards for exploring. "Oh, we can do paint jobs and ponchos." Whereas this game where we're like, "Oh, let's go really deep with this, this time," and customization greatly improved this time.

Are you guys worried that players might use the blaster too often to just hang back and just bang, bang, bang? Or have you found a way to have a limited usage on it or whatever.

BB: We're going to leave it for players to find out how the actual mechanics work. You'll see a little bit, but it's still, this is a melee-focused lightsaber game. The combat team has created a really fun and cool balance with the Blaster Stance that you'll see.

JM: My last playthrough, I prioritized Blaster Stance. I'm not worried at all about people using it. People should use it if they like it.

BB: And to my earlier point, if that's your favorite stance, you'll be able to get through the whole game with it. Nothing is more overpowered or less overpowered than any other stances.

JM: They all have strengths and weaknesses.

Given the success of recent video game to TV adaptations with The Last of Us and whatnot, and Disney is obviously making Star Wars all of the time, how far away are we from seeing Cal Kestis in his own TV show popping up somewhere else?

BB:We only know about the game!

JM: Yeah. We are focused on Jedi Survivor 100%, ready to get this out the door and into the players' hands, so that's what we're excited about. That's what we know about.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will release on April 28th for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. EA provided travel and lodging in Los Angeles for the purposes of a preview event for the game.