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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an Action-Adventure Metroidvania Souls-like RPG game set in the Star Wars universe, developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts for the Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC. It was released on November 15, 2019. Updated versions for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S released on June 11, 2021, and are available as free upgrades to owners of the last-gen versions.
Taking place five years after the end of the Clone Wars and the rise of the Galactic Empire, the game follows Cal Kestis, a maintenance worker who dismantles derelict Republic ships and equipment as a part of post-war clean-up. Little does anyone know, Cal is a former Jedi Padawan who survived Order 66 and went into hiding. When an industrial accident causes him to reveal his Force-sensitivity, the Jedi-hunting Imperial Inquisition is alerted to his survival and he is forced on the run. With the Empire at the height of its power, Cal must learn to survive and hide in a galaxy where he may well be the last of the Jedi, and perhaps begin to rebuild the fallen Order.
Gameplay revolves around a mixture of classic Metroidvania-style exploration and lightsaber combat in a Soulslike style, with Cal and diminutive droid sidekick BD-1 exploring a handful of interconnected areas on several different planets in the Star Wars galaxy. Areas are vast and full of secrets and upgrades, opening up further as both Cal and BD-1 unlock more abilities to further traverse the galaxy. Combat focuses on commital attacks, quick dodges, and blocking and parrying.
A prequel comic series, Dark Temple, focuses on the backstory of Cal's mentor, Cere Junda, when she was a Jedi Padawan. A sequel, Jedi: Survivor, was announced in January of 2022 and officially revealed on May 27th, 2022, with a release slated for the following year and targeting only PC and the ninth-generation consoles. A novel interquel that bridges the gap between the two games, Jedi: Battle Scars, was released on March 7th, 2023.
Previews: Reveal Trailer, EA PLAY 2019 Gameplay Demo
, Gameplay Demo (Extended Cut)
, "Cal's Mission" Trailer
, Launch Trailer
Tropes present in this game:
- 100% Completion: There are several achievements that encourage this, the most glaringly obvious of which is exploring every nook and cranny of each map on each planet. Then there are ones for finding all chests and secrets, scanning all enemy types, defeating all bounty hunter types, slaying all mysterious creatures, and unlocking all skills. Curiously enough, there are no achievements for achieving 100% databank completion.
- Ability Depletion Penalty: If Cal blocks too many times in a row without attacking or performing a perfect parry, his block meter will deplete, leaving him without any protection for a moment.
- Ability Required to Proceed: The game has countless Broken Bridges that lock off certain areas of the game world until either Cal learns a new ability or BD-1 acquires a new upgrade that allows them to bypass whatever was blocking the path forward. Thus you'll be revisiting all maps multiple times over the course of the story, and even more often if you're out for 100% Completion.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: At least twice. The first instance has Cal and BD-1 frantically trying to out-climb the gigantic Gorgara on Dathomir. The second time has the duo running the heck away from a very upset Darth Vader as he tears the Inquisitorius base apart to get them.
- Air-Aided Acrobatics: On Zeffo, a good chunk of the planet is connected by a series of tunnels full of compressed air. As soon as the manholes leading to the tunnel system are opened, Cal can use the resulting upstream to reach higher places with ease.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Trilla Suduri, a.k.a. the Second Sister. Even more tear-jerking when she comes so close to repenting and returning to the Light Side, only to be slain by Darth Vader.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: You will need to do this to find certain chests, secrets and echoes.
- Amazon Brigade: The majority of force users in the story are female, far more than in prior games. Cere, the Second Sister, the Ninth Sister, and Merrin are all more prominent and have more screen time than their male counterparts aside from Cal himself. There’s also a fairly popular PC mod to let you play as “Gal Kestis."
- Ambiguous Gender: The three Zeffo Sages whose tombs are visited over the course of the story — Eilram, Miktrull, and Kujet — are only ever referred as "they", and when one is heard speaking late in the game, the recording uses a male and female voice actor speaking in concert.
- Anachronism Stew: The Second Sister is shown using a TIE/IN Interceptor as her personal vehicle some eleven years too early. Another can be seen getting shot down by an LAAT/i above Kashyyyk. Explanation
- And the Adventure Continues: After destroying the holocron so that the Empire can't find it, opting to let the Force decide the children's fate, Cal turns to his friends and asks what they want to do next. Smash to Black as the credits roll.
- And Then What?: Merrin repeatedly points out the inherent flaws of Cal and Cere's quest to find the Force-sensitive children.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Most chests don't contain anything other than new color schemes for Cal's clothes, BD-1 or the Mantis, plus the occasional lightsaber component to visually customize your only weapon (not that you really get much out of the latter, given how hectic the game tends to be).
- Androcles' Lion: Midway through the game, Cal finds a wounded giant Shyyyo Bird on Kashyyyk and decides to heal it. The bird repays him by giving him a ride to the top of the Wroshyr tree in what is basically the only instance of fast travel in the game.
- And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Cal can find plant seeds all over the universe, which he can then plant into Greez's terrarium on the ship. The next time he enters the ship, the plant will have grown and stays like this for the rest of the game.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Using Force powers outside of combat to traverse obstacles doesn't cost Cal any Force energy.
- There are no achievements or additional content gated behind higher difficulty levels. The player is free to dynamically adjust their difficulty setting up or down depending on whether they're looking for a challenge, or if said challenge was being too much to handle. Difficulty changes can only be done outside of combat, however.
- If you die, the enemy or boss that killed you "picks up" all your XP. If you hit them once, you regain it all, and completely restore your health and Force energy. You also bank any skill points you gain, meaning you don't lose those if you die.
- Unexplored edges of the map are highlighted various colors depending on what skills you have and are needed to continue (bright yellow for progress that doesn't require any skills, red for unobtained skills, green for obtained skills), making it much easier to see where you haven't been, where you can't go yet, and where you once couldn't go but can now.
- On taking a fatal fall, Cal respawns to a nearby spot having incurred only a small health penalty. Given how tricky the platforming can be, it sure beats having to restart from the last save point.
- Falling in the middle of combat also respawns you immediately in the instance before you fell. In theory, falling in combat is treated like a weak hit from an enemy.
- Unfortunately this does not apply for the final boss fight, which requires platforming. Fall then, and you die instantly.
- There is no health penalty at all for falling to your death on the lowest difficulty setting, meaning players stuck on a particularly difficult jumping puzzle can make repeated attempts at it without either suffering Death of a Thousand Cuts or finally succeeding only to become easy prey for the very next enemy they encounter.
- Unlike in other Soulslike games, Cal can save and spend skill points at meditation spots without respawning enemies. Only by selecting the separate "Rest" option will enemy placements be refreshed, so players who have cleared out a sizable chunk of a given map could elect to just quick save and carry on with their businesses without fear of powerful monsters popping back up. Leaving and returning to a planet will still cause enemies to respawn, however.
- If you die, any story cutscenes and dialogue you saw won't repeat itself. Meaning dying to a boss doesn't force you to sit through an unskippable intro or mid-battle cutscene.
- The final section of the game, Fortress Inquisitorius, cannot be reaccessed after completing it. To ensure no Permanently Missable Content, any databank scans that are missed will automatically register after the credits roll.
- While story progress relies mostly on manual save points, if you create a shortcut or obtain a collectible they will not be lost if you die.
- Apocalyptic Log: Some of the Force Echoes Cal finds throughout the game detail the untimely demise of their creators. Cal is also following the journal of deceased Jedi Eno Cordova, shown to him by BD-1 as he unlocks various areas.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: While Cere and Merrin both show themselves to be valuable allies in combat, they usually stay behind on the Mantis, while Cal sets out with only BD-1 to watch his back (literally). Storywise, this is justified in that Cere nearly fell to the dark side in her escape from the Fortress Inquisitorious and is hiding herself from combat and the force as a response and that Merrin, though she is interested in traveling with Cal and is interested in him personally, isn't invested in his holocron plan and even sees the flaws in it.
- Artificial Gill: Rebreather is a breathing device acquired midway through the game that lets Cal dive underwater to reach new paths and sunken treasure chests.
- Artificial Stupidity: Most mooks have a specific radius in which they attack and chase you. Walk just slightly out of the radius, and they stop attacking. Yes, they might just turn around and walk back while being right in front of you, in lightsaber distance. You can attack them, move out of their radius, and attack them again and they will never retaliate.
- Ascended Meme: During the attack on the Imperial refinery on Kashyyyk, two stormtroopers remark that they will surely win because they have the high ground.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Data entries on various enemies provide hints on how to overcome them. Haxion Brood Bounty Hunters, for example, are rendered helpless when you destroy their jet packs.
- Attack Reflector:
- As usual, the simplest and most efficient way to deal with Stormtroopers is to kill them with their own blaster fire. It works equally well against the Nightbrother Archers on Dathomir. Just look out for any charged shots. Killing 100 enemies this way unlocks an achievement.
- Grenades and rockets can be returned to sender with a well-timed application of Force Push. This is a lot more difficult to pull off than blaster deflection and thus a lot more dangerous, especially because their blast radius is very small and easy to avoid. This gets easier once Empowered Slow is unlocked, though, but careful timing and positioning are still key. Naturally, you get another achievement for doing this often enough.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Appropriately enough, the double-bladed lightsaber. While superior in crowd-controlling and blaster deflection than Cal's default one-bladed model, it considerably lacks in mobility due to its lengthy animations and combos, and is more awkward when deflecting blaster shots as Cal has to turn himself often to block with both ends of the weapon. Its throw attack is also much less effective compared to the single saber, as it only orbits a small area around Cal instead of flying to and striking a distant target. It gets better after being upgraded into the Split Saber, however.
- One late game ability gives BD-1 the option to hack and assume control over KX-Series Security Droids. This sounds awesome in theory, but you have to weaken them significantly first - and in all but one areas where they appear, they are the strongest enemies anyway, so taking them over doesn't really give you any advantage, as they were the main threat to begin with.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Cal finally being knighted by Cere is a quiet but powerful moment.
- Backtracking: The structure of the main story is non-linear similar to a Metroidvania game. At least three planets (Bogano, Zeffo, Kashyyyk) have to be visited twice mandatorily.
- Badass Normal: The Purge Troopers, despite lacking Force-sensitivity and possessing no fancy abilities aside from their martial arts skills, are still trained specifically to hunt Jedi by Darth Vader and his disciples, thus giving them a degree of resistance to Cal's powers, making them quite dangerous to the player, especially in groups.
- Bad Boss: Who else but Darth Vader? Killing Trilla might be understandable if he overheard her almost making a Heel–Face Turn, but then he destroys several platforms that several Stormtroopers were on just to stop Cal from escaping.
- Bad Future: Depicted through a Force-vision experienced by Cal: he finds the Holocron and does use it to rebuild the Order with him as its new grandmaster training several Force-sensitive children... but unfortunately, the Empire eventually finds their hideout and attacks them. Cal is forced to surrender to the Second Sister in order to spare his students, and he ends up becoming an Inquisitor. His students are then are all locked up in Imperial facilities to suffer the same fate.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: While Stormtroopers are often seen losing against the native fauna where they are stationed, they are seen using excessive force when they do get the upper hand, like a trio of Stormtroopers on Kashyyyk blasting a lone Slyyyg with rockets or two Scout Troopers beating on a lowly Sprat.
