STACK #181 Nov 2019

GAMES

FEATURE

The Force unleashed Respawn deliberately made Cal a Padawan to grow his powers over the course of the campaign. There’s a three-pronged skill tree to pour upgrade points into for new and improved abilities, alongside core powers you unlock throughout the campaign. We were shown an upgraded Cal who was close to Jedi Master in terms of abilities, and he certainly seemed fully armed and operational, which was essential given the boss fight he was caught up in with a towering Inquisitor whose anger was only bested by her extremely generous healthbar.

“We’ve got a certain set of player abilities that we want to exploit on different planets,” says Magers. “Like we want this planet to be about Force push or something. We take that as a starting point and bring these elements into it that can kind of mimic your gameplay abilities.” Zeffo, a new planet created in a collaboration between Respawn and Lucasfilm, was the Force push planet Magers mentioned, with the kind of tomb raiding that’d make Lara Croft feel flattered. Combat was sparse in the

completionists will be tempted to return to planets with newfound abilities to unlock everything

underground crypt, but environmental puzzling was at an all-time high, with some satisfying head-scratchers to crack to unlock all of the sepulchre’s secrets. Really, though, Fallen Order is built around a foundation of combat. And you could build one hell of a palace on that foundation. Tight controls and an unlockable arsenal of new abilities combine for weighty lightsaber combat. Even though saber-on-saber fights aren’t happening all the time, Respawn has crafted combat encounters that still fulfil the power fantasy of swinging the sci-fi equivalent of a hot knife through the soft butter exteriors of armoured or fleshy foes. And if it’s not tough enough for you early on, you can always defy the main path and ship off to a planet meant to offer a challenge. “On Dathomir, the combat is very difficult for a beginner player,” says Magers. “You will grow and become a Jedi and become kind of strong enough with a different set of abilities to take on the Nightbrothers there. “But if you go there right away, it’s pretty harsh and it feels difficult. It feels like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here yet.’ And the characters are reinforcing that. That being said, we also hit certain ability gates that you cannot pass until you, on some other planet, perhaps get an ability that allows you to cross that gap. So we gate things both ways with softer suggestions and also, at the same time, sometimes hitting a harder gate that you can’t pass without a certain ability.” After a couple of hours of play time, Fallen Order has left us eager to enlist

gimme difficulty for younglings and those seeking story over stimulating ’sabers, there’s a satisfying sense of accomplishment for besting fights on one of the higher difficulties. Isolated, most enemies are Force fodder. United, they offer a Batman: Arkham -like challenge thanks to the interplay between enemy archetypes. Like Dark Souls, death acts as an unforgiving instructor. And when you die, the enemy that turned you into a Force ghost holds onto the XP you’ve collected towards your next ability point. You’ll respawn at a (hopefully) nearby save point, but you have to damage your past-life killer to get it all back. It’s worth beelining for them as there are other rewards. “The system where you can reacquire your Force, health and XP really feeds into the exploration loop because, if you die to a creature, you want to get back to that creature,” says Magers. “You then become more familiar with the space as you’re re-traversing and re-engaging with the different encounters.” As powerful as revenge is as a player motivator, even for a vengeance-shunning Jedi like Cal, the opportunity to better acquaint yourself with a level post-mortem tends to lead to discoveries that were previously unnoticed. Prioritise getting that XP back, for sure, but keep an eye out for things you may have missed. Fallen Order rewards the curious trailblazer eager to find the many secrets outside of the main path. And completionists will be tempted to return to planets with newfound abilities to unlock everything, thanks to Respawn’s metroidvania design logic. Each of the planets we’ve experienced so far has a unique feel, with the promise of planet- specific wildlife threats.

for the full experience. If this already high bar is matched throughout the course of the full campaign, Respawn is on target for a Death Star-destroying hit.

• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out Nov 15

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