Star Wars Day (May 4) may have passed, but many are still celebrating the beloved franchise. It helps that Obi-Wan Kenobi releases near the end of this month, and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 is expected to be announced at Star Wars Celebration too. Now, what changes it makes remains to be seen, but like a lot of other games, the original was almost very different.
It has been previously reported that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s main character could have been a woman, but this was decided against because of Rey in the Sequel trilogy. However, a former Respawn developer has shed more light on this decision. Twitter user @NoraShramek, a game dev who has previously worked at Respawn, Riot, Insomniac, and more, recently revealed that many devs wanted the main character to be black and/or a woman.
According to Nora, a “LOT” of devs advocated for this but were told no by upper management at Respawn: “This was not evil EA or overly controlling Lucasfilm/Disney”. There were reportedly two main reasons this was rejected. The first alleged reason is that there were already two black people in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the second was because of Rey. Nora also suggests that the demographic of those making these decisions were largely, if not completely, white males.
Nora also went on to share one alleged comment made by someone on Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s development team, that being “I think all the black people need to have more glossy skin because black people have more oily skin than other people.” Nora would also go on to say that she is no longer at Respawn Entertainment, and to her understatement, there have been serious changes at the developer—she just cannot personally verify.
She also added that the majority of the dev team cared about representation, but this decision was pushed by a few people. Nora also says It’s nothing against Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s Cal Kestis or his actor Cameron Monaghan, as she says he did a great job and she has plenty of Cal merch, but it’s about “opportunity lost.”
Hopefully, Nora’s statement about changes made at Respawn proves true. EA has put Respawn, in one way or another, over three Star Wars projects aside from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2. Perhaps what was a lost opportunity there can be redeemed in another one of Respawn’s Star Wars games.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 is reportedly in development.
Source: GameByte