Respawn Entertainment is working on providing us with a more immersive, engaging, and impressive follow-up to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. When April rolls around, we’ll have a more powerful Jedi to play with as Cal Kestis has grown up and gotten far more adept at surviving the Empire.
It shouldn’t be a surprise when I say that the lightsaber is iconic and continues to be one of the most recognizable weapons in pop culture. Few games have ever really nailed the feel of the Jedi power fantasy, but it looks like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is taking the fantasy up to ten.
Per IGN, we now know how work has gone into making lightsaber battles realistic. The video linked above focuses on the combat stances Cal Kestis will use to deal with the Empire. From the start, Cal will use Single-Blade, Double-Bladed, and Dual-Blade combat stances, which now seem to be far more nuanced when compared to their inclusion in Fallen Order.
A lot of discussion across the internet is something shown in the video linked above, which I’m finding to be quite surprising.
What stands out about the video is something rarely seen in the franchise — decapitation and dismemberment will be something Stormtroopers will now be left dealing with when facing off against a Jedi.
The two new stances being introduced in Jedi: Survivor will be the Cross Guard, utilizing a hilted lightsaber similar to Kylo Ren’s, and Blaster Stance, a fighting style using both a lightsaber and blaster.
Cross Guard is described as high-risk because it deals the most damage but is also the slowest and has the least amount of range.
“We wanted the player to feel really powerful, but that there’s also a big risk, probably even more so than Twin, I would say. You need to understand spacing, because with that stance, we don’t artificially push you towards an enemy. It’s kind of like a fighting game stance a little bit,” says Jason de Heras the senior design director at Respawn.
Blaster Stance is something the team wanted to include to give players the choice to use range attacks and because it looked cool to the teams at Respawn. “We thought it would be something that reflects the journey that Cal’s going through, to do something that’s unconventional, something that’s usually frowned upon for a Jedi and kind of putting it in this circumstance where he’s doing whatever it takes in the situation. That’s something that I think through conversations, we were able to really make that work in regards to combat,” says Stig Asmussen.
Every stance will come with its own skill tree, with sets of upgradeable skills to further develop Cal Kestis. This is in addition to the Force skill tree and survival skills that increase health, Force metere, and more.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launches on April 28, 2023.
