Summary
When I was playingStar Wars Jedi: Survivor, and I controlled Cal Kestis, making blind leaps and trusting that there would be a wall to run along or some other daring aerial parkour available to him, it highlighted how absurd video game action heroes are, thoughCal is one of the few with a good excuse for it. Improbable leaps of faith are nothing new to video games. TheSuper Mario Bros.games have asked that of me for years. As presentation has achieved cinematic realism, it’s harder for me to ignore when Nathan Drake willingly leaps to his death.
Early 2D Platformer games generally featured cartoonish mascot characters, with rare exceptions, like the originalPrince of Persia. Now, games with more realistic aesthetics and tone still incorporate dramatic leaps.Minecrafthas its professional parkour players, butI don’t worry when a stylized jumble of blocks takes a soaring jump off a cliff. When theTomb Raiderreboot rendition of Lara Croft does the same, it’s terrifying. Sometimes, modern over-the-top action games use dramatic stakes to make those sequences feel rationalized. Nathan Drake might have to do some death-defying stunts to escape a sinking boat, not because he chose to.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Ending Explained (In Detail)
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s final chapters are extremely tumultuous, putting Cal Kestis and the Stinger Mantis crew through their greatest test yet.
Urgent Stakes Do Not Justify Jedi: Survivor Platforming
Cal Kestis Must Be Guided By The Force To Know Exactly What He Can Accomplish
When these well-characterized and fully developed humans risk their lives with nigh impossible stunts willingly, it can eviscerate verisimilitude. Thesprawling open worlds ofJedi: Survivoroffer a lot to explore. Cal may run along a sheer cliff wall in the hopes that at the end he will be barely within reach to Force Pull a hanging rope towards him just to access a hidden temple. TheJedi Survivorstory has Cal pursuing a mystery to find the elusive planet Tanalorr, but there is no Death Star hovering over Alderaan, soCal’s risk-taking stunts don’t have urgency to rationalize them.
The yellow paint is the Force, telling you, ridiculous as this may seem, you can climb it.
The gap in abstraction between the player’s experience in a video game and the fictional experience of the characters within a video game obviously requires some suspension of disbelief to maintain immersion. In almost all cases, outside of games with rewind mechanics, when the player causes the game’s protagonist to die six times before they land a jump on the seventh, that is not the reality in-fiction. The hero made the jump on the first try, theplayer just experienced six alternate timelines where they didn’t.
Games with rewind mechanics, likePrince of Persia: Sands of TimeandBraid, make every platforming death part of the story, but this is not usually the case.
Jedi Survivorhas many Easter Eggsand is clearly part ofStar Warscanon, meaning Cal canonically survived the game’s events. He didn’t miscalculate his double jump distance or pick the wrong time to do a Force Pull. There’s one rational explanation for why Cal would engage in dangerously reckless acrobatics just to cross a gap, instead of calling his allies to pick him up in a shuttle, or opt to use a jetpack like Bode Acuna: Cal is using the Force. The Force must be telling him which apparent death drop is within the bounds of his physical and supernatural abilities to navigate;the Force tells Cal to have faith and jump.
Yellow Paint In Uncharted & Other Games Gives Direction
Like The Force, Yellow Paint Instructs And Guides The Player On How To Proceed
Someteasers suggest that anUncharted 5could be in the works, and I might be back to seeing Nathan, or his successor, flinging themselves through impossible climbs above certainly lethal drops. While I would be happy to be reunited with a member of the Drake family, the real reunion is with my old friend, the yellow paint. The use of yellow paint to signify which environmental objects in modern games are climbable or interactable bothers some players.I love that yellow paint. The yellow paint is the Force, telling you, ridiculous as this may seem, you can climb it.
When Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Releases On PS4 & Xbox One
EA has finally confirmed when the latest entry in Cal Kestis' story, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, will be coming to last-gen consoles.
Maybe those vaults over nothingness help Cal deal with his survivor’s guilt. I get why Cal does what he does inStar Wars Jedi: Survivor, but I would still like to know Mario’s excuse.
Whether it’s the Force or prescience, thatvisual cue tells me I’m approaching a jump the designers intend for me to succeed at, unlike the earlyTomb Raidergames where I sent Lara to countless deaths, followed by seemingly endless original PlayStation era loading screens, while trying to jump the wrong gap. If we had the yellow paint in real life, it could save us all a bit of trouble, and for me, I probably could have avoided a knee surgery. The hardestSuper Mariolevels ever sometimes approachKaizo Mario Worldlevel, but I still know it’s absolutely beatable.
Characterization Makes Uncharted’s Stunts Unbelievable
Fully Developed Characters Like Nathan Drake Should Care About Self Preservation
Giving realistic characters, not cartoon plumbers, a chasm that descends to jagged rocks or a deep abyss andhaving them take that risk when there are no stakes to warrant it can be immersion breakingfor me. Sometimes I can get lost in the gameplay itself, but when Nathan and Elena playCrash Bandicoottogether, that humanizes him. Nathan shouldn’t be flinging himself over nonsensical jumps to gather lost gold coins, he should leave that to the cartoon characters like Crash. That is, unless I take a cue fromStar Wars Jedi: Survivorand learn to trust in the Force.
A newDeadpoolgame would offer a perfect opportunity for a video game character to comment on all the yellow paint on the obstacles they happen to be able to climb.
Overall,Star Wars: Jedi Survivorwas excellent, and did a great job building on the foundation laid down in the original, bringing back old friends and honoring those that were lost in the first game.Cal’s recklessness is actually part of the story, and he has the Force going for him, as well. It’s a rare case where I could consider absurd platforming as character development. Maybe those vaults over nothingness help Cal deal with his survivor’s guilt. I get why Cal does what he does inStar Wars: Jedi Survivor, but I would still like to know Mario’s excuse.