- Bag of Spilling: Applied in the backstory. Cal's damaged connection to the force explains why he starts without several core force powers (such as push, pull, and jump) a padawan his age would be expected to have.
- Bat Out of Hell: The Gorgara is a Chirodactyl, a colossal bat-like monster from Dathomir which is fought as a boss in two parts, the first inside a cave and the second in free fall on air.
- Beef Gate: The Mantis can travel to Dathomir right after the first visit to Bogano, long before the story necessitates it, but Cal likely won't last long against the tougher enemies without the health upgrades and extra powers he can unlock by following the main path — easily exemplified by the powerful nydak lingering right at the start of the area. Even if Cal gets past the enemies, he won't even be able to make much progress before having to turn back due to lacking the correct abilities. A few cosmetics and essences can be found, though, giving a small boost for the early game, and the double-bladed lightsaber at the end of the accessible area can make the imperial troops on Zeffo easier to deal with.
- Being Tortured Makes You Evil: All Imperial Inquisitors are former Jedi who were captured and tortured until they submitted to the Dark Side under Palpatine's authority.
- Bifurcated Weapon: Upon reaching Planet Ilum and finding a split Kyber crystal, Cal creates a Split Saber from the remains of both Jaro Tapal's and Cere Junda's Lightsabers.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Despite having seemingly been dispatched earlier, Cere returns at the last second to save Cal from being killed by Darth Vader.
- BD-1 saves Cal's life at least twice by shorting out something important at the last moment.
- Big Good: Master Eno Cordova takes up the mantle in the story. He is the one who laid the path to his holocron that drives the plot of the game, and though he appears to be deceased, he still advises Cal from beyond the grave and provides him the pep talk he needs during his Darkest Hour.
- Big "NO!":
- Cal does this several times when he sees anyone he befriends being in danger. His most notable one, however, is when he is confronted by a dark vision of his master, Jaro Tapal, who claims his death is on Cal's hands The Big "NO!" in question from Cal comes when the vision declares that he is no Jedi, while shattering the lightsaber Jaro's living incarnation gave him.
- In a flashback, Cere lets one out in captivity when she sees her former apprentice become the Second Sister, before using the dark side of the Force briefly to break free and escape.
- Binomium ridiculus: Perhaps an unintentional example. The bat-creature Cal fights on Dathomir is officially a "chirodactyl". Those are both fully legitimate Greek roots to use in naming conventions. "Chiro" comes from the Greek for "hand", and "dactyl" from Greek for "finger". Thus "chirodactyl" means... "handfinger". Compare with the "pterodactyl", which means "wing finger", indicating that, like bats, the wings of the pterodactyl are their hands, and the bones distributed throughout are their elongated fingers. Hence why the bat family today are known as chiroptera: the hand-wings. Unlike "chiroptera" and "pterodactyl", "chirodactyl" doesn't actually indicate anything about the creature, and instead hints at a creature whose distinguishing feature is a hand made of fingers. Or perhaps a finger made of hands.
- Bittersweet Ending: Cere's attempt to redeem the Second Sister fails due to intervention from Vader and Cal and Cere barely manage to escape from the Dark Lord of the Sith with their lives. However, they manage to find and destroy the holocron which contains the locations of all Force-sensitive children across the galaxy, preventing the Empire from getting to them.
- Blade Lock: Duels against lightsaber-wielding opponents will have these in spades, where you have to Press X to Not Die or face taking damage. One such example with the Ninth Sister ends the fight.
- Bleak Level: Dathomir is a deserted planet full of hostile wildlife, where even plants and fungi look depressing and/or scary. The sky is likewise tinted in a bright red.
- Bloodless Carnage: Despite being able to dismember or bisect droid and animal enemies, no blood or dismemberment is used for humanoid enemies except in story-centric elements, with only orange burn marks from the lightsaber due to the blade cauterizing the wounds (as is traditional). Wyyyschokks mangling stormtroopers to death likewise leaves no blood to be seen.
- Blood Knight: Based on some of their combat chatter, Purge Troopers seem to really enjoy their job and relish going toe to toe with a Jedi.
- Book Ends: The Second Sister is both the first boss fought during the tutorial level and the final boss fought during the climax. Darth Vader technically qualifies as the final confrontation, but his "fight" could hardly be considered as such.
- Bonus Dungeon: Not a dungeon per se, but the "Meditation training" allows the player to refight all enemy types and bosses in various arenas. It also includes a spectator mode.
- Boring, but Practical: Using Force Push to send enemies off cliffs to their deaths might not be as flashy as lightsaber combat, but it's a very effective way of making many difficult group encounters more manageable, especially when fully upgraded.
- Boss Banter: Bosses with lightsabers can toss out intimidating comments at Cal when you fight them.
- Boss Rush: One of the Meditation Training challenges throws every lightsaber-wielding boss at you.
- Break Meter: Both Cal and melee weapon-wielding foes have a block meter that diminishes as they guard against attacks or have their own attacks parried. When emptied, it forces a stun state, leaving them wide open to punishment.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Saw's Partisan group makes heavy use of salvaged Clone Wars era wargear. Most notably they have managed to salvage several LAAT/i gunships which they have put to effective use against Imperial TIE Fighters as well as being used as troop transports. During the Partisans' assault on the refinery prison cells, Saw uses a Clone Wars-era DC-17 blaster pistol, while most of the Partisans use DC-15S blaster carbines.
- Brick Joke: The achievement for discovering the Bogano Vault early in the game is "A Long Time Ago". The achievement for filling out the entire map on every planet, inevitably one of the final ones to be unlocked, is "A Galaxy Far, Far Away".
- Brutal Bonus Level: Meditation Training challenges have 3 optional objectives - one of which is a No-Damage Run. What makes these hard is the sheer amount of enemies thrown your way.
- Bubblegloop Swamp: The Swamp of Sacrifice on Dathomir overlaps this with Bleak Level, as there is next to no wildlife in the swamp. Another swamp-like area can be found on Zeffo.
- Buried Alive: The ultimate fate of Taron Malicos after being beaten by Cal, Merrin uses her Dathomirian magic to have the earth beneath him swallow him whole. Making matters worse, she points out that he will eventually die of this, either of asphyxiation or starvation.
- But Thou Must!: As part of the prologue, Prauf begins to fall to what will be his death, and has to be saved by Cal using the Force. Despite being foolhardy for a Jedi in hiding to do, the player must press the prompt to use the Force for the game to continue or the scene will loop endlessly.
- Button Mashing: Happens all the time to avoid grab attacks or escape scripted boss attacks. Can be turned off as of May 2020.
- The Cameo: Two from the overarching Skywalker Saga.
- Obi-Wan briefly appears when Cere shows Cal her Holocron, relaying his warning message from Rebels.
- During a flashback, when training with his master and Clone Troopers there is a brief appearance by Palpatine ordering the Clones to excecute Order 66.
- Darth Vader shows up at the very end to serve as the true final boss.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Optional dialogue between Cal and Merrin has both characters refer to the Gorgara as a "bat".
- Call-Back: The opening shot is a subversion. It calls back to the frequent use of dramatic camera work moving cameras around ships that the franchise both innovated and made famous. Only instead of a massive starship out in space just before a glorious combat, it's a junk ship being scrapped for parts on a garbage planet.
- Call-Forward:
- Trilla telling the heroes to "Avenge us." before dying is reminiscent of Maul's final words in Star Wars Rebels, that being "He [Luke] will avenge us.".
- On Bogano, Cere tells Cal there's someone he needs to meet. She's talking about BD-1, but he assumes she's talking about Jedi, so when he first meets BD-1, the scene echoes Luke's first encounter with Yoda on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back.
- There are four nods to The Force Awakens, the opening chapter of the sequel trilogy films:
- The game begins with Cal working as a scrapper on the planet Bracca, salvaging decommissioned Venator-class Star Destroyers from the prior Clone Wars. Remember that we first saw Rey as a scavenger on the planet Jakku, exploring the wreckage of Imperial Star Destroyers from the Galactic Civil War three decades prior?
- When Cal encounters the Haxion Brood bounty hunters for the first time, he fights a bounty hunter droid that looks like the one that stood at the entrance to Maz Kanata's castle. He encounters more droids looking similar to that one after he escapes captivity.
- Greez mentions that he knows a castle on Takodana where you can get great drinks.
- And lastly, when he travels to the planet Ilum, the first thing we see is that a huge trench has been dug through it while it is being mined by the Empire for its immense kyber crystal reserves. The visual dictionary for The Rise of Skywalker confirms that it indeed eventually becomes Starkiller Base, a powerful system-obliterating superweapon wielded by the First Order.
- The location of the final battle against the Second Sister is eerily similar to the carbonite freezing chamber on Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back. Fittingly, Darth Vader himself shows up right after Cal defeats the former.
- Camera Lock-On: Just like a 3-D The Legend of Zelda game, you can lock-on to an enemy, causing all camera movement and your attacks and dodges to be centered on them.
- Cave Behind the Falls: In the Shadowlands on Kashyyk, there is a cave behind a small waterfall that's just a little conspicuously out of the way. Inside there is a treasure chest.
- Central Theme: Loss and past trauma, and moving forward from it.
- Prior to the game's start, Cal loses his Jedi Master during Order 66, and has to go into hiding as a result. The experience has left him partially cut off from the Force, as well as crippling Survivor's Guilt. He is eventually able to heal his connection to the Force, and learns to forgive himself for the loss of his Master, Jaro Topal, with the help of his new friends and steadily renewed faith in himself.
- Also prior to the game's start, Cere lost her Padawan, Trilla, after she was captured and tortured by the Empire to give up her location. She has never forgiven herself for it, and in a fit of rage, gave into the Dark Side of the Force. As a result, she chose to cut herself off from the Force. Eventually, thanks to Cal's support and her renewed hope in rebuilding the Jedi, she reconnects with the Force and ensures Cal's safety.
- Merrin is the sole survivor of the Night Sisters, and has harbored an extreme hatred for those who slaughtered her people ever since. Unfortunately, she is misled into believing that the ones who killed her people were the Jedi. Upon meeting Cal and bonding over their mutual loss, Merrin is able to calm her rage and put her abilities to a more productive use, rather than simply staying on Dathomir.
- The Second Sister AKA Trilla, Cere's Padawan, understandably loathes Cere for giving her up to the Empire. This hate allows her to be a powerful Force user, but at the expense of her own happiness. When Cere admits her wrongdoing and offers Trilla another chance, Trilla seems like she's about to move on, as well... Until Darth Vader cuts that short.
- Taron Malicos, another former Jedi, completely goes off the deep end due to the loss of the Jedi Order. His way of coping comes when he falls to the Dark Side for his own enjoyment, even at the cost of misleading Merrin about the true murderers of her people.
- Challenge Run: In the combat challenges, you'll earn one star for finishing each challenge, but you can earn another one by never using stim canisters and a third one for never taking a single hit.
- Combat Sadomasochist: Some of the Purge Troopers are like this. They giggle when you parry their attacks, yell things like "More, give me more!" and "Whoo! Hit me, baby!" when you damage them, and laugh slightly when you kill them.
