Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Respawn Entertainment's first entry into a galaxy far, far away won critical acclaim when it launched in November, but Lucasfilm's expectations for the action title were initially very different, according to game director Stig Asmussen.
Asmussen and many of the team members assembled at Respawn for Fallen Order had backgrounds in creating melee-focused action titles, with the director playing a key role in the creation of the original God of War trilogy. The shift toward the final direction the game took -- a Metroidvania-inspired, third person title with an emphasis on lightsaber battles -- was a gradual one, but the team managed to convince Lucasfilm that they knew what they were doing.
"'We want to make a game with Jedi and lightsabers and Force powers.’ and I could feel that the room kind of gasped for a moment. That’s when I realized; Jedi are really big… I mean, of course they are a big deal… but it’s a really big deal. It’s like the Holy Grail here," Asmussen said in a longform inerview with IGN. "There was a little bit of people eye-balling each other and somebody, I don’t remember who, on the Lucasfilm side said, ‘What about making a game with blasters? Something more like a shooter?’ ”
Respawn's previous experience in creating high-quality shooters (including Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends) meant that Lucasfilm's initial expectations for a blaster-focused FPS from them made a certain degree of sense, perhaps in the vein of previous cult favorites in the Star Wars Legends collection like Dark Forces or the first-person sequences in Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight. The allure of putting players in the shoes of a character with a strong relationship to the Force proved too strong for the developer to resist, however.
"They didn’t mention any games in particular and I said, ‘You know, part of my background is melee and the team that we built is melee-action…’ I think you wouldn’t be really happy with the results of what we’d make for that, because I’m not super comfortable with doing that," Asmussen continued. "And I said, ‘but, you know… lightsabers.’"
The team's passion for making a strong action game in a galaxy far, far away proved integral to Jedi: Fallen Order's success. The game was a sales hit for EA on its release and convinced fans that the franchise's future was in safe hands.
“That’s the day that I learned; every step of the way, we have to earn it," Asmussen said. "We can’t just come in and say, ‘This is the game that we’re making.’ It’s gotta be a conversation. It’s gotta be a collaboration, and we have to earn the respect, and that works both ways. But here we are, years later, and the name of the game is ‘Jedi: Fallen Order.’"
A sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order has not officially been confirmed, but the prospects are looking strong for it. EA has taken steps to expand its Star Wars team in the time since release, and developers from Respawn have expressed enthusiasm for their time building the project, suggesting that Cal Kestis and Respawn's take on Star Wars may both be back in the next few years.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out now on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: IGN