Written by Brandon Hofer  on April 09, 2023

Previews: The team over at Respawn seem to have done a great job with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor making it a more refined and polished experience.

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EA and Disney recently invited Gaming Target to Los Angeles to check out their upcoming title, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Set five years after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, we once again join Cal on his journey against the Empire. There have been some nice changes and quality of life upgrades from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and some features that I would have really loved in the original title are here as well.

When I first sat down for my play session, I noticed immediately that Jedi: Survivor seemed to both look and play better than Jedi: Fallen Order. Respawn’s first Star Wars game was already a very pretty game, however, it seems they raised the bar with Jedi: Survivor. There were many times when I would stop and take a moment to admire the environments, as well as how smoothly the game was running. The upgrades that Respawn made during development were immediately apparent and they should be welcomed by fans once Star Wars: Jedi: Survivor releases on April 28th.



My play session started approximately an hour into the game so that I was able to immediately jump into the action. My session started out with a cinematic with Cal and BD-1 and the Mantis was in trouble. We ended up having to make a rough landing on a planet and upon inspection, it was clear the Mantis wasn’t going anywhere until we got the parts we needed to fix the ship. Once I got through that bit of storytelling I was thrown into the game and left to explore this new planet.

My immediate impression of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor when I first started playing was that it felt like an upgraded version of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. To me, that is the mark of a good sequel. You take what worked in the original title and refine it so that it works even better than it did before while also adding some new elements to make it a fresh experience. It both looks and plays better than Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which was already a really great game.



My first big objective during my playtime was making my way toward a town to find someone who could help fix the Mantis. To do that I had to make my way across the planet and solve some puzzles along the way. I was introduced to a number of different environments during my time on the planet from caves that were on the planet to some really nice vistas on the surface. Traversal in the game has also received some upgrades that I really appreciated while I was playing. For starters, they have upgraded the zip lines in the game. In Jedi: Fallen Order if you were on a zip line but needed to reverse course, you couldn’t. You simply had to ride it to the end and then jump back on and head back in the direction you came from. In Jedi: Survivor you can switch your direction on the fly, immediately changing the direction you are heading. This is something I really appreciated as I did have instances where a quick change in direction was definitely warranted.

Something new added to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the addition of a grappling hook. The way it worked for me is when I was near something I could grapple, I simply hit the left trigger and then Cal would use it to hook on to that object. During the instances where I was able to use it, it definitely helped me cover some good distances quicker than I normally could. Speaking of doing some things more quickly in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, they mercifully have introduced a fast travel system. The Metroidvania aspect of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order really needed a fast travel system but didn’t have it, so I was really happy to see it introduced in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The way it works in this game is you can fast travel to any meditation points you have already found but it has to be on the same planet. So if you are on Planet A you can not fast travel to a point on Planet B but you can fast travel to all of the different points you have unlocked on Planet A. This is something I really appreciate due to the nature of having to backtrack in these games once I become a bit more powerful and gain more abilities.



Something else that I was able to experience during my play sessions were these temple-esque types of places. They kind of reminded me of the shrines that you found in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The couple that I experienced during this demo were bite-sized experiences where you had to solve some puzzles to earn your reward and clear the area. The two that I came across were optional but I did them anyway and I appreciated how it was a change of pace for a brief period of time. They weren’t overly complex or anything but I did appreciate the change. I’m not sure if I would want a whole lot of these throughout the game but having some sprinkled in here and there would be fun.

The combat in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is similar to what you saw in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It takes its inspirations from the Souls like genre where, depending on the difficulty, every battle can be a serious challenge. With that being the case, I did appreciate all of the different difficulty settings so that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor could be more accessible to a wider range of people. There is your easy difficulty setting where you can concentrate mainly on the story and you don’t have to worry about combat all that much all the way up to the most hardcore option available where your skills as a Jedi will be repeatedly pushed to their limit.



My impression during the few hours I got to spend with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is that it is a bigger game than Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Five years have passed since the end of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and the beginning of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. They also just released a new novel Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars that you can read that covers that five year time period, if you are someone who wants to know all of the story. Respawn took the lessons they learned while developing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and further refined everything for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. If the whole game is as fun and well put together as the demo I was shown, gamers are in for a treat when Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is released on April 28th.

Please Note: EA paid for our travel expenses to go to LA and check out Star Wars Jedi: Survivor for this preview event.