- Canon Immigrant: Two of the Kashyyyk enemies, the Wyyyschokks and the Flame Beetles were originally from Legends. The Wyyyschokks were first mentioned in Han Solo and the Lost Legacy and Flame Beetles originally debuted on the ninety-first issue of the original Marvel Star Wars comics, "Wookiee World".
- Continuity Nod:
- When Cere shows Cal a Holocron, it plays Obi-Wan's warning message.
- Merrin also references the massacre of the Nightsisters during the Clone Wars by General Grievous, saying she was just a child at the time who was left the Sole Survivor of the Nightsisters.
- The AT-ATs on Kashyyyk are an early variant identical to the ones seen in Star Wars Rebels right down to round blaster turrets on its chin, dorsal gunner turret and lack of protruding viewport.
- Cal enters the same crystal cave on Ilum from the Clone Wars.
- Trooper dialogue can also contain little nods, with one such trooper on Kashyyyk explicitly mentioning being glad they have the high ground.
- On Kashyyyk, Cal enters the now-dilapidated tree hut from which Yoda commandeered the Wookiee troops during the battle seen in Revenge of the Sith, and if Cal dives into the basin that is been overlooked by it he can even find the submerged remains of a NR-N99 Persuader-class droid enforcer tank.
- This is not the first time that a list of Force Sensitives was found, and then subsequently destroyed so the Emperor can't get his hands on them.
- Convection, Schmonvection: The Inquisitorius base has a flowing bed of lava going right under the floor of the indoor dojo that's only separated from the training ring above by a series of perforated grates. Later on, the whole bridge area leading up to the interrogation chamber runs over an even larger lava pool. Considering the base's chief metal construction and the place having virtually no coolant system, it's a miracle that the Imperial forces inside haven't roasted themselves alive yet.
- Colossus Climb: Cal climbs an AT-AT for a High-Speed Hijack on Kashyyyk.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Force Push doesn't work as well on all story bosses; They might be stunned, but they are not thrown into the abyss like normal enemies would. However, it's interestingly averted with the bounty hunter bonus bosses: If you time your attack right, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from pushing them into the abyss and thereby killing them in seconds.
- Controllable Helplessness: When Cal is captured by the Gorgara, you can mash buttons as Cal tries to get free from its claws.
- Cool Starship: The Stinger Mantis is a sleek stunner of a luxury space yacht, and you can pimp it out with many different paint jobs for that personal touch.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover art for the standard edition of the game shows Greez brandishing a pistol, whereas he's a decidedly sedentary companion in the actual game.
- Critical Annoyance: When you're low on life, the life bar turns pink and flashes red. For a number of players, the moment this starts to happen would be your cue to pop in a stim - but this may end up being your undoing if you're not fully aware that you need a critical second to complete the healing procedure - something that your enemies may not give you as they relentlessly attack you unless you use Force Slow on all of them to escape and get some breathing room.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Cal is utterly outclassed by Darth Vader and spends most of the encounter running away. But with BD-1’s help, he does manage to land one good hit on the Sith Lord… only for Vader to shrug it off and return the favor.
- Cutscene Boss: The final confrontation is against Darth Vader himself which is composed of Cal mostly running away and doing quick time events to block and evade his attacks. Justified since he couldn't have possibly taken on Vader in a straight fight himself and what few attacks he did try were utterly ineffective.
- Cycle of Hurting: There's no such thing as Mercy Invincibility in the galaxy far, far away. Getting caught in a Sith's or Purge Trooper's combo attacks can easily reduce Cal from full health to nearly (or totally) dead in three seconds or less. This is particularly dangerous when forced into a corner because, unlike in most similar games, you can't dodge or evade through enemies, and the oftentimes suboptimal camera angles tend to make it difficult to see what enemies are about to do. Thus, if you get boxed in, you're as good as dead.
- Dark Action Girl: The Second and Ninth Sisters are members of the Inquisitorius division with the former serving as the game's main antagonist. There is also Nightsister Merrin, who is a downplayed example due to siding with Cal, but is still fairly ruthless and brutal.
- Death from Above: When jumping and there's an enemy immediately underneath, the player is given a prompt to let Cal perform a heavy downward attack that deals major, if not fatal, damage to the hapless victim.
- Death of a Child: During Cal's visions near the end of the game, a kid is shown to be is shot by Imperial Troopers.
- Death World: Kashyyyk, as usual. The planet is dangerous enough up in the trees where the Wookies live, but venturing down to the forest floor is practically suicide. Down there, even the flowers are out for your blood, not to mention all the nasty critters that call the damp darkness home. And then there is Dathomir...
- Decapitation Presentation: The Second Sister taunts Cal with this prospect during their final duel.
- Degraded Boss:
- The Imperial security droid is first introduced as a somewhat easy boss, before appearing elsewhere as regular enemies.
- The first time an AD-AD is fought, it gets a top-screen lifebar like all bosses. In every other instance, it is treated like a standard (albeit rare) enemy.
- Derelict Graveyard: The game opens on Bracca, a planet where Clone Wars era Republic and Separatist ships are being dismantled for scrap.
- Developer's Foresight:
- Enemies will comment on your actions during combat, like if you like to hold the block button or roll too much. Keep your distance like a smart Dark Souls or Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice player or exit combat, and they will mock you. Stormtroopers call out who gets killed and will specially call when you take out all the ranged or combat troopers first.
- Every time Cal customizes his lightsaber, there's a brief animation of him igniting the blade and inspecting it. During the brief period where Cal's lightsaber is damaged and unusable, there's a single opportunity to customize it by backtracking to the Mantis's work desk. If done, the animation still plays, but the blade won't ignite.
- Averted with underwater chests. Every part of the typical animation plays except for the bit where BD jumps into and out of the chest.
- After Cal is captured by bounty hunters and sent to Ordo Eris, he is separated from BD-1. This means that without him, you can't heal or open the map until you find him again.
- If you single out wildlife when also fighting Stormtroopers, they will cooperate with you. But once all animals are dead they will immediately turn on you while citing a protocol requiring them to leave no survivors.
- On Dathomir, if Cal travels back through the area where he first encountered the Gorgara after retrieving the Astriumnote , he'll radio Merrin and ask if there are any more creatures like it around. She'll be impressed that he managed to take on the beast and win, ultimately thanking Cal for ridding Dathomir of it.
- Didn't Think This Through: Cal ends one fight with the Second Sister in the traditional Jedi way, by disarming her and grabbing her lightsaber... which promptly latches onto his Echo power and shows her all the pain she went through, wracking him with her torment and allowing her to take the Holocron and flee.
- Merrin points out that Cal and Cere's quest to find the Force-sensitive children so they can rebuild the Jedi Order will turn them into targets.
- Diegetic Interface: The game presents an especially elegant one in the form of BD-1's holomap. As Cal progresses through various areas, the droid maps out each room and hallway, adding them to a multi-tier map of everything explored on the planet. When consulting the map, Cal sees it being projected in real-time by BD-1. This is important because looking at the map does not actually pause the game and doing so while there are enemies around may be ill-advised.
- Disc-One Nuke: You can get the Saberstaff earlier than normal by going to Dathomir as early as possible. If you can survive long enough to get it, the planets you were supposed to explore before it become a bit easier (since the Saber Staff adds Crowd Control ability, and has an easier time deflecting blaster fire).
- Disney Villain Death:
- With Force Push and Pull and a nearby bottomless pit, Cal could teach his enemies how to fly. It doesn't matter how much health the target has, a fall's a fall, though larger enemies are immune to this by virtue of being too big to Push or Pull. The Ninth Sister meets her Uncertain Doom this way.
- Cere serves as a rare heroic example. It's actually subverted in her case, as while she's seemingly tossed into a lava pit, she later returns just in the nick of time to save Cal from being killed by Darth Vader. The game does not provide details on how she managed to survive.
- Doomed by Canon: The heroes' goal at the start is to found a new Jedi Order. Given that the game takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and given that there is a decided lack of any sort of Jedi Order in any of the later movies, most players will realize immediately that their quest isn't going to succeed the way they want it to. Of course it doesn't, but for a good cause: to prevent the Empire from knowing the locations of every Force-sensitive in the galaxy.
- Door to Before: Due to the amount of backtracking inherent in the gameplay, all maps have numerous shortcuts that you can open up to make subsequent visits less of a hassle. You even get a notification on screen every time you do this.
- Double Jump: Standard fare for Jedi, but Cal's damaged connection to the Force makes it unavailable until he relearns it about halfway through the story.
- Double Weapon: Jaro Tapal's lightsaber originally had two blades before half of its hilt was shot off by an Order 66 affected Clone Trooper. The second blade gets restored later on by Cal, whether early on at Dathomir or Bogano, or halfway into the game on Kashyyyk, where it's required.
- Dramatic Irony: The final act of the game revolves around Cal trying to keep a list of Force sensitive children out of the hands of Darth Vader. Those who follow the Expanded Universe closely would know that there was likely no danger in letting him get it - he'd previously destroyed another copy of this list to prevent Palpatine from replacing him, and would likely have done the same to this copy.
- The Dreaded: Darth Vader, as is natural. His name isn't even spoken aloud, but his presence is chillingly felt when Cere tells Cal that when she was captured and tortured by the Empire, she initially proved resistant, but then, 'a shadow' came to her, and inflicted such horrific, unimaginable pain upon her that she had no choice but to give up the location of her Padawan, Trilla, leading to her capture, torture, and turning into an Inquisitor. And then, when Vader makes his appearance near the end after Cal defeats Trilla, it is a very chilling moment. The look of absolute fear and dread that comes over both Trilla's and Cere's faces when they see the Dark Lord of the Sith says it all.Cal: That doesn't look good.Cere: It isn't. It's him.
- Dual Boss:
- Multiple boss enemies are fought alone the first time you encounter them, only for pairs of them to show up later. AT-STs and Purge Troopers are more like tough normal enemies, while Haxion Brood mercenaries play it straight.
- The final Meditation Training challenge forces you to take on the Second and Ninth Sisters at the same time.
- Dual Wield: Cal builds a new lightsaber in Ilum that allows him to briefly separate both blades and make a devastating scissors-like slash with them, inflicting high damage at the cost of Force energy (in saberstaff mode, it deals crowd control damage, whereas in single-blade mode, it deals incredibly high single-target damage). Then he goes back to the Tomb of Kujet on Dathomir to take on Taron Malicos, who fights him with two lightsabers, too.
- Dynamic Loading: The narrow passages that Cal has to pass through are probably meant to mask loading times between areas.
- Early Game Hell: The early stages of the game can be quite challenging for a new player, especially with no skills. The fact that the Oggo Bogdo has a reputation as a serious (optional) Wake-Up Call Boss and that an unprepared player can at least lose a fair chunk of health to basic enemies if not be killed outright attests to this. Things do get better once Cal learns a few more skills and gains upgrades, but player skill is still a factor.
