Posted in: Electronic Arts, Games, Respawn Entertainment, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Video Games | Tagged: Electronic Arts, preview, Respawn Entertainment, star wars, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

We Got To Preview Some Of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

We were given a chance to check out a solid three hours of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, courtesy of Electronic Arts. Here's our thoughts!

One of the most anticipated games of 2023 has to be Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, as Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment attempt to recapture The Force in a bottle. The team had a hit back in 2019 when they brought Cal Kestis to the forefront as a Jedi on the run from the Empire after the fallout from Order 66. The game earned a ton of praise for being innovative and telling a phenomenal story that, in short, had very little to do with The Skywalker Saga or any other well-known take from the franchise, blazing its own path with a new set of characters people enjoyed. Now they're looking to do a proper follow-up to the game, and as part of that ramp-up to its release, EA was kind enough to bring us out to Los Angeles to play a three-hour demo to play and check out everything we wanted.

WARNING: Just to clarify a few things before we go on, we're going to keep this preview mostly spoiler free. However, if you're looking to play the game and do not want to know anything about it, we're going to be talking about what we experienced in the demo after this paragraph. So if you decide to move on past this paragraph and read everything after the artwork you see here, that's on you and you alone!

The demo started us off in a specific part of the game, a little bit into the story without revealing any major plot points, but enough to let us know that Cal and BD-1 are doing alright and are surviving in an Empire-run galaxy at this point. There are still several surviving Jedi running around, but it's clear whatever remains of their organization is gone or on the brink of dying. But all is not lost, as there are still remnants of hope spread across multiple planets and locations. Our demo has us joining Cal, making an emergency landing to get spare parts for his ship while also seeking out an old friend for help. After traversing much of the terrain and avoiding getting caught, we come across a small town called Rambler's Reach, located on the planet Koboh.

A lot of the elements from the first game are here, from combat to interactions to building mechanics, so a lot of this will feel like familiar territory. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor does a fantastic job of bringing back the familiar and marrying it with some new toys and things to do that make the action RPG more robust. We made out way through some caverns and desert landscape, with its own perils and dangers found about, along with side missions that were optional to take. When we hit the valley, we were introduced to a plethora of options that had nothing to do with the main storyline. This included learning to handle animals for faster travel, collecting seeds to plant in a garden for later, finding rest spots throughout the landscape to meditate and customize our gear, taking on Bedlam Raiders, saving Prospectors who are just trying to mine minersals of interest from the planet, and more.

It should be noted that during this gameplay session, we were given two primary options. We could explore the storyline and see what it has to offer (which takes up the majority of our time in this session), or we could go off and do whatever we wanted after reaching the cantina. We went with the former for the purposes of the review, but let me tell you, this game tempted us at every turn. It's very clear Respawn put in a ton of content that make this game feel deeper and more challenging, with side missions that practically hurt us to ignore. There were caves filled with journeys that we saw other players take while we were stretching and getting some water, which contained battles with creatures like a Mogu, a Gorger, and even a familiar beast some of you might recognize from Return Of The Jedi.

Once we got to the cantina, we met up with our old pal Greez Dritus, the former pilot of our ship, The Mantis. He shows us around the rundown place and says it'll get better over time. After some info on the story, we're told he has a room saved for us down in the basement, which is another safe hub where you can meditate and take care of your gear. Something about this place that will get overlooked at the start of the game and will pay off in time is that the cantina does, in fact, get fixed up over time. You'll see trash get cleared out, tables cleaned, more people arrive and hang out, and slowly over time, become the central hub for storytelling when you're here. This reminded me a lot of RPGs like Suikoden 2, where it's clear there is an empty area in this bar that will eventually get filled with something important.

Another important aspect of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the skills tree, which operates much like the previous game did. You'll start off with three areas to improve on while in meditation, with points you earn along the way that can be spent in these areas. They are Survival (physical attributes), Lightsaber (how you wield the blade), and Force (the mystical power flowing through you). When you spend points, you'll unlock new areas based on how much is required, and it will automatically give you more access in that area to do cool things. Such as crazy tricks for when you dual wield, convincing creatures to attack others, or being able to walk along walls for longer periods of time. Nothing is really wasted here unless you do something dumb like put a bunch of points into a single-wield of your lightsaber and then decide to only dual-wield. The more you unlock, the easier it is for you as a Jedi Knight to pull off the impossible against all odds.

The storyline took us through a couple of different aspects, as we came across a droid stuck in a nearly-destroyed Jedi chamber underneath the town, and an area the Empire took a specific interest in based on some readings they discovered. Again, we won't spoil anything for you, but we will say this goes into some deep Jedi lore. Long before the Skywalkers were even a thought. There's a lot of mystery to what lies here and what is in store for Cal and his friends as they start getting into the weeds of what might be the very thing to help them restore the Jedi to some kind of resistance against Darth Vader and The Empire. Even things that people have no interest in within the story could be greatly affected by what you find and who you run into along the way.

At the end of our three-hour demo for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, we were super bummed it was over. Had they not brought the day to a close, we could have spent the entire day there and into the night, exploring everything the game had to offer, even in its limited demo capacity. The game isn't without faults, which we will discuss at another time seeing as how giving a game grief based on a demo seems tacky. But for the most part, we enjoyed ourselves and wanted to see what else the game had to offer. Back when we played the first game, we were raving about how it was the Star Wars title we kinda always wanted. Something fresh and original that had ties to the universe but wasn't dependent on the films to make it work. While it mostly ticked all of the boxes, the sequel seems to be picking up that same spirit. Time and a little gameplay will tell if it managed to carry or drop the ball, but for the time being, April 28th can't come soon enough!

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!