Developer Respawn has released a nine minute clip of the upcoming Stars Wars Jedi: Survivor and, yep, this sure looks like a Star Wars game with a Jedi, surviving. What it does show is returning protagonist Cal Kestis (and his droid BD-1) making their way around a new planet, Koboh, which they’ve apparently crash-landed on.
Koboh is a lush environment that is host to a Separatist hideout, with various battle droids patrolling around alongside plenty of local fauna, and of course some bigger nasties that demonstrate the game’s lightsaber combat. Respawn had already talked about the combat focus of the sequel, with Cal having five “full realised” stances (opens in new tab) to switch between while fighting
Cal has clearly been in training with new combo moves for his double-bladed lightsaber (this is unlocked near the end of the first game), with the gameplay at various points showing him detaching his weapon into two separate blades, Darth Mauling around groups of enemies and, in one particularly cool moment clipped below, spinning round an enemy and simultaneously stabbing them in the back.
Particularly notable elements are that the environment seems more interactive this time, with bushes reacting to lightsaber swings and Cal force-tossing things like rocks around. The first game saw the player collecting cosmetics in the form of ponchos, but during this sequence we see Cal collect nothing less than a bomber jacket from a chest: So perhaps the jackets are the main cosmetic collectable this time around.
Fans have of course pored over the footage for any little detail, though amusingly enough (as GamesRadar+ notes (opens in new tab)) a lot have chosen to grouse about Cal’s new running animation, which seems fine? I’m not really sure there’s a canon for how Jedi should run, but give Disney time I guess.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was recently delayed, but only by a little: it was due March 17, but will now arrive April 28 (opens in new tab). Director Stig Asmussen says the six-week delay is simply about hitting “the Respawn quality bar” and providing the level of polish fans expect. Personally speaking, the nicest thing about this footage is it shows Cal as he was at the end of Jedi: Fallen Order, without his powers having been reset, which suggests that by the end of this one you really will be the kind of badass that even an Empire would fear.
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