Star Wars: Jedi Survivor’s reveal trailer dropped a few days ago at the Game Awards, revealing more than we could’ve ever hoped about the story, gameplay, setting, and characters that will be involved in the sequel to the 2019 hit, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
Though some things appear to have remained the same since the last entry, like protagonist Cal Kestis and the hack-and-slash gameplay, nearly every cut gave us new information about what the much-anticipated title will bring. And so, what better way to look into those new additions than to go through the trailer, piece by piece, so that we can get a full overview of everything the trailer revealed to us so far? Without further ado, let’s begin.
Who is in the Bacta Tank?
The trailer begins by showing Cal Kestis opening a mechanism to reveal an occupied bacta tank. This confirms for us Cal’s return, but who is in the Bacta Tank?
The camera soon cuts to a close-up of the person inside as the tank drains. They have long hair, stunning blue eyes, and a sleek, muscular body. As indicated by interviews, this as-of-yet-unnamed character is going to be a villain. The unknown character speaks, lamenting his betrayal and imprisonment, and so it might be safe to assume that he was “betrayed” by someone from the Jedi Order.
We will revisit him when he reappears in the trailer later, but for you can rest assured that he is not a familiar face in Star Wars canon, keeping with the series’s commitment to focusing on new characters over legacy ones.
New Enemies
After a brief introduction, we are treated to a quick-cut montage of Cal taking on some enemies in interesting environments. The first image shows Cal slicing through a Magna Guard, complete with staff (but not cape) in some non-descript mechanical room. This is the first confirmation that we get that Separatist droids will be present in the game, though it is unclear as of yet how given that the Separatists were dismantled and their droids decommissioned after the Empire took power. The game might incorporate flashbacks to make this happen, or (more likely), some faction in the game is making use of those old droids. Oh, and this shot also shows that BD-1, Cal’s droid companion, has returned.
Next, we see a Cal lifting two Recon Stormtroopers (oh, sorry, “Advanced Recon Force Troopers”) into the air in a heavily-forested environment. The troopers and environment indicate that this could be taking place on the Forest Moon of Endor, where we know the Empire later sets up a shield generator to protect the second Death Star. Ewoks, anyone?
Then, we see Cal force pushing an Imperial KX-Series droid and some Stormtroopers toward a red-lit pit somewhere in a place immediately recognizable as an Imperial Base (the dark steel and red-line lights are the giveaways here). This facility with the presence of KX-series droids could allude to this being the Imperial Base on Scariff, where the Death Star plans (from the original movie) were stored. That base was featured (and destroyed) in Rogue One, and its relevance to the plot would be around the same period of time as this game takes place.
Finally, we very briefly see Cal meeting lightsaber blades with a mysterious masked opponent. The person he is fighting is dressed in a similar manner as two other characters later, though he is the only one of the three to be wielding a lightsaber. The saber appears to be orange, though it might be red and simply look orange due to the lighting of the scene. Hazarding a guess, I think this antagonistic faction might be Imperial Bounty Hunters (a la Boba Fett), since they do not appear to be Inquisitors and are not in any typical Imperial uniforms, but are working with the Empire and are able to stand toe-to-toe with a Jedi of Cal’s caliber.
The Mantis Ship
Next, we see a familiar site: the “Stinger Mantis”, also know simply as the Mantis. This spaceship was Cal’s primary means of traversing the galaxy in the first game. But there is something missing here: the Mantis’s crew. In the first game, the ship is owned by gruff-but-likable Greez Dritus, yet he is nowhere to be seen in the brief glimpse we see of the cockpit (or anywhere else in the trailer, for that matter). Instead, taking his place is Cal himself, which has us wondering (and worrying about) what happened to Greez in the five years between the last game and this one. Similarly, Nightsister Merrin, introduced near the end of the first game as a new member of the crew, is also absent.
The ship crashes down into a desert canyon that looks similar to some places we’ve seen before in Star Wars, but not similar enough that it is likely to be any place we’ve seen before. The next shot shows a vista of the lightly-shrubbed, mesa-filled desert, further confirming that this is a new location for the franchise.
A New Jedi, plus Holocrons
The next scene is narrative, where a new character is lightly ribbing Cal for “being busy making himself the Empire’s most wanted.” This new face is dressed in robes that seem to indicate a connection to the Jedi, which is further confirmed when the camera cuts to reveal that there is a moderate-sized library of holocrons in the background. While these data-storage devices are not exclusive to Jedi, their glowing-blue “bookshelf” design is universally shown in relation to them.
More mysterious is the figure to the speaking character’s right, who is pale, still, and hidden by a fascinating, strange mask. This person looks to be an ally to the woman we are presuming to be a Jedi, but his dark aesthetic and mystique seem much more “Sith,” if you ask me. And, if either of these two figures is a Jedi or Sith, then that raises another question: where are their lightsabers? Hidden on the other side of their bodies? So many mysteries…
Friendly Beasts and Separatist Droids
The next important cuts show Cal Kestis approaching and seemingly befriending a large creature that resembles some mixture of a bird, horse, and dinosaur. This, along with some other images we see later, indicates that befriending wildlife and riding it will be an important part of the next game, and might be explained using force powers.
The next shot shows Cal riding the bird-like beast while slicing his lightsaber through a Separatist Battle Droid. Not only does this confirm that the game will have mounted combat, but it also further cements the fact that we will be seeing Clone-Wars-era enemies in the game, even though (to reiterate), the Clone Wars ended years ago in the universe’s timeline.
Finally, we see a shot of Cal holding onto the legs of a bird in flight, and he seems to be controlling the animal. While we lack the context to know if flight or gliding will be a regular part of Cal’s gameplay, the fact that you can do so at all vastly increases the size and complexity possible in the worlds/levels.
Bounty Hunters? Imperial Agents? Boss Fights? Dual Wielding?
In the next few shots, Cal is in the village that the birdlike creature was flying him toward, where he is confronted by two new characters. The first is masked, and wields a shock glaive of some sort. His helmet resembles a Mandalorians, though not so closely as to confirm that it is of Mandalorian make (much less that he, himself, is Mandalorian). Since this figure does not talk in the trailer, we can only speculate so much.
The next cut reveals another character, a huge, brutish alien who keeps his blaster holstered as he addresses Cal by ordering his ally to attack you. Both he and the first figure are wearing rust-orange armor with dents and scrapes, their armor looking similar to the lightsaber-wielder’s earlier. It is likely that these three are a part of the same faction.
A fight ensures, the first figure uses his shock-glaive to push Cal to the ground, and then the next shot shows Cal facing off with the adversary when he puts his arm out to reveal a second lightsaber. That’s right: this game has confirmed dual-wielding lightsabers.
More Foes
Next, we see a few more enemies, with the first being what looks to be a forest-colored wampa, which leaps down from the top of a building on what might be Endor. The wampa has previously only been seen on Hoth — one of them imprisoned Luke at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back — where it was depicted with pure white fur. This variant is brown, more suited to a forest environment. It proceeds to pummel Cal around a bit in what looks like a boss fight reminiscent of some of the similar creatures in the first game.
Next, we see several shots of some new variants of Dark Troopers, which are elite Imperial droids meant to be some of the toughest warriors in the Empire. They seem to be located in the same Imperial base as before, first coming out of an elevator and then being present in a mist-shrouded TIE-fighter hangar. In the latter, Cal is dispatching one in what looks to be a kill animation, where he spins his lightsaber around to slice an electrostaff-armed Dark Trooper to bits.
After a brief, vague cutaway to some text which reads “Stand Against the Darkness,” we briefly see Cal deflecting blaster bolts from a new fighter (or perhaps other piece of machinery). This fighter, piloted by a red-visored enemy of some sort, is not one I’m familiar with, and so it seems that some new ship designs will be present in the game as well.
