JEDI: FALLEN ORDER

IS RESPAWN’S STAR WARS OUTING ACE WINDU, OR DOES IT SITH THE MARK?

- SAM WHITE

Order 66. The one you roll out when all 65 other orders don’t cut it. It’s Darth Sidious’ devastating coup-de-grace that’s the preface to Jedi: Fallen Order – it lingers in the hearts of all of its characters, both on the Light side and the Dark. Sadly, its boring story never capitalises on the rich potential.

Sandwiched directly between Episode III and IV we meet our protagonist, Cal Kestis. Cal was once a Padawan and experienced the Emperor’s takeover first-hand, when he and his master were betrayed. Nowadays, he’s holed up as a scrapper out on Bracca – a planet where entire Star Destroyers are cut up for parts – listening to alien Rammstein. He’s hiding from his past, hoping the Empire doesn’t discover his identity.

Of course, in true action adventure fashion, it’s not long before the powers that be do find out about his upbringing. And it’s here, right at the start, that Fallen Order displays one of its greatest weaknesses: a lack of emotion. Even long after an introductory pull on the heartstrings falls flat, the story never manages to give you any real reason to care about any of its characters or their motives.

However, it’s a truly bombastic intro sequence thereafter, with Cal’s high-octane rescue from a group of elite Sith, the Inquisitors, carried out by Cere – an ex Jedi Master – and her alien friend Greez, who pilots a ship called the Mantis. Along with a wonderful little droid called BD-1, these two are your main companions, but much like Cal, they suffer from boring dialogue and some laughable grasps at emotional depth. Cere carries her own emotional burdens from the events of Order 66, and Greez simply seems to be disillusioned, but neither of them have enough personality to hang a campaign’s worth of camaraderie off of.