- Eldritch Location: Dathomir, naturally. Being covered and shrouded in the Dark Side is bad enough, but it has been nearly deserted since suffering a brutal genocide during the Clone Wars, with only a few surviving hostile Nightbrothers and terrifying monsters like the chirodactyls making the planet their home. One inhabitant, Taron Malicos, is a Dark Jedi who survived Order 66 and went mad because of the planet's dark magick.
- Elite Mooks: The various kinds of Purge Troopers are rare but vastly more dangerous than any other non-boss human enemy in the game. They are specifically trained to fight Jedi and thus more resilient to being thrown around by Force abilities, even taking advantage of being Force Pulled to sucker punch Cal.
- Enemy Chatter: Cal can eavesdrop on tons of idle chatter from humanoid enemies. In combat, they'll taunt Cal, give orders, or react with doubt and fear as Cal slices up their allies.
- Enemy Scan: Every time you defeat a new enemy for the first time, BD-1 can scan it to give Cal information about it so that he can better know how to defeat them the next time he encounters them. Some enemies, including bosses, cannot be scanned, and information about them is automatically updated to the enemy databank after the battle.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Fortress Inquisitorius
looks real friendly.
- Evolving Attack: Every new Jedi mechanic that Cal learns can get between two and five upgrades that influence its power, reach, or radius. For instance, Force Push can be improved to be stronger so more sturdy enemies are affected by it as well, or its range can be increased so it hits multiple enemies at once.
- Fade to White: Occurs when you enter/exit a meditation circle, and also at the start and end of visions Cal encounters inside the Tomb of Kujet. There's also one when Cal nearly drowns after a collapse deep in the Ilum caves separates him from BD-1.
- Fake Longevity: The game doesn't have any fast travel mechanics whatsoever, collectibles are not shown on the map, and the map can only be accessed when pausing - prepare for a lot of running back and forth, especially on Zeffo and Dathomir. There are also certain smaller things that make the game longer than it has to be, like unskippable cutscenes, long and repeated animations for every collectible, and unskippable dialog everytime you change planets.
- Fan Boy: An incidental bit of dialogue reveals Greez to be an ardent admirer of Jedi High Council member, Yaddle.
- The Final Temptation: At the end of the game, having retrieved Cordova's holocron, Cere suggests using the holocron to find all Force-sensitive children across the galaxy in an attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order. Cal, however, decides it best to leave their destinies to the Force. To ensure this, Cal destroys the artifact, ensuring that the Empire will never know what was in that holocron.
- Final Boss Preview: You fight the Second Sister a total of three times before the final confrontation. In the first two, you're heavily outclassed and the fight ends after a bit without a winner.
- Finishing Move: If you leave a trooper stunned (usually easily accomplished by parrying one of their hits) and your next hit is lethal, Cal will whip out a stylish final blow to the enemy.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: Stormtroopers and bounty hunters are sometimes armed with a flamethrower.
- First-Person Perspective: The game is played in third person, but when Cal grabs Trilla's lightsaber, his Psychometry kicks in and he gets a first-person view of how she became an Inquisitor.
- Fission Mailed: At one point, Cal is suddenly faced with an unusual boss that laters turn out to be a bounty hunter of the Haxion Brood out to get him. The boss fight goes on as usual, only for the bounty hunter to whip out a stun device that completely incapacitates him, followed by the familiar death screen fading in. This time, however, you don't get prompted to RESPAWN, but to REAWAKEN, which Cal does in an off-world prison cell. Thankfully, after escaping, you'll get revenge on the bounty hunter that captured you. After that, the other hunters of the Brood will randomly hunt you down as Optional Bosses, but they won't cause any further fission mailures.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- During the tutorial sequence, as Prouf is about to fall to his death only to be saved by Cal instinctively using Force Slow, an Imperial probe droid hovers in the background. After the dream sequence that makes up the next scene, the Inquisitors show up to find Cal, kicking off the main plot of the game.
- You discover a Force Echo of a Stormtrooper being attacked by the Albino Wyyyschokk just before you jump down into what turns out to be its lair.
- In the ending, Merrin is overheard on the communicator telling Greez that she can feel that Cal and Cere are alive, despite us seeing Vader effortlessly fling Cere into a pit of magma just two minutes earlier. Sure enough, Cere shows up to take on Vader just a few seconds later.
- Flawless Victory: Completing a Meditation Combat Challenge in the 2020 Star Wars Update without taking any damage awards you a performance rating of 3 stars.
- Foreboding Architecture: Some boss fights (such as the Ninth Sister or Gorgara) are quite predictable before they start: As you come close, you can already see a suspicuously big and circular arena-like area below you.
- Foregone Conclusion: The game is set five years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. Given the state of the Jedi Order at the time of A New Hope, it's clear from the outset that Cal and Cere won't achieve their goal of rebuilding the Order by the end of the game. Reinforced by the fact that Cal slices up the holocron that would've located the future Jedi Order anyway, after everything he and the rest of the crew had been through, to keep the Force-sensitives out of the Empire's hands.
- Foreshadowing:
- The Title Screen shows a wrecked Venator and an escape pod in space. It's the scene of what happened to Cal when Order 66 was initiated and how he ended up on Bracca.
- Cal's lightsaber has a suspiciously-damaged hilt, and the inventory description says it was a gift from Cal's master Jaro Tapal. We later see in a flashback the hilt was damaged from a blaster shot during Order 66, and Jaro gave Cal his lightsaber as he died from his wounds.
- After Cal's second visit to Kashyyyk, Cere mentions that during her torture and interrogation that while she was there a "dark shadow" came to try and break her, foreshadowing the arrival of Darth Vader.
- Friendly Fireproof: Averted. The many Stormtrooper variants that can toss grenades or fire rockets are capable of hurting other Imperial troops with their explosives. Even more, they often do so even if the player is being swamped by their other melee comrades, leading to situations where a Rocket Trooper inadvertently saves Cal from a mob of baton-wielding Scouts because he fired blindly into the scuffle.
- Frozen Foe Platform: There are fast-moving platforms that can only be force frozen in place in order to be used, later, this can be used on enemy units to bypass them.
- Funny Background Event: During Cal and Cere's conversation after Cal beats the Ninth Sister, Greez can't do anything but mindlessly sprinkle seasoning on his food while anxiously looking back and forth. He does it for like two minutes before he finally stops.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- One of the many battle quotes of a Stormtrooper: "Block all you want, I only need a few hits." They're right; if more than three or four blows or bolts get past Cal's guard, he's a goner.
- Cal is still just coming into his powers as a Jedi. This is reflected in his skill tree - the tree stretches out on the menu far beyond what the player can access, symbolizing how much further the power of the Force can be taken than what Cal can access.
- When the Shyyyo bird on Kashyyyk is injured, BD-1 heals it with the same stim it uses during gameplay to heal Cal.
- The final boss is Darth Vader and unlike other bosses, he doesn't display a health bar, Cal cannot attack him directly and all he can do is run away and deflect his attacks during scripted Quick Time Events. Given that Vader has canonically killed several Jedi Masters several magnitude stronger than Cal at his peak, at times while being significantly outnumbered, fleeing is the only wise thing to do.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- The color of Cal's lightsaber beam can be changed at will. In lore, a kyber crystal, which dictates the color of the plasma beam, is transparent before "choosing" its user and altering its own hue to reflect the chosen's spiritual energy. Once a crystal has "chosen" its color, it cannot change again; the only exceptions are crystals "bled" by Dark Side users, which turn red, and bled crystals that have been "purified", which turn white. The game itself acknowledges this when Cal has to turn his new crystal to determine its color, but afterwards all color options become available anyway.
- Haxion Brood mercenaries and their wisecracking Bounty Droids will cheerfully venture deep into the Stygian depths of Dathomir on the off chance that Cal shows up in search of chests. It all makes very little sense outside of gameplay considerations.
- During the Dathomir portion of the game, Cal manages to convince a Nightsister that the Jedi order are the good, peace-loving guys and not at all comparable to the people who massacred their civilization. By the point he does so, he will likely have slaughtered 50+ Nightbrothers in their own village after being explicitly told he's not welcome on the planet by the people who live there. Granted, this was the doing of both Merrin and Taron Malicos in that they were ordered by them to attack them, and Cal acted out of self-defense. But even so...
- Once Merrin is convinced Cal is good and joins the crew, the Nightbrothers and Undead Nightsisters will still appear around Dathomir and attack Cal. While it's conceivable that Merrin might not have bothered or cared to inform the Nightbrothers that Cal is an ally, the Undead Nightsisters are reanimated and controlled by Merrin herself.
- Lightsabers can cut through anything outside of a few rare materials, and a slash intended to kill is almost always lethal. Outside of considerations for gameplay balance, there's no reason why most of the enemies Cal encounters (especially the fauna of the various planets) should be able to take more than one attack to dispatch or take no damage from being parried. Some Tactical Guide entries, such as the one for Jotaz, try to Hand Wave this by saying that the creature has an incredibly thick hide, but it still seems unlikely it would be able to stand up to a lightsaber as well as it does.
- Gang Up on the Human: Zigzagged. Imperial forces do get attacked by wildlife if they end up in the same general area, they will cooperate with you in killing them, but divert attention to Cal if he gets close enough to them. Wild animals also tend to ignore each other in favor of dogpiling Cal at the same time, as evident in the case of Sorc Tormo's pit fight segment, where Flame Beetles, Jotazes, and Wyyyschokks gleefully gang up on the player instead of fighting amongst themselves.
- Gentle Giant: The Binog and the Shyyyo Bird, at first glance, might appear as bosses due to their large, threatening size, but they turn out not to be hostile.
- The Ghost: One of the two additional companions you can pick up is a Bogling, a furry critter native to Bogano that was trapped behind a steel barrier before Cal freed it. It stays on the Mantis out of sight of the party, sometimes hiding under the Holomap Table or in the vents. Greez will begin to notice strange things on the ship and ask about it, but Cal stays quiet.
- Giant Flyer:
- The Shyyyo Bird on Kashyyyk. It fights off the Ninth Sister's ship, and after Cal treats its injury, it gives him a ride to the top of the Origin Tree.
- The Gorgara on Dathomir is, unfortunately, much less friendly.
- Giant Spider:
- Wyyyschokks, large arachnid predators from the Kashyyykian jungles, where they easily dispatch stormtroopers and take multiple lightsaber strikes to put down. They'll also spit webs at Cal to slow him down.
- Dathomir hosts Baneback Spiders. They're nowhere near as huge as the Wyyyschokks mentioned above, but a spider the size of a large dog is still uncomfortably oversized.
- Glass Cannon:
- Played brutally straight on Jedi Grandmaster difficulty, where enemy health stays the same and Cal's attacks still do appreciable damage, but he is effectively rendered a One-Hit-Point Wonder, such that even tiny critters could kill him in a heartbeat.
- All human(oid) enemies that aren't bosses count as well. None of them are particularly resilient, not even the Elite Mooks, but all of them can pile the hurt on Cal in no time if you let your guard down.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: Achievements are awarded for collecting all secrets, chests, skills, companions and mythical monster kills, as well as for completing all maps.
- Gradual Regeneration: Cal's Force meter slowly fills up outside of a battle.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Saw Gerrera's Partisans use grappling hooks slung underneath their pistols and rifles a few times on Kashyyyk.