New Ally, Bode Akuna
Following this, we are introduced to Bode Akuna, who looks to be Cal’s ally in the game. We see him helping Cal (and BD-1) up from a ledge. Bode is dressed in a fairly non-descript fashion, aside from the blaster pistol on his hip. In the background, interestingly, we see a vast cityscape shrouded in darkness. The neon lights indicate that this may be Corusant — specifically, this may be one of the lower levels of Corusant, which fans have been waiting to see depicted in a game since the announcement and subsequent cancellation of Star Wars: 1313. Though, of course, this may just be another city somewhere else in the galaxy.
The next shot shows us Bode working in tandem with Cal to finish off an enemy in what looks to be a sort of “tag-team” companion system, and so it looks like you will get a chance to fight alongside Bode during gameplay. Given the off-the-back flip and piledriver, it looks quite flashy. Also worth noting here is the backdrop — we once again see fog and mist, like in the previous shot in the TIE-Hangar, and this time it is accompanied by dead trees, indicating that the Imperial Base we’ve been seeing throughout the trailer will be on this mysterious planet.
New Enemies, New Look
Next, we get a few short snippets highlighting some interesting bits. First, we get a rather long cut of Cal fighting a huge orange monster in a jungle environment, which essentially confirms the return of the optional (well, hopefully optional) beast hunts from the previous game.
Next, we get a front-on shot of Cal’s new look, featuring some aging up, facial hair, and no poncho. There isn’t much to say about this, aside from that our ginger Jedi is looking great. Keep up the hair care regimen, Cal.
Finally, we see some Clone-Wars-era main battle droids being sliced through by Cal’s spinning lightsaber. But there is more to this one: the droids are carrying halberd-like polearms, have unique orange markings, and their head-shape is just a bit unusual. This seems to indicate that these droids do not belong to a flashback featuring Separatist forces, but rather were maintained by an unknown faction in this desert area. Given the markings and environment, I’d bet they are controlled by those bounty-hunter-like enemies we saw earlier, and are probably just leftovers from the war.
Big Bad
The previous shots were intercut with the dialog, “The Jedi is a threat. Now that we have this,” which crossfades into a shot of a main — probably the same confirmed villain from the bacta tank before, holding a mysterious, ancient-looking artifact, implied to have some sort of power. It is unclear by his statement whether or not he is saying the Jedi (presumably Cal) is a threat because he has that object, or if the second sentence is him trailing off about how that object could be used against said threat (“Now that we have this…we can stop him” or something).
It is clear, at least, who he seems to be talking to, and it is none-other than the orange-clad villain from before who threatened Cal. He gets no lines this time, though this does confirm that the orange-suited enemies are in league with the main antagonist, rather than being a separate faction in their own right.
New Mechanics Galore
Finally, we are shown a rapid-fire of small, new mechanics.
Cal is able to slow battle-droid-fired lasers to a near halt, a la Kylo Ren at the beginning of The Force Awakens. We see Cal using a grappling hook to reach a ledge in some area which looks distinctly like a junkyard. The next shot shows Cal activating his lightsaber, which now has some (kinda adorable, entirely impractical) crossguard hilts. And, finally, we conclude with Cal fighting more magnaguards, with a targeting reticle popping up on an enemy just as they are dispatched (this might just be a lock-on, or an indication that the opponent can be finished off).
That final shot cuts away to the title card with Star Wars: Jedi Survivor’s release date of March 17th.
That wraps us the reveal trailer, and what a reveal trailer it was! Lots of new features and new faces, as well as plenty of mysteries that we will need to get answers to when the game releases (or, at least, when more promotional material is unveiled). Personally, I’m most excited for the dual-wielding and new enemy types. What about you? Anything you’re excited about from the new trailer, or was there something you noticed that we missed? Let us know in the comments below, and may the force be with you.
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Graves
Graves is an avid writer, web designer, and gamer, with more ideas than he could hope to achieve in a lifetime. But, armed with a mug of coffee and an overactive imagination, he'll try. When he isn't working on a creative project, he is painting miniatures, reading cheesy sci-fi novels, or making music.
