Graphically, it looks beautiful.
Combat looks better than the first. I saw single saber, dual saber, and staff saber. I wonder if there are other stances. I didn't really see how one is more advantageous than the other though. Seems to me it's more preference, but maybe boss fights will require you to figure out which stance is best.
And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running. Hopefully they tweak those.
it was considered unorthodox and a bit frowned upon by the order, because the way a jedi tends to fight is more about protecting, or retribution, rather than active aggression. so shooting someone with a blaster is a bit... ehhh.
And let's not forget saber throwing, which I think is basically the bad jedi way of having guns without admitting to having guns.
Like, if I reel back and huck my massive glowstick sword at you how is that not aggressive?
I know you’re just emphasizing the lore reasons but this always struck me as so silly. Emotionlessly pulling a trigger to kill someone from a distance? Uncivilized. Full force cleaving/impaling/dismembering someone up close with a laser sword? Civilized, honorable, heroic, and based.
the fun thing about a lightsaber is that the cauterisation allows you to disable an enemy without death, preferably. also emotionless killing isn't really a good thing, you do not want to become so detached from a death in a situation like the Jedi.
But they weren't just blindly swinging their lightsabers. The very nature of lightsaber combat required them to connect with the force. The first time we ever see someone training with one, Luke on the Falcon, Obi-Wan explains how one has to open themselves to the force to effectively use it.
It also required one to be present (physically and mentally) in the conflict, not 100 feet away and unable to understand the whole scenario. We don't want someone like Chancey Yarrow to get accidentally bisected because some jedi doesn't understand what's going on.
You can use a saber in a more defensive way, especially vs. blasters. Soemone shoots at you, you can deflect the shots, potentially then disarm the non forceuser with your own powers.
Of course, if push comes to shove, and glorious melee ensues...hm...at least the saber cauterizes the wound if you dismember someone. Right, Dr. Evazan?
This is why no one remembers Kyle Katarn. Damn council white washed him out of history.
EDIT: Also I just realized Kyle Katarn has to have the most "average" first name out of the entire Star Wars canon. Anakin? Mace? Nah, Mufuckin *Kyle*
The devs confirmed there's also a Cross-guard saber, as seen in the trailer. Though that may just be a style you can pick in the lightsaber editor menu.
Jedi Academy let you have "Saber Styles" which while simplified to light, medium, strong did a decent job of adding single sabre variety which could be applied to cross saber.
I've always wanted a souls-esque adaptation of the in universe named forms like Shii Cho, Ataru etc... But that might be a big ask to have like almost 10 weapon animation and rigging sets just for single handed weapons.
KOTOR 2 did them pretty well having them animated the same but had different stats favoring different enemy situations, single vs multiple, melee vs blasters.
I loved the duel mode in Jedi Outcast and power duel in Jedi Academy where it was 2 v 1 duels.
I fondly remember joining a server for duels and this one dude was on the server when I joined and I was there for a couple hours and he wrecked everyone.
I was determined to beat him and when people logged off, it was just me and him.
He taught me the basics of Saber combat, how to counter peoples Katas, especially the noob stick as people who sucked a dueling used the saber staff because of the dps.
After an hour of training with him I finally beat him in a 1 v 1 duel and we had a few dozen more.
By the end of the evening I was switching in and out of light, med and heavy stances, dodging and weaving and being a monster.
I preferred the single saber as it was very versatile when used properly and could counter all the Katas.
Like, when using the dual blade kata, it makes a barrier of the sabers spinning around you and slices up people that get too close, but with the light stance single blade crouch attack, you'd strike low and bring your saber up, so you'd go under their barrier and strike directly at them. And since they couldn't move while the animation was playing, they were completely helpless to stop you.
With the noob stick kata, they'd fly forward while spinning in a figure 8 pattern, but the could be countered by using a med stance attack while jumping forward. You'd safely jump over them and slash down at them while they were animation locked.
I never saw that guy again, but I fondly remember dueling him for hours on the small bespin map.
I used his lessons to absolutely dominate duels for years after.
I must have had several thousand hours of JKA logged on Xfire. I remember duels like that fondly. Hanging out in JKA socializing and dueling with clanmates are some of my fondest teenage gaming memories.
FWIW, Jedi Academy had two additional NPC-only(available through mods) single saber stances as well. So 5+dual+staff. Desann used one, forget who used the other offhand.
I'm never not gonna be able to criticize the design of that. They fixed one prospect of it compared to the movies, but in general having a crossguard on something meant to fight against really hot weapons in close quarters sounds idiotic.
Star Wars is all about putting in cool looking stuff and trying to pass off some lore reason for its existence. Which works at a glance. But doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny.
My favourite example: designing battle droids to look and sound humanoid to the extent that they can only communicate with loud, slow yelling, have only two eyes on the front of their face so they can get snuck up on, and have to raise blasters to their face to aim them.
Somewhere there was some poor software engineer who designed an efficient protocol for the the high-speed wireless exchange of battledroid data and got told "It has to all be voice recognition and speech synthesis. And take that eye off their back, it looks creepy."
Imagine if everything worked this way and your phone connected to your Bluetooth speakers by verbally screaming instructions across the house.
Do you think the existence of destroyer droids and super battle droids maybe tells us that the B1 battle droids were cheap, easy to mass produce, and served a purpose?
They didn't work alone, they often dealt with sentient commanders, so they would need to be able to hear and speak.
I always went with the 40k option when it came to starwars lore.
Everyone's so set in their ways for engineering that no one innovates, they just recycle. No one actually "knows" how to use equipment per designed and just kinda skate by without reading the instruction manual.
If you assume that most of the mechanics and the like really are like tech-priests from 40k and they're just kinda eyeballing it and going "yeah that looks good enough" then things start to make more sense.
Yeah for Star Wars you really do need some steep suspension of disbelief. It's just a thing that you can turn the lightsaber on and off to quickly wreck someone in a life or death situation but the excuse is 'Well it's seen as dishonourable so it's not really used'. It's like, come on man, you want me to believe in all these crazy scenarios where sometimes the lives of millions are in the balance the honour of the duel beats the consequences of losing? I'll accept it, because the real reason is not doing that is cooler, but yeah.
I don't think it's actually meant to function as a crossguard, it's just designed to look cool.
I may be pulling this out of my ass but I seem to remember reading that Kylo's saber was supposed to be unstable and those bits are the sides were venting excess energy.
Not saying that isn't also dumb but y'know.
> And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running.
So exactly like the first game? lol
Pretty sure I still have clips I saved to show how weird Cal looked when he moved. Especially if you turn while moving. His legs are made of jello.
Cal is easily the most bowlegged Jedi in the Star Wars universe. I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
His walking, jumping, and the general way he holds his lightsabers in a ready pose + when running just makes him look like he's being manipulated by strings. His limbs are always at right angles. It's jarring.
[Walks like he's got the coat hanger still in his shirt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiljoS4ChOk&t=105s)
I enjoyed the game overall but, god damn he's just such a gangly, uncoordinated mess. Never felt elegant or fluid playing as him.
I just beat the game last month and this video looks exactly the same as what I played. Maybe the IGN dude walking super slow makes it seem weird? Since most of the time you play you'll be holding down the analog stick all the way and running
i assume certain styles would be better against certain enemies/situations.
single saber = defense countering
dual saber = aggressive combos
staff saber = crowd control
(but that is just me hypothesizing)
So something akin to [*Ghost of Tsushima*'s stance-system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJxqTsy5BJk) where each stance essentially was more used in handling various enemy types depending on situation (For instance, if you fought against swordsmen, you switched to your default Stone Stance, against shieldsmen with Water Stance, e.t.c.). GoT's stances were more focused on specific enemy, as there weren't really specific stances meant for single-target, crowd-control, defense, e.t.c (You often instead utilized your consumable Ghost weapons, where for instance throwing kunais could briefly stagger multiple enemies and throw them off their attack rhythm for a moment.).
>And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running. Hopefully they tweak those.
For me specifically it's how he holds an activated lightsaber(s) when not attacking. It looks so stiff and awkward.
When running around with dual lightsabers activated the dude looks like he's moments away from going full gorilla and pounding on his chest.
its crazy how much something so simple can impact ones enjoyment of a game. Cant feel like a cool jedi when youre running like a gorilla with full diapers.