- Gravity Barrier: While the game doesn't have fall damage, in many parts of the game you cannot jump down from big heights even though you can clearly see the area where you came from below you - you will get the same minor health reduction as in bottomless pits. The most egregious example is in Dathomir's Upper Strangled Cliffs, where you can jump on a slide to the Collapsed Settlement from the one side - but from the other, you're warped back up just a good meter away from the slide.
- Greater-Scope Villain:
- Emperor Palpatine is the head of the Galactic Empire and the greatest evil in the setting, but isn't involved with Cal's story.
- Darth Vader can also be thought as this, given how he commands the Inquisitorius and is also possibly after Eno Cordova's holocron. He is also the final foe Cal faces in the game.
- Green Aesop: Downplayed as it's not the focus, but a lot of Databank entries about the Empire's various machines talk about how the processes that the Empire use to power machinery or make various compounds pollute the planets they're on because of how inefficient they are.
- Grenade Spam: AT-ST have three weapons: their blaster cannon, a rocket launcher and a grenade launcher. The latter releases entire volleys of grenades every time it fires, but its range is fairly short, so the AT-ST will only deploy it if you get too close.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: With Empowered Force Pull, Cal could do this to enemies, first by grabbing a live one, then tossing him at his nearest comrade for a double-kill. Like many combat-related tropes on this page, doing this for the first time nets the player an achievement.
- Guide Dang It!:
- The Sabersmith achievement requires the player to customize every possible component of their lightsaber. What it does not tell anyone is that you cannot be having any part on your saber that belonged to the original lightsaber of Jaro Tapal, even if you're switching back from another part. You also can't use blue and green lightsaber beam colors. You must be having all parts replaced at the same time for the achievement to count.
- The Full Glow-Up achievement is also like that, in that it requires Cal to be having alternate textures equipped on his apparel (Poncho or Outfit doesn't matter), BD-1, and the Mantis all at once.
- Similarly, "A Galaxy Far, Far Away" has caused confusion for players who assumed that having all planets marked 100% explored would net the achievement. In reality, you may still have to hunt around for a few overlooked force echoes for it to register.
- Gun Twirling: Cal draws his lightsaber with a showy twirl of the hilt before igniting the blade.
- The Heavy: The Second Sister is the Inquisitor in hot pursuit of Cal after confronting him in the junkyard planet, and she continues to act as the main antagonist despite being only a fairly low-ranking pawn of the franchise's Greater-Scope Villain, Emperor Palpatine. And by extent, Darth Vader.
- Healing Checkpoint: In addition to functioning as checkpoints, meditation circles allow you to fully replenish your life, Force and stim canisters, although this will also respawn nearby enemies.
- Healing Potion: Stim canisters.
- Heart Container: Cal can find "Force essences" around the galaxy, with every three granting a boost to his maximum health or Force energy. There are also yellow crates that permanently upgrade BD-1's stock of healing stims. BD can carry up to 10, and you start off with 2 stims. So there are 8 stim crates you have to find.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Near the end of the game, Cere offers a defeated Trilla a chance to leave the Inquisitorius and rejoin the Jedi. The Dark Side corruption disappears from Trilla's eyes as she admits she's carried too much hatred in her heart. But before she can accept, Darth Vader arrives and kills her for her failure. Before Vader cuts her down, she begs for Cal and Cere to "Avenge us!".
- Hoist by Their Own Petard:
- Per series tradition, there's you banking Stormtroopers' own blaster bolts right back at them. With Force Slow, you could also Pull them into their own charged blaster shots, and return grenades or rockets to the sender with Push. Doing either enough times unlocks their respective achievements.
- The most efficient way to destroy AT-STs is to reflect their own blasters, grenades and missiles back at them.
- The only reason the Empire's initial assault on Kashyyyk fails is because Cal turned one of their own AT-AT's against their ground forces.
- Hopeless Boss Fight:
- The confrontation with the Second Sister in the prologue. You're expected to run out of health without damaging her much or at all; while you can whittle her health down with enough skill it's incredibly difficult, and the fight ends in a cutscene after either you run out of health or her health reaches 75%. This continues into your second and third battles with her. Cal can only deplete her health to 50% before a cutscene ends the fight, and the third fight ends with a cutscene just a few minutes in. The final duel with her, however, has them both see the duel to the end.
- The first time you run into the enforcers sent by the Haxion Brood, a crime syndicate that Greez pissed off in the past, the hunter you run into will disable Cal with a stun grenade and take him captive no matter what you do. You do get back at them later on, though.
- The Post-Final Boss, which is none other than Darth Vader, doesn't even have a health bar. The difference between him and Cal is unfathomable, with Cal pushing himself far past his limits just to survive while Vader is literally tearing the base apart with subtle gestures. Unusually, Cal and Cere manage to survive and successfully escape from him, if only by taking advantage of the environment, flooding the tunnel they're fighting in and forcing Vader to focus on the rising water over them.
- Hope Spot:
- When the Second Sister/Trilla is beaten towards the end of the game, it seems like reconciliation between her and her former mentor seems likely... but then Trilla's face contorts with horror and we hear a distinct, raspy breathing sound and Darth Vader shows up. Seconds later, Vader condemns Trilla for failure, and cuts her down.
- Cal sees a past example of one in a Force Echo on Zeffo: the echo has a Jedi Master, Chiata and a clone commander talking after their ship had crashed, the clone assuring her that his men were out looking for her padawan and should find the boy soon. Then the commander gets a personal transmission from Supreme Chancellor Palpatine....
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Story, Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, and Jedi Grandmaster.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Nope. All the Stormtroopers you encounter in this game must've graduated somewhere else because they will hit you at any range if you don't dodge or parry like crazy. Even worse, they will hit you with pinpoint accuracy while you're engaged in a melee fight with Scout Troopers or Purge Troopers, but they'll never hit their allies... unless they're wielding a rocket launcher, and it's by accident.
- Important Haircut: A flashback reveals that Cere cut her long hair prior to the events of the game. The Spartan appearance suits her humble, contrite attitude following her actions during the purge.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Most of the humanoid characters are modeled after their English voice actors.
- Interface Screw: Some bosses, such as Haxion Brood Commandos, and even Trilla in her final boss fight, can throw a flash bomb that fills the screen with a bright light that slowly fades away from the center, making it difficult to see while fighting them.
- Interface Spoiler:
- Around halfway through the game, the structure of the holo map will just neatly tell you how many planets you have left unexplored.
- The image of the Full House achievement spoils the fact that Nightsister Merrin eventually joins the crew long before you meet her for the first time.
- If you duly scan all the enemies you encounter, halfway through the game you will realise that there is a final unused spot in the Imperial enemies databank, beyond even the Ninth and Second Sister. Given that bosses are usually placed at the end and given that they seem to be ranked in terms of power, this missing entry forbodes ill. It is reserved for none other than Darth Vader, whom you encounter during the final mission as the Post-Final Boss.
- Defied with the Double Lightsaber. All of its upgrades are hidden, unlike other upgrades which have locks on it. Even if you notice the empty notches on the upgrade tree, you’ll probably write it off as insignificant.
- Ironic Echo: Right before his duel with Cal, Taron Malicos tells him that Dathomir will be his grave. Right after Malicos loses the duel, Merrin bandies the same line right back at him right before burying him alive with a spell.
- I Shall Taunt You: Stormtroopers, Purge Troopers, Bounty Hunters, and certain boss enemies will do this if Cal is hit multiple times or doesn't attack them.
- Jump Scare:
- As you find a workbench on Kashyyyk you get a "friendly" visit from a Wyyyschokk, a giant spider. Hope you're not arachnophobic. This only triggers if you step on the webbing on the ground and can happen in two other spots, just as you're entering the Shadowlands and in the Albino Wyyyschokk's lair.
- In the final sequence of the game, as you're making your escape from The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, you've seemingly lost Darth Vader and are trying to find a way out to get back to the Mantis when you open a door and Vader's right there already swinging his lightsaber at you. Yikes!
- "Just Frame" Bonus:
- Blocking an attack with perfect timing will have Cal parry without consuming any block meter, usually stunning the foe and/or significantly draining the guard meter of melee weapon-wielding opponents. For blaster attacks, Cal deflects the bolt right back to the sender instead of it flying off randomly.
- Dodging with perfect timing without inputting a direction will have Cal perform a "precision evade", wherein he performs a quick, Matrix-esque dodge and puts him in much better position to counterattack than a standard dodge away. Later on, he can upgrade it to inflict brief Bullet Time and give him a boost of Force energy.
- Just Hit Him: Darth Vader has Cal in a Force Choke and barely even bothers to react when the latter attempts to Force Pull a generator at him, but the act of defiance prompts Vader to fling Cal across the room which gives Cal a chance to flee. Of course, Vader catches up soon enough, but the attempted escape buys enough time for Cere to pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment.
- Kaiju: The Binog is a gargantuan-sized draconic beast native to Bogano which is usually seen resting on the top of a plateau, but can sometimes be seen peeking out at Cal at certain moments. Thankfully, it is a completely friendly Gentle Giant.
- Kill It with Fire: The Flametroopers wield back-mounted flamethrowers that let them deal with Kashyyyk's flora and fauna with relative ease. They also happen to be one of the more dangerous Stormtrooper types out there, as their flame jets can stun-lock Cal in place, and his own recovery animation is often longer than the time it takes for them to start hosing him again. And they don't usually come alone.
- King Mook:
- The Oggdo Bogdo, the Albino Wyyyschokk, the Rabid Jotaz, and the Nydak Alpha are merely larger Palette Swaps of existing creatures with new moves. They are considered bosses and won't respawn if Cal rests at a meditation point. Slaying all four unlocks an achievement.
- A lesser version of the trope takes the form of Cartel bounty hunters and droids. These named characters are often encountered in areas previously visited by Cal, replacing any other enemies who spawn there. Once defeated, however, they don't seem to show up there again.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Purge Troopers are immune to Cal's basic Force techniques, to the point of being able to retaliate violently without taking damage themselves. For instance, if you try to Force-Pull a Purge Trooper for a quick impalement, he'll struggle for a bit before suddenly charging at Cal to deliver a powerful melee strike that hurts and knocks Cal flat on his ass. With Empowered Push, Pull, and Slow, however, they become much more manageable, where one could end fights instantly by flinging them off of ledges to their doom, or slow one down significantly that he could be killed in a single stab.
- Last of His Kind:
- While it's clearly not the case in the series, Cal believes himself to be the last surviving Jedi when Cere rescues him and reveals her plan to rebuild the Jedi Order, though having to stay low and hide probably didn't help in discovering any other survivors.
- The great Shyyyo Bird of Kashyyyk that Cal befriends on the Origin Tree is believed to be this. At one point, the bird gets a surprise shot In the Back courtesy of the Ninth Sister and her fighter ship, prompting a Big "NO!" from Cal (and likely the player as well), but it thankfully survives, and even offers Cal to ride it as fast travel.
- Then there is Nightsister Merrin, who is the last female survivor of her people in Dathomir after they were purged by the Separatists. There are still some Nightbrothers around, but as far as Nightsisters are concerned, she is the last one remaining in the planet.
