3/5 ★ – OysterMcGrath's review of STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order™.

Jedi Fallen Order is a game that does something unique - it makes me actively dislike the story and characters. Gameplay wise the game is amazing, but personally it speaks to the poor writing and pacing that I was turned off enough to not want to come back. A major issue with the game’s approach to storytelling isn’t that it’s telling a bog standard narrative - such a story doesn’t get in the way of great gameplay and is more window dressing. The problem more so is that the standard structure the story follows leaves out room for development of the characters, resulting in moments that you recognize from hundreds of other stories without the justification for that happening. Never did I feel the characters deserved their camaraderie simply because they didn’t spend enough time together. Never once did I feel Cal and BD-1 were a cute friendship because there was a lack of dynamic between the two beyond “they’re friends now.” It’s easy to look at these examples and assume that they don’t matter if the gameplay itself is fine. However, by the time you return to Zeffo for a second time, run through parts of the level you’ve already been through, and confront many of the same enemies, you (well, I) feel the pacing come to a crawl. When you start to feel a game slow down unintentionally that’s a sign that you’re losing interest - and for me, it happened there. If a sequel comes out I’d be extremely curious to try it out as I’m sure there’s more confidence in this particular Star Wars property now that might lend to better storytelling. But Star Wars (and I say this as a non-fan who knows nothing) has always had bumpy storytelling, so this fits right in, doesn’t it? Don’t @ me - I love Kingdom Hearts so I don’t consider myself a paragon of literary analysis.