Quick! Make it a looter shooter!
I didn’t know I wanted this game, but now I do.
Even in the days before The Last Jedi finally made me into a Star Wars fan, one thing I really appreciated about the series is Lucas’ propensity to make the viewer uncomfortable by putting the characters over bottomless pits. Invoking that fear of falling that’s kind of primal, it’s just a great technique to use when you’re designing this kind of science fantasy mosaic. And it just adds so much to that sense of place, and sense of grand scale that the Star Wars universe has as a result.
And the reason I bring that up now is that I played for another hour last night, and I was navigating so much around bottomless pits that I was just amazed at how well this game captures that Star Wars spirit of scale and place and grandeur by the places they have designed.
I do remember getting serious vertigo playing the original Dark Forces.
This was a strange shift for me as well - weeks before the launch I ignored it mostly, though I appreciated the art/visual design whenever I saw it played. Then it got great reviews and I was really looking at it a bit closer and got more excited about it, and held off buying it at launch to get Pokemon to play with other IRL folks.
But then I started watching The Mandalorian and the urge to play this has only grown. I’m picking it up Friday when I get paid, and I’m really excited about it at this point.
Pretty sure I’ve hit the endgame, or at least I can see it in the distance, the conflict has been set up. I’m impressed with where they’re taking things, curious to see where it ends up. I’ll just say it carries a bit more ambiguity than I’m used to seeing in Star Wars, at least as far as jedi go.
Jedi Knight also did a great job with the vertigo-inducing landscapes and sense of scale. Something that was strangely missing from the sequel Jedi Outcast. (I never played Jedi Academy).
The games are kind of blending together for me - which one had you start in kind of fuel system, where you followed the lines up to a ship, and at the end you take a massive outdoor elevator up to a spaceship? I remember that one giving me the willies.
That was Jedi Knight. I remember a Tie Fighter flew by when I was up that elevator, and it made me look down toward where I’d come up from and I felt dizzy with vertigo.
And there’s a fight in Fallen Order where you talk with your teammates once it’s over (I’m avoiding spoilers here) and Cal goes “Good thing I’m not afraid of heights!”. Yeah. Lucky you.
By the way, I had to patch the game through Origin yesterday. And then after the patch, the game took much much longer to load the main menu. I’d say maybe something over 5 minutes instead of the usual minute or so. But then when I launched the actual game, it took me less than a minute to load my saved game instead of it taking 2-3 minutes like usual. So a big improvement in load times. Plus the game runs a lot smoother for me too. Less slow downs, less times where the game gets to a low frame rate.
So kudos on the Patch EA. That was a great patch for my system.
Oh yeah, and the main menu loads much faster too now, so that really long load was just a one time thing that the game did in order to make loading faster from now on.
Nothing should take five freaking minutes to load. WTF.
Again, it was a one time optimization pass I think. Because now the load times are much shorter than they used to be.
All right, I am done! Pretty good time, I am certainly glad I picked it up. I was interested to see that it carried through with the theme I mentioned earlier, though it occurs to me that I should have used the word ‘ambivalent’ rather than ‘ambiguous’, but at least I got the first four letters right. All the cool powers you get through the game kept me interested, and I did continue to enjoy its blend of puzzles and fighting. I also don’t regret bumping the difficulty down one bit. I’m hopeful for a sequel!
Been busy with family, but the short bursts of play I got in the last couple of days meant that I got to the point in the story where a whole lot of abilities got unlocked for me, and one of the major buttons on the control that previously did nothing can now be used.
I’m really glad they folded these controls in slowly over the course of the campaign. Using all these abilities and buttons from the get-go would have been much tougher.
But as a consequence of how they did it, I had every ability on my skill tree unlocked until they just unlocked the rest of the tree. I even got things that I normally wouldn’t have gotten because I had nowhere else to spend the points, but now that the big tree is all unlocked, there’s so many useful abilities I can’t access because they require 3 skill points each.
I never mastered skills which required more than X or held Y. Anything with a pause in it might as well not exist.
I saw this coming, with all the empty slots on the board, so I had 4 skill points saved up when it happened, which was a relief. There were some skills I just didn’t think I’d get a lot of mileage out of, so I’m glad to have saved several points for what I assume is the same part as you (when you unlock Force Push).
Sorry, I know this is off-topic and from a few weeks ago, but I’ve only just caught up with the thread. A quick PSA: have a look at what your local library offers in terms of digital services. Obviously it will vary by country / state / county, but I recently found out my local library system gives you access to a Magzter-type app, through which you can read Edge, Retro Gamer, PC Gamer and so on for free. (Also, The Guardian, Washington Post, The Economist, The Week, Viz etc etc.)
Anyway, the game: only just started, but loving it so far, unashamedly playing on easy as I always find the combat in games the least interesting part.
I’m having a hard time in this game with dodging or parrying attacks. I keep thinking my timing is off, but I don’t usually have any problems with this sort of thing in other games (e.g. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or The Surge). The telegraphing is sometimes not very obvious and when it is, it seems like I’m always late dodging or parrying (e.g. the spiders with their heavy attack – which remind me of Victor Vran where they did the same, yet never a problem to dodge there).
For example, I always manage to parry mook blaster bolts without any difficulty, but in boss battles there’s sometimes such a short window between a boss telegraphing an attack and executing it, with controls seeming sluggish to respond.
Could just be me of course, but I’ve switched permanently to the easiest setting as a result. Still having loads of fun with the game, too.
25 hours and done. The boss battles are low points for me, as in every videogame ever. It’s like Simon Says with extra beatings.
It’s a very enjoyable TombSouls otherwise, though I do wonder if that’s what Star Wars is looking for. It’s a little bit like Star Wars pinball or Star Wars lunch boxes - successful theming, but is it the interplanetary adventure Star Wars needs? Looking forward to the open world RPG :)
Edit: and would it breach some profound Souls-like philosophy to have respawns generate similar but not identical enemies and enemy placement? If I have to reattempt something 8 times, it might be nice for it not to be the same exact thing 8 times over.