- The Binog of Bogano. It is said to have an extremely slow breeding rate, to the point only a single specimen of it can exist at a time in the galaxy.
- Left the Background Music On: The game opens with a pounding industrial song with alien lyrics as the camera pans over the scrapyard of Bracca, eventually closing in on Cal and revealing he's listening to the song on headphones — appropriately, the song becomes muffled as he takes the headphones off.
- Light and Mirrors Puzzle: In one room in the Jedi Temple on Ilum, you need to move light through mirrors so that it points towards ice which can then be melted.
- Lightning Bruiser: All Purge Troopers, except for the Electrohammer subtype, are extremely quick with their horribly damaging combos. The same is true for any and all Force-wielding enemies.
- Literal Disarming: Cal can cut off limbs from animal and droid enemies. However, this doesn't work on the humanoid opponents, with the exception of the Ninth Sister, whom he amputates to end their fight.
- Logical Weakness: Darth Vader may be the most terrifying thing in the Galaxy, but he is still a cyborg and reliant upon those parts to survive. A mere electric shock from BD-1 can short-circuit his life-support system, and all those prostheses are vulnerable to water, so Cal and Cere flee by flooding a tunnel and forcing Vader to keep the torrent from overtaking him.
- Lone Wolf Boss: The boss battles against cartel thugs can feel incredibly out of place due to their flimsy connection to the game's main story and have no connection with the Empire whatsoever. The fact that your pilot has a gambling problem is literally the only reason this plot thread exists, which doesn't really justify a bunch of criminals waylaying you in the weirdest places with next to no prior build-up.
- Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: In the first Zeffo tomb, the entombed sage is honored less than the Life-Wind itself, the living Force. The second tomb was instead built to its sage's vainglory, with brutalized laborers worked to death to construct it to their exacting specifications. The final tomb, helpfully located on the ominous world of Danthomir, celebrates the atrocities of its sage, who imposed authoritarian rule, bought supporters with promises of wealth, power, and secret masteries of the Force, and brutally oppressed and slaughtered rebels who fought for liberty and freedom. And like the Rakatan who fell to the depravity and corruption of the Dark Side before them, now nothing remains of their culture but a few crumbling ruins on a handful of worlds too obscure or primordial for new settlers to bother looting.
- Mage Killer: Purge Troopers are Stormtroopers specifically trained to fight and kill Jedi and sport lightsaber-resistant equipment. They also put up more resistance against Cal's Force abilities than normal Stormtroopers.
- Man-Eating Plant: Found in Kashyyyk. The flytrap-like ones can be destroyed, but the vines tipped with stingers are invincible and can only be avoided, forced to temporarily retreat, or used against nearby enemies.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone's reaction when Vader shows up after the final battle. You can see Trilla freeze up and instantly begin resigning herself to death, and Cere - who had just regained her ferocity and will to act - turn guarded and hesitant. And when Vader effortlessly defeats both of them, Cal - the only one who didn't know of him beforehand - can only stare in stunned disbelief. The terrified look on his face as he realizes he'll now have to face a monster he knows he can't even match, let alone defeat, says it all.
- Meaningful Background Event: While Cal and Cere are attempting to persuade Trilla to come back to the light side, a door in the blurred background behind her can be seen starting to open and spraying steam everywhere. Then a very familiar heavy breathing comes into play...
- Mercy Invincibility: Hah, you wish. Enemies can and will work together to stunlock Cal to death if he's not careful.
- Mighty Glacier:
- Imperial security droids (like K-2SO of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story fame) move slowly and telegraph their attacks well in advance, but any hit they land deals high damage.
- Rocket troopers take several seconds to fire their missiles, but a direct hit can take out a huge chunk of your health bar.
- Zeffo Tomb Guardians. They're very durable and walk very slowly. Most of their attacks are very strong but very slow, although a few of their attacks are much faster with almost no telegraphing.
- Mile-Long Ship: A Venator-class Star Destroyer may be seen far in the distance from the landing pad on Zeffo. Fittingly, Cal and BD-1 can explore the inside of it after certain skills/plot coupons have been acquired later in the game.
- Mirror Match: The May 2020 combat arena includes Cal himself, wearing a Inquisitor uniform and wielding a red saber.
- Monster Compendium: You can have BD-1 scan defeated enemies to unlock database entries for them.
- Monstrous Scenery: On Bogano, a huge dragon-like creature known as a Binog can be seen sleeping in the background; info about the creature can be obtained, but it cannot be interacted with. Notably, it disappears as Imperial presence increases on the planet, but returns once they leave.
- Mook Chivalry: Averted with a vengeance. Enemies will mob you all at once if they can, with melee fighters dogpiling you while gunmen shoot into the fray from afar. This is just as dangerous as it sounds.
- Mook Lieutenant: Stormtroopers and Scout Troopers are often found being led by Captains, distinguishable by their orange pauldrons. The Captains can take a few more hits than their standard counterparts and use some extra gear (i.e. grenades), making them a bit more dangerous.
- More Dakka: Heavy Assault Stormtroopers wield multi-barreled blaster cannons that lay down a withering hail of fire that's only interrupted because the weapon is prone to Overheating. The gun also has a small integrated Deflector Shield that provides the wielder with some protection from return fire.
- Multi-Mook Melee: When exploring the Fortress Inquisitorius, the enemy density is much greater than in earlier parts of the game, and you will frequently have to fight up to a dozen enemies at a time. Of particular note is the Inquisitor Dojo where Stormtroopers, Scout Troopers, Purge Troopers, and Security Droids come at you in waves.
- The Meditation Combat Challenges in the 2020 Star Wars Day update are also this.
- Mundane Utility: Cal can use his lightsaber as a torch in dark areas. He also uses the Force to open some doors after unlocking them. This is used for shock value in Cal's vision of how his Jedi Order will fall, where in the vision he ignites his lightsaber... to reveal it's red, and he is an Inquisitor.
- Musical Spoiler: After you defeat Trilla in the final boss fight, players familiar with John Williams' work might recognize when the background music slowly starts to play "Anakin's Dark Deeds", providing Five-Second Foreshadowing to the arrival of Darth Vader.
- My God, What Have I Done?: During the final battle between them, Cere uses the Dark Side to stop Darth Vader. A combination of Cal talking her down and Vader complimenting her on the strength of her hatred make Cere come back to herself, whereupon she has a look of utter horror on her face at her actions, as she realizes she nearly did the same thing she did back when she found out Trilla had become an Inquisitor.
- Mythology Gag:
- Collectible modular components allow Cal to customize his lightsaber's visual appearance, and the options from "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" at Disneyland are available. At least one person
has recreated their IRL lightsaber in-game.
- Cal's lightsaber makes a different activation sound effect depending on the color. Blue uses the classic Jedi ignition sound effect, while green gives it the more aggressive "hiss" sound first used and most commonly associated with Luke's lightsaber in Return of the Jedi.
- The world where Cal (potentially) obtains the double-bladed lightsaber is Dathomir, the home world of Darth Maul, who used a double-bladed lightsaber as his iconic weapon.
- Several paint jobs for the Stinger Mantis reference other ships in the franchise, like the Millennium Falcon and Boba Fett's Slave I.
- The AT-AT shooter sequence uses a cockpit camera angle identical to a few shots of AT-AT pilots during the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.
- One of Cal's ponchos, appropriately titled "Homestead", is patterned after a blanket used as set dressing in the Lars' Tatooine home in A New Hope.
- Taron Malicos, describing how he survived on Dathomir, says that "The Force is a most powerful ally," and shortly after refers to the period they are in as "dark times". The Star Wars Legends comic series set in the same period was titled Dark Times and had the Arc Words of "The Force is a powerful ally."
- Collectible modular components allow Cal to customize his lightsaber's visual appearance, and the options from "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" at Disneyland are available. At least one person
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
- Less individual names than any place or species on Dathomir. Places bear cheerful monikers like "Nightmare Ruins" and "Swamp of Sacrifice" and even colorful flora have names like "Bleeding Gut."
- Later into the game, after Cal gets his master's lightsaber busted at the entrance to the Tomb of Kujet, he walks outside and finds out the true identity of the robed old man on Dathomir, a former Jedi named Taron Malicos. Given that the last name is spelled like the word "malice", you can tell that he's up to no good lately and has most likely fallen to the dark side. And indeed Cal does have to confront and defeat Malicos as a boss later on after getting a new lightsaber.
- New Game Plus: Added to the game in May 2020. While only cosmetics carry over, the player is given new ones only available in NG+.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Yes and no. At certain points in the story, Cal would gain new abilities to help him navigate the world. The subversion is that Cal already knew most of these from the start, but is not able to tap into them due to his wounded connection to the Force. Upon experiencing specific triggers, the connection is slowly repaired, which also jogs his memories of the lessons he learned from Jaro Tapal, and allowing him to reacquire the techniques his late master taught him.
-
Nintendo Hard: The game has been compared to Dark Souls or Sekiro by multiple reviewers, and for good reason. Combat is brutal even on easy difficulty settings, enemies are numerous and merciless, they respawn every time you rest at a meditation circle, even simple Elite Mooks can utterly destroy you in a flash, and bosses will introduce you to a whole new definition of pain. Much like Doom (2016), the easiest difficulty setting gives you a more comfortable margin for error, but the actual gameplay, number of enemies, and their attack patterns all remain the same as they are in harder modes; the game still requires you to learn the proper strategies to survive in combat and it will not let you simply cheese your way to victory.
- No Campaign for the Wicked: Prior to the game's release, its developers made clear that there will be no option to play on the dark side, as the game will focus more on survival and ability development as a Jedi. There is, however, one small part of the game where the player takes control of a vision of Cal becoming an Inquisitor after failing to protect the younglings he would gather to train (were he to finally obtain the holocron revealing their whereabouts) and ultimately betraying them to the Empire, but there is nothing and no one for him to attack during this brief, dark moment. While the 2020 Star Wars Day update makes the Inquisitor garb he wears in the vision as a selectable outfit, it's only cosmetic and enemies behave and act towards Cal normally as if he were still a Jedi.
- No-Gear Level:
- When Cal gets captured by the Haxion Brood, he wakes up in a prison and has to find a way out with only his Force powers and, once he's found him, BD-1's help. He only gets his lightsaber back at the very end so he can compete in the Brood's Gladiator Arena. Thankfully, you only have puzzles to deal with until then.
- And again when Jaro Tapal's saber is critically damaged, shattering the crystal contained inside. Cal has to book it off of Dathomir and travel to Ilum to find a new crystal and rebuild the lightsaber into his own Jedi weapon. You do end up having to deal with a few enemies this time around, though, but thankfully it's just a bunch of undead Nightsisters that aren't too difficult to avoid, and later a couple of Probe Droids that can be dispatched with Force Pull or Force Push.
- Non-Indicative Name: The challenges found in "Meditation Training" are intended for an end-game Cal.
- Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Normally, if Cal falls into a bottomless pit, he loses a fraction of his life and respawns at the nearest safe ground where he previously was. However, there are a few in this game where this trope is averted, meaning that if he fell in there, it's Game Over:
- The second phase of the Gorgara fight begins with the said boss chasing Cal up a rock face. If the player doesn't climb up it fast enough, he tumbles off the rock wall and dies instantly, as easy prey for the Gorgara.
- After escaping from Darth Vader's Force Choke near the end of the game, Cal has to turn around and run across the bridge to the turbolift to get as far away from the Dark Lord as he can. However, Vader uses the Force to warp the bridge parts, requiring some skilled platforming. Take one misstep into the abyss below and it's instant death.
- No One Could Survive That!:
- The Ninth Sister is last seen being Force Pushed to her presumed death off the Tree of Origin on Kashyyyk. However, even her entry in the game's log implies we may not have seen the last of her.
- At the end of the game, Darth Vader uses the Force to turn Cal's own lightsaber against him and stab him. Somehow, the wound doesn't prove fatal. But it's possible that he survived because it either didn't go deep enough, or it didn't hit any vital organs. And then again, BD has stims ready, so he probably healed Cal himself.
- No OSHA Compliance: The Scrapper yard on Bracca is very up to Imperial safety standards, which is almost none. The Scrappers take apart downed Clone War-era ships with giant lasers and stand on top of the salvaged parts with very little safety gear at elevated heights. When there's a malfunction with some equipment, Cal has to climb around without a harness (while, oddly enough, he has several sturdy O-rings on his outfit that a harness lanyard could attach to). In addition, some of these scrapping sites are situated right above the mouth of a Sarlacc-like creature called the Ibdis Maw (which is actually a super-organism with multiple mouths scattered across the planet), mainly so that the Scrappers can feed it the scraps from what they salvage and collect its mineral-rich feces to sell. From Codex entries, it's actually a deliberate attitude from the Empire to punish Bracca for siding with the Separatists during the Clone Wars.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Cal can be a formidable warrior, but as a Jedi he has a lot to learn. This is demonstrated by the fact that two inquisitors are considered very serious threats, while a Sith Lord is considered unstoppable.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Imperial troops are awfully cocky during fights until only one of them is left standing, which prompts the soon-to-be-dead survivor to have a sudden realization of how royally screwed he is.
- Trilla has a look of utter terror on her face when she hears Darth Vader approaching.
- Ominous Message from the Future: Near the climax of the game when the holocron is within Cal's grasp he's drawn to a wall that grants him a vision of him trying to rebuild the Jedi Order under the Empire's nose. It starts out well enough to the point the Padawans recieve a good bit of training, but the Empire ultimately finds them. They attack, killing the Padawans skilled enough to fight back and capturing the others to have them turned into Inquisitors. The vision ends showing Cal that he's doomed to become an Inquisitor too if he tries to rebuild the Order. The vision plays a major, if wordless, part in Cal's decision to destroy the holocron during the ending to protect the children from the Empire.
- Once per Episode:
- Cal gets the requisite bad feeling when he encounters the Second Sister on Bogano:Cal: I had a bad feeling I'd see you here.
- Once again, a limb gets sliced off: the Ninth Sister's hand, in her duel against Cal.
- Cal gets the requisite bad feeling when he encounters the Second Sister on Bogano:
- One-Hit Kill: Cal can jump down and instantly kill enemies that are directly below him and do not see him. He can also instantly defeat enemies by Force-pushing them off a ledge into deep water or a bottomless pit, or Force Pulling to stab them while they're vulnerable.
- One-Man Army:
- Cal is a minor case, as even though he's still fairly green for a Jedi, his Force powers and training are already enough to let him take on large groups of wildlife, Storm and Purge troopers, and even AT-STs, which he will have done several times over by the end of the story.
- Darth Vader, as usual. At this point Vader is so powerful that he can tear a base apart with his mind and Cal never once gets a hit in.
- In The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, Cere, having reclaimed her title as Jedi Knight and healed her connection with the Force, joins Cal, albeit working down a different path to support his goal, takes on multiple Purgetroopers at once, enemies Cal still has trouble with one on one, and delivers a rapid Curb-Stomp Battle.
- One-Time Dungeon: Both Bracca and The Fortress Inquisitorius cannot be revisited once their story mission is complete.
- Only a Flesh Wound: The Ninth Sister doesn't seem fussed about losing her sword hand in a duel with Cal. Considering how she's been through far worse in the past, a hand is barely anything to her.Ninth Sister: Being an Inquisitor taught me that no set-back is too great. When you've already lost yourself... a limb's easy.
- Opening Boss Battle: once Cal Kestis is outed as a Jedi, he'll have his first fight against the Second Sister, the game's Big Bad. You'll only have to last a few minutes against her until the crew of the Mantis comes to rescue you.
- Optional Boss:
- The Cartel bounty hunters and droids. Visually, they're mostly indistinguishable from one another apart from some bounty hunters having male voice tracks and others female. For some reason, the devs gave them unique, quirky names like Sir Chonks and "Grand Moff" Nohogg which are displayed in Dark Souls-style notification text when you defeat them. You don't have to defeat them, though; if you fail a battle, they will not be present for the next time you're there and instead reappear somewhere else.
- The four legendary monsters are among the very few enemies that don't respawn when you rest at a meditation circle.
- Order Reborn: Much of the game's plot derives from Cal's attempts to track down a holocron that contains a list of force sensitive children so that he can rebuild the Jedi order. Ultimately subverted when Cal finds the Holocron; he destroys it to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Magickally reanimated corpses of the Nightsisters that were killed when the Separatists laid waste to Dathomir, to be precise. Between their Glowing Eyes of Doom, moaning shrieks, crazy speed, lightning-quick attacks and sheer numbers, they constitute yet another reason to avoid this planet like the plague.
- Overheating: A number of imperial guns like the Heavy Assault Trooper's blaster cannon and the AT-ST's main gun can only fire a few bursts before they're forced into a cooldown cycle. They get so hot that their barrels' yellow glow is easily visible even in bright daylight.
- Painfully Slow Projectile: Blaster shots (and Nightbrother arrows) are rather slow compared to their film version, allowing the player to block them with Cal's lightsaber, or even send them back to the shooter if timed right. These enemies could also perform charged shots, which are even slower, slow enough that they could be affected by Force Slow, though they cannot be banked with the lightsaber.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Darth Vader, who destroys an entire bridge with nothing but the Force.
- Photo Mode: Lets you pan the camera, hide characters and has image setting sliders, all within a single menu.
- Planetary Romance: The ancient Precursors and their long lost civilization gives the game elements of the genre, though multiple planets are visited.
- Player Nudge:
- If Cal is defeated, the game will show you some tips that you can browse through before you press a button to respawn back at the last meditation circle he used.
- In a puzzle area, you can ask BD-1 for a hint on how to complete it.
- Plot-Irrelevant Villain: Sorc Tormo and the Haxion Brood. Aside from briefly kidnapping Cal, they have no real importance to the story and only exist to justify why bounty hunters are waiting to ambush the player in previously visited areas.
- Post-Final Boss: Ironically, Darth Vader is much easier than the preceding Final Boss fight against the Second Sister. Because he's a Hopeless Boss Fight, there's basically no skill involved at all.
- The Power of Friendship: One of the priciest skills in the game is literally called this. As it turns out, friendship is why BD-1's Stim Packs can eventually fill up Cal's Force Gauge.
- Precursors: The Zeffo were an advanced, force sensitive race whose works provide the backdrop for much of the terrain explored in the game. The tomb of Miktrull implies, and the tomb of Kujet confirms, that over the course of their history they became a bit naughty.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Cal speaks one to the Ninth Sister before Force-pushing her off a mountain, though it's uncertain if she's gone for good.Ninth Sister: You can't stop the Empire!
Cal: I can stop you. - Press X to Not Die: Boss battles are peppered with QTEs that force you to mash a specific button to avoid a grisly fate. If you're playing with an XBox controller, it's often literally the X button you need to hit.
- Projectile Webbing: Wyyyschokks can fire entangling web globules in several highly precise patterns.
- Psychometry: Cal has a natural ability to feel Force echoes, learning details about an object or location by touching it. Cere notes that it's a pretty rare ability, even among Jedi. It backfires when he grabs Trilla's broken lightsaber, giving him a small Heroic BSoD and allowing her to escape with the holocron.
- "Psycho" Strings: The Second Sister's theme
starts off with high-pitched violins and only gets more Ax-Crazy from there.
- A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: The Second Sister's true identity is Trilla Suduri, the former apprentice of Cere Junda. She gave in to the dark side and became an Inquisitor after Cere abandoned her, got captured and ended up exposing her location after being tortured so that Suduri too would be captured. Being just a young Padawan, her mind was easy prey for the dark side.
- Recurring Boss:
- The Second Sister is fought a total of four times, and each time Cal is able to hold his own against her a bit more until he finally defeats her in the last duel.
- The Gorgara on Dathomir is fought twice, once in its cave and then again in a frantic aerial battle.
- After Cal escapes Ordo Eris and the clutches of the Haxion Brood bounty hunters, he will occasionally encounter the said bounty hunters in pairs over and over throughout certain large areas on every playable planet. Their appearance can be very unexpected, requiring players to be careful to avoid an early demise from being unprepared to fight them.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Imperial Inquisitorius in a nutshell, with both the Inquisitors and the Purge Troopers usually seen dressed in black and red.
- Red Herring: The Binog is a giant beast that can be found near the Vault on Bogano which is visible from almost anywhere on the map. Codex entries can be found that talk about the legends surrounding it, so a Boss Battle seems pretty much guaranteed at one point or another, but the creature never graduates beyond being part of the scenery.
- Resignations Not Accepted: At the end of the game, Trilla appears to genuinely start to forgive Cere as evidenced by the Dark Side corruption leaving her eyes. However, it’s this exact moment that Darth Vader arrives on the scene and scolds her for failing him. He’s not just punishing her for losing the Holocron to Cal; he’s refusing Trilla’s implied fledgling Heel–Face Turn.
- Rewatch Bonus: With knowledge of the Second Sister's identity and backstory, it's easy to go back to her first encounter with Cal and hear the absolute, unvarnished bitterness in her voice when she demands to know, "What Jedi gave his life so that YOU might live?"
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Bogano-native Boglings are furry creatures with huge eyes and avian legs that barely reach up to an adult human's hips. They live in underground tunnel systems they like to peek out of from holes to the surface, and they move around by jumping like tiny kangaroos. One of them can join Cal on the Mantis if you find and free it.
- RPG Elements: Downplayed. The experience Cal gains by killing enemies, picking up collectibles and completing missions can be invested in a skill trees to unlock bonuses and new combat moves. Outside of this there's little you can do to improve your Player Character. Force Essences can be collected to improve Cal's health and Force energy, but his sole weapon will always be his lightsaber whose damage can only be improved through an expensive end-game skill choice, and the two modes it can gain merely modify his fighting style. Any outfits you can find are purely cosmetic. The RPG aspect of the game is also mitigated by the fact that Cal can eventually unlock all the force powers in a single playthrough, where a more traditional RPG would force the player to specialize in a particular build. There's also the fact that collectibles like outfits in no way affect the character's stats.
- The Reveal: The Second Sister is Trilla Suduri, Cere's former Padawan who turned to the Dark Side and joined the Inquisitorius after she was caught in Order 66.
