Star Wars Jedi: Faller Order is still a few months away from its official release, but already we’re beginning to see how this next game from one of the world’s biggest franchises as designed Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts is shaping up. Starting with a cinematic trailer just a few months ago, to a very big showing at this year’s EA Play with actual gameplay footage, the game has been viewed and dissected exhaustingly by both its critics and fanbase.
While we now have an idea of how the game will play thanks to the gameplay footage, there are some finer things, especially ingrained deep within combat, that a lot of people are still wondering about. For one thing, I noticed something with how the combat looked very similar to a game I’ve also played this year, and my suspicions were proven correct after an interview with Star Wars Jedi: Faller Order’s lead combat designer came out.
As first reported on by WCCFTech, an exclusive interview with Jason de Heras posted in EDGE magazine stated that the combat in Star Wars Jedi: Faller Order is ‘very similar’ to FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Here is the quote:
“I thought it was pretty badass, and a little comforting to know that you could make this type of game without a stamina bar. They let you attack, they let you roll, they do all this for free – and then the AI will tell you if you’re doing the correct thing,” de Heras said. “It just confirmed to us that you don’t have to limit everything the player does; let them have a little more agency, and then let the AI give them a slap on the wrist or a punch in the face. It was a positive thing for us to know there was a game that was similar to ours. Very similar.”
I noticed this similarity very early on in the released gameplay footage, but I didn’t actually think that Respawn went so far as to ingrain the lack of a stamina bar into it as well. What remains to be seen, however, is how it will be implemented across the entire game – will it be challenging like Sekiro? Or will it make you look and feel cool, all without the additional difficulty or challenge? I’m of the opinion that Respawn would do well to meet these both in the middle and provide a satisfying combat experience without bordering on sadistic levels of difficulty, but not mindlessly easy enough to be boring altogether.
In any case, this just made me more interested in Star Wars Jedi: Faller Order, and we’ll see how the game lives up to the already building hype people have towards it.
Star Wars Jedi: Faller Order will be released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on November 15, 2019.