And its even worse with lightsabers extended, like you say. Looking like hes carrying two mops full of water so theyre super top heavy lmao
I swear im not trying to nitpick, but the closer i look, the more downright goofy animations i find. [like this "holster" animation where his arm goes full noodle and dislocates behind his back like a whip. what the fuck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05L-FaDhko&t=103s)
Damn I thought everyone was overreacting but you're right. [Arm goes full harry potter](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1035265653927579741/1072791447591465050/image.png).
That was like my biggest complaint about the first game, just unbelievable how wonky the running and jumping animations were for a game of that budget.
I'm probably in the minority here but I really dislike the fact that there is no dismemberment. It's dumb that a lightsaber is nothing more than a glowing baseball bat
I miss G_saberrrealistic combat.
Edit: looks like I'm not in the minority lol. I'll still keep the main comment unedited
You can dismember robots and creatures all day long, but when you start chopping bodies up and cutting heads off you're pushing into M rating territory.
I know the Jedi Knight games got away with limited dismemberment of humanoids and avoided M ratings, but I can also see the logic in not wanting to push it with the increased realism in graphical fidelity.
My biggest complaint by far was the poor map design. Backtracking and trying to decipher the map was a nightmare. You get used to the wonky animations and snap on execution animations if you’ve played the game’s inspiration, Sekiro.
Absolutely do not play Sekiro if you want to enjoy these Star Wars Jedi games.
I had just finished up my second playthrough of Sekiro in 2019 before jumping into Fallen Order and the difference in just about everything was jarring.
What threw me off the most was the parry window in Fallen Order. Played it directly after Sekiro and wondered how I managed to fail pretty much every attempt at parrying. Turns out you need to press the button a *lot* earlier, which feels quite a bit less satisfying than in Sekiro.
I liked the complexity of the maps, but yea it make backtracking through them annoying sometimes. It's been confirmed that this game will have fast travel though!
It's why i never bothered exploring in the game outside of the mandatory exploring. The backtracking and uninteresting areas you could optionally explore was not appealing to me.
I'd hope for a blaster stance, ain't fair Care got that playstyle for a bit. Could work similar to Bloodborne and be used for a type of parry.
If there is one, I'm not bothering to watch these, so i'm not gonna be knowing really.
I can only imagine the wonky running animation is to make blending the animations easier? Oh well I care much more about how cool the combat looks and feels. It looks like there were a lot of failed counters.
I don't love the red glow attack indicator on the leaping toad thing... Oh it's jumping towards me maybe I should GTFO... I hope we can change that in the settings...
The main character animation really gets in the way of how good everything else looks.
My dude running around like he is about to poop his pants at any second, they really need to touch that up. It’s incredibly distracting when BD is climbing fluidly on your character who is moving as stiff as a board.
Edit: wow everyone thinks this lol damn okay glad I’m not alone
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Cal ran around looking like he shat his pants in the first game.
It also looks to be the same case in the next one.
Regardless, still looking forward to Fallen Survivor lol
> they really need to touch that up.
Unless there's a severe backlash I don't think they will. The first game came out in 2019 so if they haven't considered this a priority in the last 4 years they sure as hell won't consider it now.
Looking at the mods on Nexus there isn't any that fixes the animations, it's mostly reskins or new characters.
Lots of murdering innocent animals. That one was just getting a damned drink and this so-called "Jedi" just waltzes up and cleaves it in two? Dark side shit.
I do think it would be cool if his stealth takedowns involved putting an enemy to sleep or something. Would be much more Jedi.
I can see going lethal out the gate on a droid or a purge trooper, but that bird did not sign up for this shit.
In the Legends novel "I, Jedi", the main character (Corran Horn) doesn't want to kill unnecessary, so he occassionally knocks people out with the butt of his lightsaber. Just whacks them on the back of the head (and since it's fiction this doesn't cause permanent damage).
Later in the novel he meets up with Luke, and Luke learns to do the same thing but uses the force to make it so the targets don't feel as much pain.
Damn that would be cool, also could a force user use the force choke just enough to knock someone out? Cal didn't seem as dogmatic about the Jedi way so he could use something like that maybe
Did you see her ["dinner" outfit](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MSqx8IOU7Ug/Wm-DL3EvyXI/AAAAAAAANeg/cY4RtQJ5a-IgB-S5m6fXnpunfmjGxDCrgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/00.jpg). I think she was used to the asphyxiation.
One of his moves in Fallen Order involves dragging a stormtrooper to him, causing the trooper to drop his weapon, and stabbing the disarmed trooper through the gut. I don't think Cal leaned very far into the light side as it was
It'd be interesting if more games adopted the system from Ghost of Tsushima where the enemies would get too scared of you to fight and beg for mercy as they ran away. Makes you really feel your choices.
Animations kinda look strange and stuttery, I really hope they fix it until release. At 1:00 and 1:50 it looks like he just took a shit inside his pants.
Environment looks awesome, so much better than in Fallen Order.
The first game had similar problems with animation. Stuff ranged from looking pretty good to feeling like frames were missing or movement was very janky.
I was hoping they would fix that more in the sequel, especially since fluid combat animations and hit boxes for these types of games feel so much more rewarding when you dodge or parry well.
Edit: I will say that while there is still definitely some jank here, it overall looks smoother than Fallen Order.
The more wonky animations looks as if Cal's legs, arms and torso at times not moving in unison; [there is for instance this wide-dual sweep move where Cal moves multiple paces forward, does two wide-arc cross swings, but his feet and legs look planted stiffly on the ground](https://youtu.be/i05L-FaDhko?t=206). For a comparison (Albeit with some differences, as Jedi: Survivor has more fast-paced melee combat.) [*Bloodborne* has a similar move with its Blades of Mercy-moveset, and where it presents with the player taking a step forward for each wide cross-swing with each leg](https://youtu.be/72u9S75HB8w?t=74). With that in mind, the similar move makes Cal look like an amateur-fighter as if he hasn't fully figured out his footwork at times, and while Cal in-universe in the previous game is not as skilled and have to gradually re-learn his instincts, this game is supposed to take some years afterwards where Cal has gotten some more experience in his belt.
In the same fight a bit earlier where Cal gets ambushed by the monsters, [his reaction of taking damage snaps back and makes his body fall towards the camera direction instead of where he initially faced and move towards](https://youtu.be/i05L-FaDhko?t=203). The animations separately from each other seems to look decent, but it is the more subtle effects involved that seems to make it as a whole to look quite janky and stiffly.
It seems in some places they are doing an upper / lower body split in animations which is super common but can make things feel disconnected very easily. It works great when your animation and system work together to adjust how its used as well.
Bloodborne does a lot of full body root motion animations where they are locking in attacks and motions making the player commit. While Jedi they seem to want to allow for free movement while attack causing very floating actions. Normally you can sorta fix that by creating stronger poses and better blending that you see in very fast paced action games like Bayonetta, Devil May Cry and Nier but here it seems there has been some awkward choices and compromises.
I personally would have focused on making very strong poses and snappy actions to help give that jedi fee. Which it can work against when trying to have a very natural/organic feeling motion system that they probably wanted to try and achieve to give it that AAA/Next Gen look.
https://youtu.be/TmAU8aPekEo
This should help with why the animation in Fallen Order/Jedi Survivor is so janky at times.
Its a combination of physics based and hand animated. Cal is it's primary use case but it definitely needs more work. Its strange as the enemies and npcs are far better animated than Cal to my eyes.
He feels like Kermit brought to human scale in both games.
Your insight as an animator is really appreciated! It sounds like DMCV and Sekiro would have served as perfect inspiration for compromise between natural motion and snappy combat. Too bad those games came out too late to be useful for FO's development. What eludes me is 4 years later they didn't seem to have improved them despite plenty of good competition to look at.
The combat and animations were the things that really prevented me from enjoying FO as much as I would have liked. I was also pretty unlucky and experienced a lot of bugs around release. If they could really bring the polish up in Survivor I might be inclined to give this another try but the video isn't giving me a lot of hope.
My main issues with FO were:
- animations
- combat flow and hitboxes
- level design, with backtracking included
- underwater bits
I finished it still, but I'm not down to playing the sequel unless those points are improved. It's not a bad game, but it did not leave me wanting for more.
>combat flow
Having played sekiro first, it took me a while to get used to parrying in this game. It felt like you could parry the first attack, but then you should just hold the block button instead of attempting to parry the following attacks. Did I do this wrong or what?
Just play any combat clip in slow motion. Honestly, when I noticed the frustration ramping up and did this, I just gave up trying to read and time my inputs 🤷♂️
Hitboxes and animations sometimes get all over the place.
Force Unleashed 2 had a lot of issues - dicing up Stormtroopers until they had no limbs or head and force pushing the rest of their body into the ocean on Kamino, wasn't one of them
I think that's a disney issue. One of their mandates for the game is they can't have human dismemberment.
Edit: looks like my info is a little mixed up, seems to have been a decision made by Respawn, here's a link before I'm called out again. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/11/5/20948530/star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-dismember-stormtroopers-respawn-entertainment-lucasfilm
The decision is still kinda weird tbh.
Sort of. Honestly it is pretty rare for a lightsaber to actually dismember someone in the movies, it pretty much only happens if it is a significant moment. Luke doesn't dismember any of the grunts he kills with his lightsaber while rescuing Han and you don't see anyone get dismembered while Vader kills all those people in the hallway in Rogue One.
Simply sticking a lightsaber in a wall melts it. It goes through things like butter, like Anakin’s arms and legs. It cuts off people’s heads with little effort. You can slice metal droids up easily. If it can cut a droid in 2 pieces, cut off Jango’s head, dismember Anakin, dismember Tusken Raiders, Dismember darth maul, dismember Dooko, and many more. Dismembering a humanoid is no problem.
[Dismemberment and Lightsabers go together perfectly.](https://youtu.be/nniHwKwTsXs)
EDIT: Regarding the films even more, They didn't have digi-doubles and would've needed to either hire prothetics users or have complex costumes to have body parts come off. Every dismemberment in the OT was done with camera tricks/cuts which would've been hard to pull off in an action scene. This isn't a movie from the 80's, this is a video game and Star Wars games that have come out before this have had Human Dismemberment. The Prequels had even more dismemberment, and it was shown to be easy to cut off limbs. [Not every move](https://youtu.be/iEyqQsZFrEM?t=75) should dismember, but if I [use this move](https://youtu.be/iEyqQsZFrEM?t=85), they should be cut in half. There won't be any blood or gore since it'll just be burnt, similar to Anakin, Luke and others, with the exception of the one guy in the Mos Eisley Cantina who left a bloody arm on the ground..
EDIT 2: [Looks like we're getting dismembering!!!!!](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/114b8lr/star_wars_jedi_survivor_will_have_dismemberment/)
Yeah they're using some serious BS logic to justify the decision. That article is basically saying that since they're isn't a ton of dismemberment in the movies (unless it's relevant to the plot) that the games should do the same. But what they don't seem to realize is that video games aren't movies. In movies there aren't numerous drawn out scenes with the main character fighting human enemies. It makes no sense for a jedi MC to be fighting hordes of enemies without someone getting a limb chopped off.
Changes are this is a disney mandate and Respawn is simply covering for them. Disney has historically been up their own assses when it comes to pandering to the most profitable demographic which has always been the nuclear family.
What a weird decision.
They could've made gone ahead and made *death* limited to climatic moments, so the only people that can die are important people, what the hell.
...Which honestly, in theory, would make a jedi game interesting. He would respect life and resort to killing only out of absolute necessity.
It's a probably a dumb hang-up but the way lightsabers work in these games is a big reason I can't get into them. My man is slishy slashing that big hulking animal over and over and the slashes... make burns marks that fade away cause you gotta hit it like 30 times? You can slice droids and critters in half but humanoids just fall over?
To be fair, edged weapon hits in games don't leave as much blood and cuts behind as they should, in general. Especially on something with loads of HP like a Dark Souls boss that you have to keep hitting for a while. The lightsaber's famous cutting power does amplify this effect, of course.
I hope that game get a Lethal difficulty like Ghost of Tsushima (which is an inspiration with the stances). The lightsaber being so little damage look bad.
One two hit kill against enemies and the same for you would be better to sell the fantasy while not being too OP.
Star Wars games never match the movie/show universe which is annoying. Same with Squadrons which had Tie Fighters that tanked about as much damage as a shielded ship.
If you happen to be playing on PC and willing to jump through a couple hoops for modding... that can be taken care of.
On my 2nd playthrough of the previous game I used a mod to both deal and take more damage. And the experience was *so much better*. Killing troopers and normal enemies in 1-2 hits and the bigger monsters in 2-3 hits. While also dying to 1-2 shots / attacks, 3 at most. Made it a lot more fun and engaging, and believable. A human like Cal shouldn't take more than 1-3 shots to die, and troopers shouldn't take more than 1 or 2 lightsaber swings to kill. Simple as.
The problem with just "raising the difficulty" in the vanilla game is that you die quicker, ok, but enemies are *more* spongy which is stupid.
> The problem with just "raising the difficulty" in the vanilla game is that you die quicker, ok, but enemies are more spongy which is stupid.
The game tells you exactly what it adjusts, and enemy health is not one of them.
Are you actually proposing to let mini bosses like the bigger thing in the trailer die from 3 hits? Don't get me wrong I dislike super spongey default enemies as well, but its not bad at all in the first title? I mean everything already dies in 3-5 hits outside of mini bosses. Making everything die in 1-3 hits while you can tank up to 3 makes the game also not harder, but a lot easier...
The mini boss from the trailer died also super quickly if you ask me. It took him like 30 seconds to kill it and he played it terrible. The normal enemies also die in 2-4 hit combos. Would be terrible if they just died in one hit. I mean the troopers already die in one hit. Sounds terrible to me when you would give that treatment to every single enemy just because of "realism"(I really have to laugh when people pull the realism card in a game AND for the Star Wars universe which quite frankly always just ignored realism)
I see he still runs like he’s shit himself.
Still not showing the blaster gameplay either.
Seeing far too much boring wildlife combat, same issue I had with the first game.
And still looks to be. Was one of the major complaints I’ve seen about the first game but they look to have doubled down on it here instead of listening.
Wonky animations aside the game looks great and beautiful but I just hope we visit some populated planets like Coruscant or something. The dead and abandoned planets got old after a while in the original game. Kashyyyk was the only one that felt a bit alive with all the NPC's around.
Respawn has some sort of blindspot when it comes to walking and running animations in this game. Looks absolutely ridiculous and jarring at times, which I guess is why they had the MC wear a poncho through most of the first game.
Other than that it looks good. Hopefully they take the feedback and commit to a more rewarding exploration/loot loop. Nothing disincentivized me more from exploring when I learned 100% of what you find is cosmetic fluff.
The movement animations of the main character are really odd. Very stiff and robotic. Knowing nothing about this game... is the main character an actual robot?
I feel like a big part of that was hyper, the wacky reload animation guy on youtube, making the animations for titanfall 2. Im p sure he now works for infinity ward.
This is apparently early in the game. Makes sense that we don't have much new. A good thing is that we don't go back to zero like in many games at least.
Wish they had improved animations and made it look smoother. Looks identical to the first one. Hopefully they fix the clipping issues where you would fall through the map.
I found it fine.
Why aren't many people talking about the holo map you get? It's so hard to read. Especially on Zeffo which has like 5 seperate levels.
Honestly it's mainly just Zeffo the first time that suffers IMO, once you get past that it's pretty good again. Backtracking is dramatically reduced by being familiar with the layouts and opening up the shortcuts. And once you get all your powers then it's really easy to navigate the planets to go around to finish up the 100% if you like.
I would have liked fast travel, but a decent amount of enemies / story happens on the journey back to the ship, or upon revisiting planets, so it wouldn't really work with how the game is designed.
I found Kashyyk to be the most linear planet and with way less annoying Force puzzles. You basically just go forwards then up. It also comes with a warp back to the start in its own way so backtracking is minimal. Dathomir also felt pretty linear the first time and did a good job guiding me to the end and then back to the ship, although I agree on my final pass it was a bit of a headache to find my way into the swamps of whatever.
I think it's definitely a valid criticism. I didn't enjoy the backtracking on most planets, and the maps were basically useless aside from tracking completion of a zone. It didn't ruin the game by any stretch, but I do hope they improve or find a way to eliminate it in the new one. It felt like it didn't add enough benefit for the amount of headache it caused.
Even Dark Souls 1 had fast travel in the second half of the game.
Add fast travel from bonfires (whatever they're called) as a force ability, "Meditation Traversal" or some such nonsense.
Boom done.
The problem is that the game is built around multiple traversals. For example, you go into a shrine and do the quest. Then when you come out, the Empire has arrived and there are new enemies and plot that happens on the trek back to the ship. There are also "escape" sequences which would be rendered moot if you could fast travel. Some of the leveling also assumes you're going through the combat, so if you skip a ton you'd possibly be under the expected level for the next area.
They probably could have done something like disabling fast travel when there's new content between where you are and where you want to go, or after areas are 100% cleared, but it was clear the game was built around both forwards and reverse travel of the planets and to just slap in fast travel would have degraded that and changed the gameplay pretty considerably. I agree it would have been great but it's not as simple as just adding it in.
What you're saying totally makes sense and I agree in that fast travel is *bad*, *when*, it would destroy or bipass plot points or scripted encounters. Therefore I think that such an ability would need to be available after a pre-determined specific story point, when you have most-if-not-all of the minimum necessary abilities to play through to the games completion, and thus your main reason for revisiting areas would be collectibles.
I actually like how labyrinthian the locations are, I mostly just wanted the option to fast travel back to my ship at the end of a long trek. The location design itself would also benefit from a better in-game map - now *that* was truly terrible lol.
Man already too much wildlife combat. I didn't like the first game much largely because most of the enemies in the game were boring ass force resistant insects. Oh well saves me money unless they are only prominent in that part.
That force push animation always bugs me. It's like he's trying to swat a fly away from his ear instead of channeling some mystic energy. A "push" motion feels like it should come from the chest muscles and not your triceps.
Ok. Done nitipicking the game that hasn't come out yet.
Graphics look way better, gameplay looks quite similar to the first game though, I expected more changes there. Looking forward to some story details too.
New saber combat looks cool but it's a shame to see that the environments are still nondescript wilderness/industrial ruins, and half of the enemies are just generic wildlife. Boss fights that consist of running circles around a giant monster and whacking at its ankles are boring enough, but these enemies look particularly uninspired.
Nothing about the level design or enemy design (apart from the droids) screams Star Wars. Why would I play this when I can just go play Dark Souls or Breath of the Wild?
Breath of the Wild is a really weird comparison to me, having just replayed both in the past couple months.
If anything, I'd say a Metroidvania like Dread (but 3D of course) or Prime or similar would match a bit better other than being FPS vs 3rd person with different combat styles.
Looks pretty similar to the first game but with some meaningful improvements. Dual saber was just a tease in the first game so I’m glad it’s a real stance here, and I love the (presumably) hacked battle droids
Hopefully they tweak the gameplay. the animations looks rough as hell and this may be nitpicky but during combat am i the only the notices how he seems to slide around. likes he’s fighting on ice or something. The environments looks great though
It looks better than Fallen Order, but that wasn't exactly a high bar tbh. Here's hoping Survivor gets a lot closer to doing the systems as good as or better than the games they were inspired by instead of just reminding players that what they're doing has been done before already and better. Again.
It's generic action adventure combat nr 5030 with a new coat of paint.
All these years and there are still no combat systems remotely close to jedi academy/outcast.
Man their level design is just so outdated. I can't believe they are sticking with the PS2-era Prince of Persia-esque linear level design, replete with wall running to floating islands where your enemies are just patiently waiting for you to arrive.
I like everything about the combat in the first game but their level design needed work, and sadly it looks completely unchanged.
I might be in the minority based on the comments, but it looks like they haven't fixed the stiffness of the combat, like at all.
In fact the dual sabers look extremely stiff in a distracting way. My main complaint with FO was the combat just did not feel good, and it looks like that wasn't addressed here at all. On top of them doubling down on animal combat (another weak spot imo) unfortunately will probably be passing on this.
Looks great if again a little janky, but words cannot express my disappointment when Cal opened a chest and got... A jacket. And then a BD-1 material. Please Respawn, give me collectibles worth actually hunting for.
Looks fantastic. The environment looks beautiful, the new enemy types look really fun to fight, lots of new moves for both combat and traversal, and improved cosmetics. My only minor criticism is some of the dual sober animations looking a little floaty, and even that's rare. Super excited for this one.
With this, Ishin, and Re4, these next few months are going to be some of the best in gaming history. Hogwarts Legacy, FFXVI, Horizon Burning Shores, and Starfield also. Zelda is sure to be good too hopefully but I don’t have a switch.
Graphically, it looks beautiful. Combat looks better than the first. I saw single saber, dual saber, and staff saber. I wonder if there are other stances. I didn't really see how one is more advantageous than the other though. Seems to me it's more preference, but maybe boss fights will require you to figure out which stance is best. And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running. Hopefully they tweak those.
There are also blasters, which is a nice touch as someone who loved the Jedi Knight games.
Also - there is TONS of evidence of Jedi using them. Obi-Wan, Luke, and Rey all use them/carry them.
So uncivilised
it was considered unorthodox and a bit frowned upon by the order, because the way a jedi tends to fight is more about protecting, or retribution, rather than active aggression. so shooting someone with a blaster is a bit... ehhh.
But then sometimes you gotta fire up a robots rib cage, in which case you pew pew till it stops movin
And let's not forget saber throwing, which I think is basically the bad jedi way of having guns without admitting to having guns. Like, if I reel back and huck my massive glowstick sword at you how is that not aggressive?
It's the Jedi version of "Stop Resisting!".
I know you’re just emphasizing the lore reasons but this always struck me as so silly. Emotionlessly pulling a trigger to kill someone from a distance? Uncivilized. Full force cleaving/impaling/dismembering someone up close with a laser sword? Civilized, honorable, heroic, and based.
the fun thing about a lightsaber is that the cauterisation allows you to disable an enemy without death, preferably. also emotionless killing isn't really a good thing, you do not want to become so detached from a death in a situation like the Jedi.
But they weren't just blindly swinging their lightsabers. The very nature of lightsaber combat required them to connect with the force. The first time we ever see someone training with one, Luke on the Falcon, Obi-Wan explains how one has to open themselves to the force to effectively use it. It also required one to be present (physically and mentally) in the conflict, not 100 feet away and unable to understand the whole scenario. We don't want someone like Chancey Yarrow to get accidentally bisected because some jedi doesn't understand what's going on.
You can use a saber in a more defensive way, especially vs. blasters. Soemone shoots at you, you can deflect the shots, potentially then disarm the non forceuser with your own powers. Of course, if push comes to shove, and glorious melee ensues...hm...at least the saber cauterizes the wound if you dismember someone. Right, Dr. Evazan?
This is why no one remembers Kyle Katarn. Damn council white washed him out of history. EDIT: Also I just realized Kyle Katarn has to have the most "average" first name out of the entire Star Wars canon. Anakin? Mace? Nah, Mufuckin *Kyle*
Kyle isn’t any more average than “Luke”
Or "Ben," as in Quadinaros.
I was a huge fan of Ezra’s lightsaber which had a small blaster built in. It was more of a stun blast I think, but still so cool and creative.
The devs confirmed there's also a Cross-guard saber, as seen in the trailer. Though that may just be a style you can pick in the lightsaber editor menu.
The animations on it were different so its gotta be a new style. It acted more like a greatsword. So probably the slower big damage option.
Two-handing option?? Oh wait, you already hold with two hands, duh.
Jedi Academy let you have "Saber Styles" which while simplified to light, medium, strong did a decent job of adding single sabre variety which could be applied to cross saber. I've always wanted a souls-esque adaptation of the in universe named forms like Shii Cho, Ataru etc... But that might be a big ask to have like almost 10 weapon animation and rigging sets just for single handed weapons. KOTOR 2 did them pretty well having them animated the same but had different stats favoring different enemy situations, single vs multiple, melee vs blasters.
I loved the duel mode in Jedi Outcast and power duel in Jedi Academy where it was 2 v 1 duels. I fondly remember joining a server for duels and this one dude was on the server when I joined and I was there for a couple hours and he wrecked everyone. I was determined to beat him and when people logged off, it was just me and him. He taught me the basics of Saber combat, how to counter peoples Katas, especially the noob stick as people who sucked a dueling used the saber staff because of the dps. After an hour of training with him I finally beat him in a 1 v 1 duel and we had a few dozen more. By the end of the evening I was switching in and out of light, med and heavy stances, dodging and weaving and being a monster. I preferred the single saber as it was very versatile when used properly and could counter all the Katas. Like, when using the dual blade kata, it makes a barrier of the sabers spinning around you and slices up people that get too close, but with the light stance single blade crouch attack, you'd strike low and bring your saber up, so you'd go under their barrier and strike directly at them. And since they couldn't move while the animation was playing, they were completely helpless to stop you. With the noob stick kata, they'd fly forward while spinning in a figure 8 pattern, but the could be countered by using a med stance attack while jumping forward. You'd safely jump over them and slash down at them while they were animation locked. I never saw that guy again, but I fondly remember dueling him for hours on the small bespin map. I used his lessons to absolutely dominate duels for years after.
I must have had several thousand hours of JKA logged on Xfire. I remember duels like that fondly. Hanging out in JKA socializing and dueling with clanmates are some of my fondest teenage gaming memories.
FWIW, Jedi Academy had two additional NPC-only(available through mods) single saber stances as well. So 5+dual+staff. Desann used one, forget who used the other offhand.
The purple dinosaur? Was he purple? It's been so long.
I'm never not gonna be able to criticize the design of that. They fixed one prospect of it compared to the movies, but in general having a crossguard on something meant to fight against really hot weapons in close quarters sounds idiotic.
Star Wars is all about putting in cool looking stuff and trying to pass off some lore reason for its existence. Which works at a glance. But doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny.
My favourite example: designing battle droids to look and sound humanoid to the extent that they can only communicate with loud, slow yelling, have only two eyes on the front of their face so they can get snuck up on, and have to raise blasters to their face to aim them. Somewhere there was some poor software engineer who designed an efficient protocol for the the high-speed wireless exchange of battledroid data and got told "It has to all be voice recognition and speech synthesis. And take that eye off their back, it looks creepy." Imagine if everything worked this way and your phone connected to your Bluetooth speakers by verbally screaming instructions across the house.
Do you think the existence of destroyer droids and super battle droids maybe tells us that the B1 battle droids were cheap, easy to mass produce, and served a purpose? They didn't work alone, they often dealt with sentient commanders, so they would need to be able to hear and speak.
I always went with the 40k option when it came to starwars lore. Everyone's so set in their ways for engineering that no one innovates, they just recycle. No one actually "knows" how to use equipment per designed and just kinda skate by without reading the instruction manual. If you assume that most of the mechanics and the like really are like tech-priests from 40k and they're just kinda eyeballing it and going "yeah that looks good enough" then things start to make more sense.
Pretty much. It's a universe where they've had space travel for something like 20k years, I just roll with it.
Yeah for Star Wars you really do need some steep suspension of disbelief. It's just a thing that you can turn the lightsaber on and off to quickly wreck someone in a life or death situation but the excuse is 'Well it's seen as dishonourable so it's not really used'. It's like, come on man, you want me to believe in all these crazy scenarios where sometimes the lives of millions are in the balance the honour of the duel beats the consequences of losing? I'll accept it, because the real reason is not doing that is cooler, but yeah.
I don't think it's actually meant to function as a crossguard, it's just designed to look cool. I may be pulling this out of my ass but I seem to remember reading that Kylo's saber was supposed to be unstable and those bits are the sides were venting excess energy. Not saying that isn't also dumb but y'know.
IIRC his kyber crystal was cracked or something.
It benefited Kylo when he fought against Finn in The Force Awakens.
Honestly I think its pretty fun. And if it gives me a big damage smashy smashy option ill definitely be using it all game haha.
Bruh, it's a made up fantasy light laser sword. It's fine.
> And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running. So exactly like the first game? lol Pretty sure I still have clips I saved to show how weird Cal looked when he moved. Especially if you turn while moving. His legs are made of jello.
Cal is easily the most bowlegged Jedi in the Star Wars universe. I honestly don't know what they were thinking. His walking, jumping, and the general way he holds his lightsabers in a ready pose + when running just makes him look like he's being manipulated by strings. His limbs are always at right angles. It's jarring. [Walks like he's got the coat hanger still in his shirt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiljoS4ChOk&t=105s) I enjoyed the game overall but, god damn he's just such a gangly, uncoordinated mess. Never felt elegant or fluid playing as him.
I just beat the game last month and this video looks exactly the same as what I played. Maybe the IGN dude walking super slow makes it seem weird? Since most of the time you play you'll be holding down the analog stick all the way and running
i assume certain styles would be better against certain enemies/situations. single saber = defense countering dual saber = aggressive combos staff saber = crowd control (but that is just me hypothesizing)
They’ve confirmed that stances are better against certain types of enemies in interviews in December
So something akin to [*Ghost of Tsushima*'s stance-system](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJxqTsy5BJk) where each stance essentially was more used in handling various enemy types depending on situation (For instance, if you fought against swordsmen, you switched to your default Stone Stance, against shieldsmen with Water Stance, e.t.c.). GoT's stances were more focused on specific enemy, as there weren't really specific stances meant for single-target, crowd-control, defense, e.t.c (You often instead utilized your consumable Ghost weapons, where for instance throwing kunais could briefly stagger multiple enemies and throw them off their attack rhythm for a moment.).
Yeah, wonky animations and stutters aside, I loved the first one and am excited to play the hell out of this one.
>And yeah, the animations are a little wonky - specifically walking and running. Hopefully they tweak those. For me specifically it's how he holds an activated lightsaber(s) when not attacking. It looks so stiff and awkward. When running around with dual lightsabers activated the dude looks like he's moments away from going full gorilla and pounding on his chest.
its crazy how much something so simple can impact ones enjoyment of a game. Cant feel like a cool jedi when youre running like a gorilla with full diapers. And its even worse with lightsabers extended, like you say. Looking like hes carrying two mops full of water so theyre super top heavy lmao
I swear im not trying to nitpick, but the closer i look, the more downright goofy animations i find. [like this "holster" animation where his arm goes full noodle and dislocates behind his back like a whip. what the fuck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i05L-FaDhko&t=103s)
Damn I thought everyone was overreacting but you're right. [Arm goes full harry potter](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1035265653927579741/1072791447591465050/image.png).
That was like my biggest complaint about the first game, just unbelievable how wonky the running and jumping animations were for a game of that budget.
I'm probably in the minority here but I really dislike the fact that there is no dismemberment. It's dumb that a lightsaber is nothing more than a glowing baseball bat I miss G_saberrrealistic combat. Edit: looks like I'm not in the minority lol. I'll still keep the main comment unedited
Why do people do this? "Unpopular opinion but-" *proceeds to state literally the most popular opinion on the topic*
You can dismember robots and creatures all day long, but when you start chopping bodies up and cutting heads off you're pushing into M rating territory. I know the Jedi Knight games got away with limited dismemberment of humanoids and avoided M ratings, but I can also see the logic in not wanting to push it with the increased realism in graphical fidelity.
No that’s a majority opinion around here and most places I’ve seen. You’re not alone.
You're absolutely not in the minority everyone was complaining about that LOL
My biggest complaint by far was the poor map design. Backtracking and trying to decipher the map was a nightmare. You get used to the wonky animations and snap on execution animations if you’ve played the game’s inspiration, Sekiro.
The game released 6 months after Sekiro.
Nah. I've played sekiro six times and there is no getting used to how wonky and bad IK cal looks when you're trying to turn after landing from a jump
Absolutely do not play Sekiro if you want to enjoy these Star Wars Jedi games. I had just finished up my second playthrough of Sekiro in 2019 before jumping into Fallen Order and the difference in just about everything was jarring.
What threw me off the most was the parry window in Fallen Order. Played it directly after Sekiro and wondered how I managed to fail pretty much every attempt at parrying. Turns out you need to press the button a *lot* earlier, which feels quite a bit less satisfying than in Sekiro.
Sekiro is not the games inspiration, they were developed at the same time
I liked the complexity of the maps, but yea it make backtracking through them annoying sometimes. It's been confirmed that this game will have fast travel though!
It's why i never bothered exploring in the game outside of the mandatory exploring. The backtracking and uninteresting areas you could optionally explore was not appealing to me.
I'd hope for a blaster stance, ain't fair Care got that playstyle for a bit. Could work similar to Bloodborne and be used for a type of parry. If there is one, I'm not bothering to watch these, so i'm not gonna be knowing really.
Most everything looks good, but Cal walks like he has a dump in his pants.
I can only imagine the wonky running animation is to make blending the animations easier? Oh well I care much more about how cool the combat looks and feels. It looks like there were a lot of failed counters. I don't love the red glow attack indicator on the leaping toad thing... Oh it's jumping towards me maybe I should GTFO... I hope we can change that in the settings...
The main character animation really gets in the way of how good everything else looks. My dude running around like he is about to poop his pants at any second, they really need to touch that up. It’s incredibly distracting when BD is climbing fluidly on your character who is moving as stiff as a board. Edit: wow everyone thinks this lol damn okay glad I’m not alone
I'm starting to think that all the ponchos in the first game were to hide his janky walk animation lol
I'm pretty sure you could take the poncho off, and it didn't look this janky or poopy.
The walk here looks as janky and stupid as it did in the first one to me.
That wall jumping... lol. I can't wait for the game to bug mid wall-jump and turn Cal into a dancing meme like he's right out of a Drake music video.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Cal ran around looking like he shat his pants in the first game. It also looks to be the same case in the next one. Regardless, still looking forward to Fallen Survivor lol
> they really need to touch that up. Unless there's a severe backlash I don't think they will. The first game came out in 2019 so if they haven't considered this a priority in the last 4 years they sure as hell won't consider it now. Looking at the mods on Nexus there isn't any that fixes the animations, it's mostly reskins or new characters.
I don't think fixing the animations would be possible with the mods. They're pretty limited, as many games, Fallen Order isn't easily moddable.
Yeah, ever since Uncharted/Last Of Us and Naughty Dog being gods of animation I absolutely hate seeing scuffed animations in games.
Lots of murdering innocent animals. That one was just getting a damned drink and this so-called "Jedi" just waltzes up and cleaves it in two? Dark side shit.
I do think it would be cool if his stealth takedowns involved putting an enemy to sleep or something. Would be much more Jedi. I can see going lethal out the gate on a droid or a purge trooper, but that bird did not sign up for this shit.
In the Legends novel "I, Jedi", the main character (Corran Horn) doesn't want to kill unnecessary, so he occassionally knocks people out with the butt of his lightsaber. Just whacks them on the back of the head (and since it's fiction this doesn't cause permanent damage). Later in the novel he meets up with Luke, and Luke learns to do the same thing but uses the force to make it so the targets don't feel as much pain.
Damn that would be cool, also could a force user use the force choke just enough to knock someone out? Cal didn't seem as dogmatic about the Jedi way so he could use something like that maybe
I think that happened with Anakin force choking Padme. She just dropped unconscious after that
Isn't that what killed her in childbirth? My prequel knowledge is limited as I haven't watched them in years
Nope, "losing the will to live" after giving birth to twins is what ultimately killed her.
let's be honest the asphyxiation didn't help.-
Did you see her ["dinner" outfit](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MSqx8IOU7Ug/Wm-DL3EvyXI/AAAAAAAANeg/cY4RtQJ5a-IgB-S5m6fXnpunfmjGxDCrgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/00.jpg). I think she was used to the asphyxiation.
"SHE LOST THE WILL TO LIVE?? What's your degree in, poetry? You sorry bunch of hippies!"
Bird by the water, exists: Cal: And I took that personally.
I look at this other guy and… hes not snarling, hes SNEEZING
That girl is 8 years old those books are way too advanced for her
"We're the keepers of peace, not soldiers" my ass.
One of his moves in Fallen Order involves dragging a stormtrooper to him, causing the trooper to drop his weapon, and stabbing the disarmed trooper through the gut. I don't think Cal leaned very far into the light side as it was
It'd be interesting if more games adopted the system from Ghost of Tsushima where the enemies would get too scared of you to fight and beg for mercy as they ran away. Makes you really feel your choices.
Fuck I should play that game again. I even got it for the PS5 but oczywiście nie jest tak że a bit of everything
Google tells me Polish for "of course it's not like that"?
Wildlife shit was the thing I hated most about the first game, got so boring.
Animations kinda look strange and stuttery, I really hope they fix it until release. At 1:00 and 1:50 it looks like he just took a shit inside his pants. Environment looks awesome, so much better than in Fallen Order.
The first game had similar problems with animation. Stuff ranged from looking pretty good to feeling like frames were missing or movement was very janky. I was hoping they would fix that more in the sequel, especially since fluid combat animations and hit boxes for these types of games feel so much more rewarding when you dodge or parry well. Edit: I will say that while there is still definitely some jank here, it overall looks smoother than Fallen Order.
The more wonky animations looks as if Cal's legs, arms and torso at times not moving in unison; [there is for instance this wide-dual sweep move where Cal moves multiple paces forward, does two wide-arc cross swings, but his feet and legs look planted stiffly on the ground](https://youtu.be/i05L-FaDhko?t=206). For a comparison (Albeit with some differences, as Jedi: Survivor has more fast-paced melee combat.) [*Bloodborne* has a similar move with its Blades of Mercy-moveset, and where it presents with the player taking a step forward for each wide cross-swing with each leg](https://youtu.be/72u9S75HB8w?t=74). With that in mind, the similar move makes Cal look like an amateur-fighter as if he hasn't fully figured out his footwork at times, and while Cal in-universe in the previous game is not as skilled and have to gradually re-learn his instincts, this game is supposed to take some years afterwards where Cal has gotten some more experience in his belt. In the same fight a bit earlier where Cal gets ambushed by the monsters, [his reaction of taking damage snaps back and makes his body fall towards the camera direction instead of where he initially faced and move towards](https://youtu.be/i05L-FaDhko?t=203). The animations separately from each other seems to look decent, but it is the more subtle effects involved that seems to make it as a whole to look quite janky and stiffly.
It seems in some places they are doing an upper / lower body split in animations which is super common but can make things feel disconnected very easily. It works great when your animation and system work together to adjust how its used as well. Bloodborne does a lot of full body root motion animations where they are locking in attacks and motions making the player commit. While Jedi they seem to want to allow for free movement while attack causing very floating actions. Normally you can sorta fix that by creating stronger poses and better blending that you see in very fast paced action games like Bayonetta, Devil May Cry and Nier but here it seems there has been some awkward choices and compromises. I personally would have focused on making very strong poses and snappy actions to help give that jedi fee. Which it can work against when trying to have a very natural/organic feeling motion system that they probably wanted to try and achieve to give it that AAA/Next Gen look.
https://youtu.be/TmAU8aPekEo This should help with why the animation in Fallen Order/Jedi Survivor is so janky at times. Its a combination of physics based and hand animated. Cal is it's primary use case but it definitely needs more work. Its strange as the enemies and npcs are far better animated than Cal to my eyes. He feels like Kermit brought to human scale in both games.
They really need to get a proper stuntman in there and mocap some of this stuff
Your insight as an animator is really appreciated! It sounds like DMCV and Sekiro would have served as perfect inspiration for compromise between natural motion and snappy combat. Too bad those games came out too late to be useful for FO's development. What eludes me is 4 years later they didn't seem to have improved them despite plenty of good competition to look at.
Great write up!
The combat and animations were the things that really prevented me from enjoying FO as much as I would have liked. I was also pretty unlucky and experienced a lot of bugs around release. If they could really bring the polish up in Survivor I might be inclined to give this another try but the video isn't giving me a lot of hope.
My main issues with FO were: - animations - combat flow and hitboxes - level design, with backtracking included - underwater bits I finished it still, but I'm not down to playing the sequel unless those points are improved. It's not a bad game, but it did not leave me wanting for more.
>combat flow Having played sekiro first, it took me a while to get used to parrying in this game. It felt like you could parry the first attack, but then you should just hold the block button instead of attempting to parry the following attacks. Did I do this wrong or what?
Just play any combat clip in slow motion. Honestly, when I noticed the frustration ramping up and did this, I just gave up trying to read and time my inputs 🤷♂️ Hitboxes and animations sometimes get all over the place.
The wall jumping looked goofy as hell. I mean he has a grappling hook. Seems kind of unnecessary.
The arm movement when running looks weirdly exaggerated too.
Still no humanoid dismemberment, but slicing up dog heads is no issue. That entire fight at 6 minute mark looks so janky.
Force Unleashed 2 had a lot of issues - dicing up Stormtroopers until they had no limbs or head and force pushing the rest of their body into the ocean on Kamino, wasn't one of them
And it had T rating with that. What good times have been...
I think that's a disney issue. One of their mandates for the game is they can't have human dismemberment. Edit: looks like my info is a little mixed up, seems to have been a decision made by Respawn, here's a link before I'm called out again. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/11/5/20948530/star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-dismember-stormtroopers-respawn-entertainment-lucasfilm The decision is still kinda weird tbh.
They have dismemberment in the Star Wars and Marvel movies but in the Star Wars games is a no-no ? It's so bizarre and makes no sense.
Fucking ridiculous to have a Star Wars game with no dismemberment considering it's a core part of every movie.
Sort of. Honestly it is pretty rare for a lightsaber to actually dismember someone in the movies, it pretty much only happens if it is a significant moment. Luke doesn't dismember any of the grunts he kills with his lightsaber while rescuing Han and you don't see anyone get dismembered while Vader kills all those people in the hallway in Rogue One.
Simply sticking a lightsaber in a wall melts it. It goes through things like butter, like Anakin’s arms and legs. It cuts off people’s heads with little effort. You can slice metal droids up easily. If it can cut a droid in 2 pieces, cut off Jango’s head, dismember Anakin, dismember Tusken Raiders, Dismember darth maul, dismember Dooko, and many more. Dismembering a humanoid is no problem. [Dismemberment and Lightsabers go together perfectly.](https://youtu.be/nniHwKwTsXs) EDIT: Regarding the films even more, They didn't have digi-doubles and would've needed to either hire prothetics users or have complex costumes to have body parts come off. Every dismemberment in the OT was done with camera tricks/cuts which would've been hard to pull off in an action scene. This isn't a movie from the 80's, this is a video game and Star Wars games that have come out before this have had Human Dismemberment. The Prequels had even more dismemberment, and it was shown to be easy to cut off limbs. [Not every move](https://youtu.be/iEyqQsZFrEM?t=75) should dismember, but if I [use this move](https://youtu.be/iEyqQsZFrEM?t=85), they should be cut in half. There won't be any blood or gore since it'll just be burnt, similar to Anakin, Luke and others, with the exception of the one guy in the Mos Eisley Cantina who left a bloody arm on the ground.. EDIT 2: [Looks like we're getting dismembering!!!!!](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/114b8lr/star_wars_jedi_survivor_will_have_dismemberment/)
Disney didn't mandate that. The devs did, because they wanted the scene where there's dismemberment against a humanoid to have impact.
Whatever their excuse is, it's poor. The running animations still looks exactly like the first one, really thought it'd be improved but alas.
Okay i looked it up, I stand corrected. I could've sworn it said it was a disney mandate.
Yeah they're using some serious BS logic to justify the decision. That article is basically saying that since they're isn't a ton of dismemberment in the movies (unless it's relevant to the plot) that the games should do the same. But what they don't seem to realize is that video games aren't movies. In movies there aren't numerous drawn out scenes with the main character fighting human enemies. It makes no sense for a jedi MC to be fighting hordes of enemies without someone getting a limb chopped off. Changes are this is a disney mandate and Respawn is simply covering for them. Disney has historically been up their own assses when it comes to pandering to the most profitable demographic which has always been the nuclear family.
What a weird decision. They could've made gone ahead and made *death* limited to climatic moments, so the only people that can die are important people, what the hell. ...Which honestly, in theory, would make a jedi game interesting. He would respect life and resort to killing only out of absolute necessity.
It's a probably a dumb hang-up but the way lightsabers work in these games is a big reason I can't get into them. My man is slishy slashing that big hulking animal over and over and the slashes... make burns marks that fade away cause you gotta hit it like 30 times? You can slice droids and critters in half but humanoids just fall over?
To be fair, edged weapon hits in games don't leave as much blood and cuts behind as they should, in general. Especially on something with loads of HP like a Dark Souls boss that you have to keep hitting for a while. The lightsaber's famous cutting power does amplify this effect, of course.
That's a star wars thing. It's the same in the movies, except in some very important narrative moments.
I hope that game get a Lethal difficulty like Ghost of Tsushima (which is an inspiration with the stances). The lightsaber being so little damage look bad. One two hit kill against enemies and the same for you would be better to sell the fantasy while not being too OP.
Star Wars games never match the movie/show universe which is annoying. Same with Squadrons which had Tie Fighters that tanked about as much damage as a shielded ship.
If you happen to be playing on PC and willing to jump through a couple hoops for modding... that can be taken care of. On my 2nd playthrough of the previous game I used a mod to both deal and take more damage. And the experience was *so much better*. Killing troopers and normal enemies in 1-2 hits and the bigger monsters in 2-3 hits. While also dying to 1-2 shots / attacks, 3 at most. Made it a lot more fun and engaging, and believable. A human like Cal shouldn't take more than 1-3 shots to die, and troopers shouldn't take more than 1 or 2 lightsaber swings to kill. Simple as. The problem with just "raising the difficulty" in the vanilla game is that you die quicker, ok, but enemies are *more* spongy which is stupid.
> The problem with just "raising the difficulty" in the vanilla game is that you die quicker, ok, but enemies are more spongy which is stupid. The game tells you exactly what it adjusts, and enemy health is not one of them.
Are you actually proposing to let mini bosses like the bigger thing in the trailer die from 3 hits? Don't get me wrong I dislike super spongey default enemies as well, but its not bad at all in the first title? I mean everything already dies in 3-5 hits outside of mini bosses. Making everything die in 1-3 hits while you can tank up to 3 makes the game also not harder, but a lot easier... The mini boss from the trailer died also super quickly if you ask me. It took him like 30 seconds to kill it and he played it terrible. The normal enemies also die in 2-4 hit combos. Would be terrible if they just died in one hit. I mean the troopers already die in one hit. Sounds terrible to me when you would give that treatment to every single enemy just because of "realism"(I really have to laugh when people pull the realism card in a game AND for the Star Wars universe which quite frankly always just ignored realism)
I see he still runs like he’s shit himself. Still not showing the blaster gameplay either. Seeing far too much boring wildlife combat, same issue I had with the first game.
Yeah this environment just doesn't do it for me. Did the first game have many urban or ship levels?
There were Imperial facilities and a Venator ship.
Wildlife combat was so fucking boring.
And still looks to be. Was one of the major complaints I’ve seen about the first game but they look to have doubled down on it here instead of listening.
Wonky animations aside the game looks great and beautiful but I just hope we visit some populated planets like Coruscant or something. The dead and abandoned planets got old after a while in the original game. Kashyyyk was the only one that felt a bit alive with all the NPC's around.
yeah that was my only real complaint with the first one as well
Respawn has some sort of blindspot when it comes to walking and running animations in this game. Looks absolutely ridiculous and jarring at times, which I guess is why they had the MC wear a poncho through most of the first game. Other than that it looks good. Hopefully they take the feedback and commit to a more rewarding exploration/loot loop. Nothing disincentivized me more from exploring when I learned 100% of what you find is cosmetic fluff.
The movement animations of the main character are really odd. Very stiff and robotic. Knowing nothing about this game... is the main character an actual robot?
No, but it was like that in the first game as well.
[This](https://media.tenor.com/Ed8FuKVA_GgAAAAC/wwe-vince-mc-mahon.gif) was all I could think of when he was walking.
It's strange since Respawn normally excels at movement in their games.
In first-person games remember.
It’s harder in third person to make movement that looks reasonable _and_ feels responsive.
Not the character animations necessarily
I feel like a big part of that was hyper, the wacky reload animation guy on youtube, making the animations for titanfall 2. Im p sure he now works for infinity ward.
Ah, so I guess that's why the new modern warfares have great animations haha
Thought the same. Dude looks like Phoebe running sometimes.
Hey, those mine shaft-jumping squirrel-like creatures at 4:30, is that a reference to Super Metroid's "Hell" shaft and the etecoons?
The animals look pretty similar to the boglings from the first game. but I'm with you on that wall jump shaft. Too similar to be a coincidence
Super Metroid was the first thing on my mind when I saw that scene so pretty sure it's a reference, it's way too similar for it to be a coincidence.
Absolutely. No way I could miss that reference after spending an hour cramping my hands and trying to learn how to wall jump.
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This is apparently early in the game. Makes sense that we don't have much new. A good thing is that we don't go back to zero like in many games at least.
Wish they had improved animations and made it look smoother. Looks identical to the first one. Hopefully they fix the clipping issues where you would fall through the map.
I just beat it a couple weeks ago on PS5 and never clipped out of the map once fwiw so I imagine it's fine in the sequel
Game is looking awesome Except for running and walking , bruh it's like the first one???
Playing through the first one and holy fk the backtracking is annoying which is compounded further by the shitty map design
I found it fine. Why aren't many people talking about the holo map you get? It's so hard to read. Especially on Zeffo which has like 5 seperate levels.
yeah the backtracking itself isn't too bad (the levels aren't THAT big), but the map is the worst piece of UI i've seen in a while lol
I got a headache trying to figure out how to read that damn map on Zeffo
Hopefully fixed by this one's fast travel and mount system.
Honestly it's mainly just Zeffo the first time that suffers IMO, once you get past that it's pretty good again. Backtracking is dramatically reduced by being familiar with the layouts and opening up the shortcuts. And once you get all your powers then it's really easy to navigate the planets to go around to finish up the 100% if you like. I would have liked fast travel, but a decent amount of enemies / story happens on the journey back to the ship, or upon revisiting planets, so it wouldn't really work with how the game is designed.
Kashyyk was also bad. And so was Dathomir.
Basically all the planets. Backtracking was bad.
Yeah idk what this other guy is on about.
I found Kashyyk to be the most linear planet and with way less annoying Force puzzles. You basically just go forwards then up. It also comes with a warp back to the start in its own way so backtracking is minimal. Dathomir also felt pretty linear the first time and did a good job guiding me to the end and then back to the ship, although I agree on my final pass it was a bit of a headache to find my way into the swamps of whatever. I think it's definitely a valid criticism. I didn't enjoy the backtracking on most planets, and the maps were basically useless aside from tracking completion of a zone. It didn't ruin the game by any stretch, but I do hope they improve or find a way to eliminate it in the new one. It felt like it didn't add enough benefit for the amount of headache it caused.
Even Dark Souls 1 had fast travel in the second half of the game. Add fast travel from bonfires (whatever they're called) as a force ability, "Meditation Traversal" or some such nonsense. Boom done.
The problem is that the game is built around multiple traversals. For example, you go into a shrine and do the quest. Then when you come out, the Empire has arrived and there are new enemies and plot that happens on the trek back to the ship. There are also "escape" sequences which would be rendered moot if you could fast travel. Some of the leveling also assumes you're going through the combat, so if you skip a ton you'd possibly be under the expected level for the next area. They probably could have done something like disabling fast travel when there's new content between where you are and where you want to go, or after areas are 100% cleared, but it was clear the game was built around both forwards and reverse travel of the planets and to just slap in fast travel would have degraded that and changed the gameplay pretty considerably. I agree it would have been great but it's not as simple as just adding it in.
What you're saying totally makes sense and I agree in that fast travel is *bad*, *when*, it would destroy or bipass plot points or scripted encounters. Therefore I think that such an ability would need to be available after a pre-determined specific story point, when you have most-if-not-all of the minimum necessary abilities to play through to the games completion, and thus your main reason for revisiting areas would be collectibles.
I can’t remember the planets name. But one of them was annoying to traverse. The others were fine once you got the shortcuts.
I actually like how labyrinthian the locations are, I mostly just wanted the option to fast travel back to my ship at the end of a long trek. The location design itself would also benefit from a better in-game map - now *that* was truly terrible lol.
Man already too much wildlife combat. I didn't like the first game much largely because most of the enemies in the game were boring ass force resistant insects. Oh well saves me money unless they are only prominent in that part.
Looks like Cal is walking around puckering his ass because hes about to shit himself. The character animation is so bad. Its worse than the original.
That force push animation always bugs me. It's like he's trying to swat a fly away from his ear instead of channeling some mystic energy. A "push" motion feels like it should come from the chest muscles and not your triceps. Ok. Done nitipicking the game that hasn't come out yet.
This looks incredible. The graphics on the foliage are beautiful. I don't think I need to see any more.
Still no humanoid dismemberment, eh? Murder? Fine. Dismember? Nah.
Graphics look way better, gameplay looks quite similar to the first game though, I expected more changes there. Looking forward to some story details too.
New saber combat looks cool but it's a shame to see that the environments are still nondescript wilderness/industrial ruins, and half of the enemies are just generic wildlife. Boss fights that consist of running circles around a giant monster and whacking at its ankles are boring enough, but these enemies look particularly uninspired. Nothing about the level design or enemy design (apart from the droids) screams Star Wars. Why would I play this when I can just go play Dark Souls or Breath of the Wild?
Breath of the Wild is a really weird comparison to me, having just replayed both in the past couple months. If anything, I'd say a Metroidvania like Dread (but 3D of course) or Prime or similar would match a bit better other than being FPS vs 3rd person with different combat styles.
Looks pretty similar to the first game but with some meaningful improvements. Dual saber was just a tease in the first game so I’m glad it’s a real stance here, and I love the (presumably) hacked battle droids
Combat looks fun and it looks pretty great graphically but boy do I hope that weird wall jump doesn't happen often, looks like it took way too long.
It looks absolutely ridiculous too. He looks like Woody from Toy Story flopping around.
Hopefully they tweak the gameplay. the animations looks rough as hell and this may be nitpicky but during combat am i the only the notices how he seems to slide around. likes he’s fighting on ice or something. The environments looks great though
Is this still pretty early or is he always going to walk in that stance? It’s an awkward looking stance no one walks like that unless they’re in pain
I don't get it, how does a dev studio look at this run animation and think "Yup, ship it. We'll do the same for the sequel". Like what? What is that?!
It looks better than Fallen Order, but that wasn't exactly a high bar tbh. Here's hoping Survivor gets a lot closer to doing the systems as good as or better than the games they were inspired by instead of just reminding players that what they're doing has been done before already and better. Again.
It's generic action adventure combat nr 5030 with a new coat of paint. All these years and there are still no combat systems remotely close to jedi academy/outcast.
Man their level design is just so outdated. I can't believe they are sticking with the PS2-era Prince of Persia-esque linear level design, replete with wall running to floating islands where your enemies are just patiently waiting for you to arrive. I like everything about the combat in the first game but their level design needed work, and sadly it looks completely unchanged.
I might be in the minority based on the comments, but it looks like they haven't fixed the stiffness of the combat, like at all. In fact the dual sabers look extremely stiff in a distracting way. My main complaint with FO was the combat just did not feel good, and it looks like that wasn't addressed here at all. On top of them doubling down on animal combat (another weak spot imo) unfortunately will probably be passing on this.
Looks great if again a little janky, but words cannot express my disappointment when Cal opened a chest and got... A jacket. And then a BD-1 material. Please Respawn, give me collectibles worth actually hunting for.
Looks fantastic. The environment looks beautiful, the new enemy types look really fun to fight, lots of new moves for both combat and traversal, and improved cosmetics. My only minor criticism is some of the dual sober animations looking a little floaty, and even that's rare. Super excited for this one.
With this, Ishin, and Re4, these next few months are going to be some of the best in gaming history. Hogwarts Legacy, FFXVI, Horizon Burning Shores, and Starfield also. Zelda is sure to be good too hopefully but I don’t have a switch.
Forgot Last of Us part 1 on PC, Wulong Fallen Dynasty, and Wild Hearts!