- Rule of Three:
- Cal goes to sleep on the Mantis and is awoken by Greez three times.
- Cal must visit three Zeffo tombs to be able to unlock the Jedi vault on Bogano.
- Cal has three main Force powers (Slow, Push, and Pull), not counting secondary powers like Wall Run or Double Jump.
- Cal's skill tree has three main branches, labeled Force, Lightsaber, and Survival.
- Run or Die: Once Darth Vader himself shows up, it's not even a question of trying to fight. All Cal can do is run.Tactical Guide: Few survive an encounter with the most powerful Sith in the Galaxy. Escape is the only chance of survival.
- Scratch Damage: Getting shot with a laser weapon isn't that painful, when even armored troopers in the films are killed instantly when a Jedi reflects their bolts back to them. However do the same in this game and indeed, most troopers will be neutralized (certain elites can withstand more than one shot reflected to them).
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Once BD-1 acquires the slicing ability, the next time you severely damage an Imperial security droid, you can press the droid action button to hack the droid and make it fight for you. Then, once there are no more enemies left in the area, you can eiither move on or just or finish it off.
- A variation of this trope comes in handy for this game: when you enter an area where native creature enemies are fighting with either Imperials or Nightbrothers, you can stand back out of their sight and let these enemies fight each other until only enemies on one side of the fight remain, then close in to finish off whoever is left.
- Sheathe Your Sword: During Cal's vision duel with Jaro Tapal, Cal ends up winning the encounter by turning his lightsaber off and vowing to uphold the way of the Jedi. He does the same thing with Merrin, even giving her the lightsaber for her to see.
- Ship Tease: Later interactions between Cal and Nightsister Merrin strongly imply a mutual attraction, particularly with an awkward hug she gives him after the climax. However, the two don’t get together quite yet.
- Shockwave Stomp: The game is in love with this trope. Most late game bosses employ some form of shockwave attack, often with a side order of Ground Pound. The Tomb Guardians encountered on Zeffo also stomp on the ground to inflict damage within a limited radius.
- Shout-Out: A couple to Titanfall 2:
- The "Vanguard" skin for BD-1 is the same colors as BT-7274.
- Greez describes love as a mixture of "admiration, attraction, devotion, and respect."
- Also, when Cal is uncovered on Bracca by the Inquisitors and the Ninth Sister drops him off a cliff, he falls at least 100 feet onto a passing train, but manages to walk away with no injuries other than just complaining "Ohhh, that hurt." Remind you of Grand Theft Auto V?
- Skill Scores and Perks: Cal's experience can be invested to unlock upgrades and abilities from three different branches: Force, Lightsaber and Survival. All three should be self-explanatory.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Ilum and some underground parts of Zeffo are set in perpetual ice. Prepare for many steep ice slides.
- Slo Mo: Cal is able to use his Force to slow time down during combat to the point that blaster bolts travel several times slower.
- Soulslike RPG: Albeit one that seems to take its cues from Sekiro rather than the Souls series itself.
- Spread Shot: Wyyyschokks are able to shoot web globules in a spread of three.
- Storming the Castle: The final section of the game involves breaking into the Fortress Inquisitorius, the headquarters of the Imperial Inquisition, to steal back Eno Cordova’s vital holocron.
- Story Difficulty Setting: While the three hardest difficulty settings are called "Jedi Knight", Jedi Master" and "Jedi Grandmaster", the easiest one is called "Story Mode".
- Strictly Formula: The story follows many of the standard Star Wars story beats established by the original trilogy. It follows a young man with force potential living on a remote planet with a Used Future aesthetic, who joins up with a former Jedi Master and cynical outlaw-type character. They trot around the galaxy in search of a MacGuffin containing some important information while being pursued by a servant of the empire wearing black armor who has a history with the Jedi Master, which is something that the latter is not entirely truthful about at first. Eventually, the hero manages to redeem his enemy, but shortly after she's killed by her master.
- Superboss: Four legendary creature bosses on four different planets. They are very powerful and await the most skilled Jedi, but none of them need to be defeated to complete the game.
- Super Drowning Skills: Imagine how amused you'll be when you discover that your enemies can't swim.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Turns out that while your enemies can't swim, you can. Cal can swim in water just fine, but he cannot dive until after meeting with Tarfful on Kashyyyk, when you're given a special underwater breathing apparatus. You can then dive for as long as you want with no ill effects on health, which is good considering the surprising amount of collectibles hidden underwater on almost every planet.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Zeffo, being an ancient alien race of Force users that predate the Republic, had a civilization that spanned multiple worlds, and eventually fell to decadence and Dark Side corruption that doomed their species to extinction seem to serve as a replacement for the Rakata from the first Knights of the Old Republic game. Their tendency towards building massive tombs and monuments to their dead rulers as well as the Dark Side influence also call to mind the old Sith species from which the Sith Order of Legends eventually sprang from, though unlike the Sith, the Zeffo apparently realized their mistake, though it seemingly came too late to save their species.
- Tagline:
- "Don't stand out.", "Accept the past.", "Trust no one.", and "Trust only in the Force." were used for the pre-trailer teaser image of Cal's broken lightsaber.
- "Broken hilt.", referring to the teaser's lightsaber that has the bottom half of its hilt broken. This was also used for the pre-trailer teaser image.
- Take Your Time: The game doesn't pressure you to complete mandatory objectives in a hurry, providing you an opportunity to fully explore every nook and cranny of the various planets so that you can achieve 100% Completion. This can break the story in some occasions. For example, later in the game, by the time you build your new lightsaber on Ilum, the Empire would have discovered the planet and began sending in troops to try and catch you, as well as wipe out the temple. Once you get rid of the enemies on the planet on your way back to the Mantis, Cere will warn you to hurry up because Imperial Star Destroyers are coming to the planet en masse. You can tarry all you want and walk around Ilum and look for all the secrets, but the said Destroyers won't ever come to the planet and the game just won't "continue" until you get onboard.
- Taking You with Me: Numerous enemies will perform a final attack upon their defeat, with some lashing out at their killer one last time (like the Nydaks) and others exploding violently. It's generally not a bad idea to put some distance between Cal and anything he just killed as quickly as possible.
- Team Killer: Rocket Launcher Troopers are a villainous example thanks to their total disregard for collateral damage. Target locked in melee with half a dozen Scout Troopers? Here, have a rocket or five anyway!
- Tempting Fate:
- One of Greez's conversations during transit revolves around a crime syndicate he ran afoul of, but he's happy to report that he got rid of them and they won't be bothering him anymore. Guess what happens soon after.
- The first time Cal spots the Gorgara on Dathomir, he voices his relief that it's far away and he won't have to tangle with it. Cue the Boss Battle a couple minutes later.
- Tennis Boss: In the last two fights with the Second Sister, you can parry her saber throw. This will send it flying back to her and prompt her to throw it again. Parry it enough times and she'll fudge the catch, damaging her and leaving an opening for Cal. The fight against Ninth Sister on top of the Origin Tree is similar, albeit easier. You only have to parry it once to damage her.
- There Is Another: The Dathomirians were thought to have been wiped out, with the exception of Maul and Sheilish, but there are still some surviving Nightbrothers and one remaining Nightsister named Merrin, who later teams up with Cal.
- Threaten All to Find One: At the beginning, the Inquisitorius learns about a Jedi presence on Brakka but doesn't know who it is, only where they were. To compensate, they line up the group of scrappers Cal happens to be with, inform them of the Jedi in their ranks, and says they will start executing them one by one unless someone exposes the Jedi to them, or the Jedi reveals themself. This trope is then immediately downplayed when Prauf starts giving a speech against the inquisitors, getting himself killed as the first victim and prompting Cal to retaliate, exposing himself.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Cal can accurately throw his lightsaber and have it return to him, potentially striking a target twice. Justified, since Cal can use the Force to direct the weapon. Likewise, Second Sister and Ninth Sister will throw their sabers at Cal.
- Tongue Trauma: Annoyed by the Oggdo's Overly-Long Tongue that it keeps using to snare Cal back into biting range? Just use Force Pull to yank it out of the thing's mouth and introduce it to Cal's lightsaber. There is an achievement for hurting an Oggdo this way.
- Too Dumb to Live: Rocket Launcher Troopers consider it a perfectly sensible tactic to fire their rocket launchers at targets right in front of them. No points for guessing how that invariably ends for them.
- Trailers Always Lie: The teaser trailer showed scenes that don't exactly appear in the game itself, and it appeared to suggest that the player would begin without a lightsaber and would later on find it inside some sort of cave or temple. In the actual game, you'll almost immediately be able to use one right after the Inquisitors come to Bracca, as Cal was shown to already have his lightsaber all along.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The identity of the game's final enemy, Darth Vader, was spoiled in a holiday trailer promoting the game on the Xbox One. While no indication had been made that he would be appearing, the trailer showed him off, basically telegraphing to everyone that he'd feature in at some point.
- Traintop Battle: The first enemies you fight are aboard and atop a moving train that Cal tumbles onto not long after the Inquisitors arrive on Bracca.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Cal has a damaged connection to the Force since the Purge, resulting in him needing to re-learn his skills as a Jedi once he taps into it for the first time in five years. This is indicative of how he levels up and gains new skills in the story.
- Turns Red: Some bosses, such as the Ninth Sister, come up with new attacks after losing a fraction of their health.
- Unblockable Attack: Enemies glow red a moment before they launch into a devastating attack that can't be blocked. Get out of the way or else.
- Understatement: Cal's reaction to Darth Vader? "That doesn't look good."
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: The point on Dathomir where Cal meets Taron Malicos for the first time has a chasm blocking the player from the Zeffo tomb on that planet that requires Double Jumping to cross, which is gained on Kashyyyk. However, with a bit of finagling, one could glitch themselves across the gap and proceed, though woe be to the one who went too far and fell down into the village area below. While there is one elevator at the foot of the slope leading downwards that could be used to get back up, going beyond that area inescapably traps the player, especially if they decide to rest and save at a meditation point while down there, as getting back up requires both double jump and Force pull, neither of which they'll have if they've skipped Kashyyyk by performing the glitch. The only solution to this problem is starting a new game from scratch.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Cal's lightsaber attacks are fairly wild and committal. When using it in double-bladed mode, he holds it in a tight two-handed grip, and his basic attacks with it are rapid, messy slashes, like he's trying very hard not to hit himself with the blade (later attacks he can unlock are much flashier, though). Justified, as his Jedi training was incomplete when Order 66 went into effect and he was forced into hiding.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Largely justified in that most enemy weapons would be a big step down from Cal's lightsaber. That said, it is a little odd that he can have a gaggle of stormtroopers blasting at him from a distance, and yet he seemingly can't think of something he could do with the discarded rocket launcher lying at his feet. It doesn't even appear to be a matter of Jedi ethics, since he has no issue with using the mounted guns on a commandeered AT-AT (which is the trope's sole aversion and a pretty sweet one, at that).
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Fortress Inquisitorius.
- Version-Exclusive Content: Players who pre-ordered the game have access to several exclusive cosmetic items, such as an orange color option for Cal's lightsaber, Umbaran and Mygeeto Campaign hilt options, and a Bee skin for BD-1. