(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Note: The clips that are all shown are from Doug's Twitch streams of himself playing the game)
Doug (vo): It's Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and I'm not gonna lie, I had a really, really interesting time with this, for two reasons. One: This is the first Star Wars game I've played since, I think, Tie Fighter on the CD ROM or maybe Super Star Wars on the Super Nintendo. So as you'd imagine, my 40-year-old ass loved seeing how far these games have come. Second: This is the first EA game I've played since Lord of the Rings, and I've heard a lot about how their reputation has changed in terms of business, but more importantly, glitches. And I'll be honest, it was kind of neat to finally see these EA glitches in full bloom, even years after it came out.
(A moment involving Doug playing the level where Cal Kestis faces off against a frog-like creature is shown)
Doug: (laughs) Look at that glitch! Oh, he flew for a second!
Doug (vo): While, understandably, a lot of people I'm sure got mad at these glitches, but for me, I just accepted it as part of the deal and I actually had some good laughs with it...for the most part, we'll get to that. This is also the first Souls-Born game I've played, which, I guess is a very particular type of gaming, and, again, I'm 40, I'm not a huge gamer, I don't know how they work. But as I understand it, they're supposed to be really friggin' hard, and if you mess up, you have to go all the way back to the last save point, which could be quite a ways back. And even once you finish a mission or get done with a boss, you have to backtrack all the way. Sometimes, they put shortcuts, but there's no Spider-Man on the subway this time. They really want to make it feel real, so that when you go back to something, you have to go all the way. For the most part, I liked it okay, but that I could've done without.
Story[]
Doug (vo): The story takes place I think in between Clone Wars and A New Hope. Order 66 has happened, and a young Jedi named Cal, played by Cameron Monaghan, is a construction worker who's apparently strong with the Force, but doesn't have much of a memory. It all starts coming back to him, though, when he's attacked by the Ninth Sister, played by Misty Lee, who's an Inquisitor trying to hunt him down, but he gets some help. A former Jedi Knight named Cere, played by Debra Wilson, and a pirate named Greez, played by JB Blanc*. From here, it goes the route you mostly would think a story like this would go. Cal is getting his memory back, he's learning some Jedi training, he's discovering all sorts of tortured pasts from all sorts of complex characters, and he has to find the lost MacGuffin to keep safe all the fragile something or others.
- (Notes: Daniel Roebuck voiced Greez)
Review[]
Doug (vo): Yeah, okay, there's not, like, a ton of spoilers that you can really ruin in this, but just in case, I won't go into too much detail. I guess, first, I'll talk about the story, as, yeah, it is surprisingly pretty engaging. If you were to just show me this outline on paper, I wouldn't think it was bad, but I'd say, yeah, it's just another kind of Star Wars property, nothing that special to it. But the pacing, the dialogue, and especially the acting really elevates this to one of the better Star Wars properties.
(Footage focusing on the game's main character, Cal Kestis, is shown)
Doug (vo): Cal is another blank slate like Luke or Rey, and I still stand by those are some of the toughest roles to play. Now, blank slate doesn't automatically equal boring, but it can very easily, if it's not played right. The idea of a blank slate is that you're supposed to imagine yourself in the role, which, as you'd imagine, works very well in video games. You're literally playing the part. But there also has to be something that makes the character stand out and be unique, so that's really tricky. Cameron does a pretty good job of this. Yeah, he's the typical good-looking dude, and you see his hair never gets messed up or anything like that, but his expressions and voice acting really do convey a lot.
(Footage focusing on the game's secondary character, Cere Junda, is shown)
Doug (vo): The supporting cast as well. I was really happy to see Debra Wilson doing some serious work. I'm so used to seeing her on MadTV and just remembering what a great talent she was, but I had no idea she could pull off drama this well. True, it doesn't help that her intense eyes are somehow...too intense with some of the rendering and, like I said, some of the glitches, but her performance still comes across very strong.
(Footage focusing on the game's main villain, the Second Sister, is shown)
Doug (vo): The Ninth* Sister is one of the greatest villains in Star Wars history, and keep in mind, this is a long roster of great villains. She is structured like one of the great movie monsters. I'm not talking about something like the Creature from the Black Lagoon or something like that. I'm talking about a Dracula or a Hannibal Lecter, one of those villains that slowly gets in your head and takes control. At first, you don't even see her face, you just hear this kind of creepy, happy voice, and, yeah, that's already pretty awesome and she's intimidating and everything. But then she takes her helmet off. Look at those eyes! Those are some creepy-as-shit eyes!
- (Note: Doug meant to say "Second Sister" instead of "Ninth". Channel Awesome clarified that slip-up on the description of the video)
(A clip of the Second Sister unmasked as a woman named Trilla is shown)
Trilla: What would Jaro Tapal say?
Doug: Jesus, those eyes, man! Oh, my God! She is so fucking awesome!
Doug (vo): She does get inside your head, she gives you some information that makes you question everything, some people you start to trust, and there's just this amazing uneasiness when she's around, and the more you're around her, the more she seems to manipulate you. And while, yes, I've definitely seen monsters that are both sexy and scary, with Dracula and Lecter, I feel like they're scary first, then sexy, where I feel like with a lot of women that are supposed to be both, it's the other way around. This is a character that's definitely sexy, but she's scary first, and I thought that was really effective.
(Various clips resume showing, primarily focusing on the game's flashback sequences)
Doug (vo): And the story, while, like I said, kind of standard, is paced out so well and they integrate so many of the flashbacks and backstories so cleverly into the game. If you know enough about Star Wars, there's certain moments you see in these flashbacks where your stomach starts to get butterflies and you go, "Oh, no!". And I think a story is really working when you start to hold your breath at times and you're not even playing the game, you're just watching a cut scene. I guess I'll mention without giving away too much that there is a surprise quote-unquote "character" that appears at the end, and I guess everyone was shocked by it, but I don't know. Maybe because I haven't played that many Star Wars games, but I just sort of thought to myself, "Isn't it kind of a given this character would be somewhere in this game?" It was still really cool, it just didn't shock me as much as I think everyone else.
(Clips focusing on the gameplay are shown)
Doug (vo): All right, let's get to the gameplay. Like a lot of games of this style, they utilize every button that they can, and for the most part, they use it effectively. Your only two weapons in this are a lightsaber and the Force, and sometimes, you don't even have those. It's pretty good at forcing you to be both offensive and defensive, and anyone that watches me play knows I love being offensive, I don't have the patience to be defensive. I spent so many days of my life being patient for other things. Why do I have to do it in a game where I'm supposed to relieve stress and everything? C'mon, let me just chop some shit up. But yes, obviously, you want to feel like your victory is earned, and a lot of that is combining the two. But a slight nitpick is, I got confused on how the defense/blocking works, as there's a way you can reflect lasers back to the Stormtroopers, but it didn't always work. So I kind of got the impression you could only block for a little bit of time and only for a second or two. And I only found out later you could actually block for a lot longer. It could just be a little finicky and didn't always work against everybody. But they are also pretty good at showing you when a move is going to penetrate the block, like the character will shine red, and they give you just enough time to get away. But if you're not paying attention, it could get you pretty good. The timing on those is usually pretty well set. With that said, when the preciseness of moves combines with the glitchiness of the game, it can be pretty insufferable. And don't get me wrong, it didn't happen a lot, but when it did, there was nothing more infuriating.
(Clips focusing on Cal's duel with Taron Malicos are shown)
Doug (vo): I had to go against a boss that took me most of the stream to defeat, and every single time I got close, a glitch would happen. All I have to do is literally push one button over and over, and it would glitch me out of that moment, to where I had to take a massive hit. And, yes, it was always near the end, and I always ended up dying afterwards.
(One such moment when Doug experiences a glitch is shown)
Doug: Okay...NO!
Heather: Why?!
Doug (vo): It was pure luck that suddenly, the glitch didn't happen on the last one, and I finally got to kill this guy.
(The moment where Doug beats Taron Malicos is shown)
Doug: (victorious) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!! (Mimics a crowd cheering) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!
(Clips focusing on Cal's final showdown against Trilla are shown)
Doug (vo): But again, that does kind of show there's a good variety of offensive and defensive in this, because with that one, you had to use a lot of defensive, which I wasn't that great at. With the final boss, everyone thought it was going to take a lot longer because everyone said it was more difficult, but at least for me, if you do offensive, it wasn't as hard. Everyone swore it was gonna go into the next stream, but I figured out an offensive pattern pretty quickly, and it took maybe a half hour, where the other one took, like, two hours.
(Clips focusing on the game's glitches are shown)
Doug (vo): And, yeah, let's talk about some of those glitches. It's weird to think that this game came out in 2019, and in 2022, there are still a lot of noticeable mess-ups. Again, a lot of them didn't break the game. If anything, we were kind of having fun with the way things would go awry.
(A moment where Doug experiences a glitch is shown, during the level where Cal explores the caverns of Ilum)
Doug: Huh. (An enemy suddenly appears, but a glitch makes the enemy pop up out of nowhere) Whoa! (Laughs and mimics Papa Klump from The Nutty Professor) Somebody call an exorcist! (Laughs)
Doug (vo): I think my favorite is this Wookiee and Stormtrooper who are supposed to be fighting just looking like they're having a conversation until they accidentally get burned alive.
(Another moment is shown, showing Doug reacting to the glitch of a droid and a Wookiee freezing in the middle of a battle)
Doug: Get in there, you freaks! What are you...? You're gonna be burned alive! (The Wookiee gets burned by a Stormtrooper) Oh, my God, you're on fire! You killed the Wookiee! What were you talking about that cost you your life?!
Doug (vo): But what seems unforgivable are the cutscenes. And I don't know, maybe it's because I'm not a game developer, but I just feel like this should be figured out by this point. Several years later after it came out, the edges of these textures still have weird, dark shadows. There's even one scene where a character uses sorcery to make the ship invisible, and the inside is literally invisible. I thought this was a stylistic choice, but, no. The ship is supposed to be there, and it just glitches out.
(Yet another moment is shown, showing Doug reacting to the glitch of the ship's background disappearing during a cutscene)
Doug: And this is intentional, right? This isn't a glitch. You're not supposed to see the ship right now, right?
Heather: Oh, Rock says, "No, this is a glitch. This happened to me, too, when I also was playing."
Doug: Oh, is that...? (Laughs)
Doug (vo): Like I said, this didn't ruin the game for me, but there was a strange honor in acknowledging, "Okay, now I see what a typical EA experience is like".
(Footage focusing on the planets featured in the game is shown)
Doug (vo): But a part of me does feel bad in saying that, because these graphics really are impressive. I mean, these landscapes are really cool and how big these worlds are are really cool. There's a clever workaround somebody told me that whenever Cal is sneaking through this tight area, it's actually loading the next part of the game. That's a really clever workaround. I guess even when he's in the elevator, it's loading the next part, which, yeah, sometimes, you can wait in there too long, and, again, it does glitch sometimes, but I don't think that's enough to distract from how detailed and well laid out so many of these levels are. And like I said, yeah, I don't really like backtracking to go back to the ship after I defeat a boss, like, I have to work all the way back, but they are usually pretty nice in putting in some shortcuts, they just still leave a lot of footwork to make your way back. It's at this point I kind of wish we were in Star Trek, you could just beam them back.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): So, yeah, this game's a lot of fun and I do highly recommend it. Does it have problems? Sure. But the pros well outweigh the cons, and I think any Star Wars fan is really gonna get into not only the characters and the gameplay, but the story as well. If you're one of those people that really gets into the universe of Star Wars and imagines yourself as a Jedi Knight swinging a lightsaber around, this is definitely the game for you. I think it's the closest you'll come to really feeling like you're there. (The title card for Star Wars: Vader Immortal is shown) Even Vader Immortal has a lot of cool stuff, but you gotta just stand in one spot while people throw things at you. Here, you can run around and reflect these lasers back and hack people up, all the stuff you want to do as a Jedi. What else can I say but the Force is strong with this one? I...bet I'm the only critic who ever said that. Eh, whatever. Still thinking about those eyes, man, leave me alone!
(A cutscene showing ships flying around the sky is shown. Instead of cutting to black, we then cut to the part in Doug's stream where he's fighting Taron Malicos, and his cat, Chaplin is climbing on him and his chair with the caption, "Extra Chaplin Moment")
Doug: (trying not to laugh) Chaplin, you are not helping right now! Get...you're really not helping! (Chaplin starts climbing on his shoulders) Chaplin, goddamnit, I'm giving you to another owner! (Doug is defeated by Taron Malicos again and Heather is heard laughing) Chaplin! What's wrong with you?! Look at me while I'm talking to you! No, don't put your paw on me, this is not a sentimental moment! (Chaplin is now sitting in his lap) You killed me! You killed me! Do not...don't...Okay, I guess you're going to sleep.