Back in January Ubisoft Massive announced that it was working on a story-driven open-world Star Wars game with Disney and Lucasfilm Games. Beyond that, very little has been revealed about the project, though the fact that EA would no longer be the sole publisher of the franchise’ games came as a surprise to many fans. As such, some are hoping that new studios might be more experimental with their stories.
The Ubisoft Massive Star Wars game could go down any number of paths, and there are some huge questions to be answered about the logistics of designing an open-world game set across multiple planets. One of the biggest questions is whether or not the upcoming project’s protagonist will be a Jedi. Star Wars stories have largely focused on force-sensitive characters in the past, though not exclusively. Here are the arguments for and against the upcoming game's protagonist being a force user, and some of the opportunities and challenges that might arise from taking the title in a different direction.
Force Users In Star Wars Stories
Despite so often being on the brink of extinction, the Star Wars universe is saturated with Jedi characters. Han Solo’s dismissal of “hokey religions and ancient weapons” in A New Hope now stands out as particularly strange, with the series later establishing that the Jedi were a key part of a galaxy-spanning government within Han Solo’s lifetime.
Making the Jedi feel rarer than they've been in other Star Wars stories could make Star Wars’ universe feel mysterious again in the new game. At the very least, it could be an interesting perspective shift. Star Wars’ High Republic series of novels, comic, and web series established that, during the height of the Galactic Republic, the Jedi were even spreading out among the planets of the Outer Rim.
The High Republic later declined, leaving many of the newer Jedi temples abandoned. The expansions and retractions of the Jedi order across the Star Wars timeline gives Ubisoft Massive the chance to tell a story set in a part of the galaxy where Jedi remain relatively rare, but where they might have been heard of in a long-distant past like A New Hope implies.
BioWare’s former development director Dorian Kieken once expressed the studio’s interest in telling a Mass Effect story from a different perspective. In an interview with TheGamer, Kiekan explained that it would be "like exploring the Star Wars universe without being a Jedi.” He clarified that although the idea was scrapped, it was motivated by the “ freedom you have in TV series like The Mandalorian or Firefly thanks to mercenaries of smuggler character archetypes."
That storytelling freedom is something the real Star Wars could take more advantage of in the franchise's games. The series’ focus on the Jedi and the battle between the light side of the force and the dark side of the force has certainly seen it struggle to tell new stories. Episode 7, while well received, was noted by many fans to follow much of the plot structure of Episode 4. The return of Emperor Palpatine and the reveal regarding Rey’s lineage later in the trilogy made many fans wonder if the franchise would ever be able to break free from repeating the same old tropes.
There’s already a well-established cast of smuggler and mercenary archetypes explored in Star Wars, put front and center in recent years with Rogue One, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and The Mandalorian. Part of the reason shows like The Mandalorian found such initial success is likely because, at least at first, they were able to separate their stakes from a greater conflict between light and dark. This allowed them to focus on personal relationships while dwelling in moral gray areas that the franchise’s stories have rarely stayed in for too long.
It’s not just that the hero's journey from nobody to powerful Jedi has been done many times across Star Wars media. The archetype has proven less flexible than some of the other options, even archetypes well-established in the Star Wars universe.
A game set in the Star Wars galaxy that tells a story without a force-sensitive protagonist – perhaps even a story where the Jedi play an antagonistic role – could provide a fresh narrative instead of having players go through the same basic arc with a new protagonist. On the other hand, there are still plenty of arguments for a Jedi player character in Ubisoft Massive's Star Wars game.
Star Wars Without Force Users
If Ubisoft Massive’s Star Wars game wants tight lightsaber combat in the style of recent successful open-world games like Ghost of Tsushima, a Jedi protagonist is practically a necessity. Ubisoft Massive’s Star Wars could be blaster-based, taking inspiration from the quick-draw mechanics in games like Red Dead 2, but there’s little denying that a Star Wars game without those iconic lightsaber battles could struggle to draw in fans.
As well as lightsaber battles, a playable force user opens the door for the game to introduce many different force powers that could make it more mechanically interesting. Players might get a clearer sense of progression through the story if they’re able to unlock new force powers as they go, a natural progression that many Star Wars games like Knights of the Old Republic, The Force Unleashed, and Fallen Order have taken advantage of.
While Star Wars may have overused the Jedi and made it harder to explore conflicts beyond the battle between the light and dark sides of the force, force-sensitive characters may also be fundamental to capturing that true Star Wars feeling. Shows like The Mandalorian may not star force-sensitive protagonists, but the force is till central to the show through other characters like Grogu, while the archetype of the Mandalorian himself remains rooted in the original trilogy’s Boba Fett.
Rogue One is similarly contextualized within the larger battle between the Galactic Empire and the rebels that the original trilogy focused on, and still had some force-sensitive characters among its ensemble. Ubisoft Massive’s Star Wars game might only be able to strike out on its own so much before it begins to lose many of the elements that makes Star Wars unique.
Ubisoft Massive’s Star Wars could still take a fresh perspective while starring a Jedi player character. It could follow a High Republic Jedi who journeys to the Outer Rim, suddenly facing both curiosity and distrust from the people living there, for example. Whether the studio will be able to create a Star Wars story which doesn’t feel like it’s retreading old ground remains to be seen, but fans will be keeping an eye out for details about the game’s development.
Ubisoft Massive's open-world Star Wars game is currently in development.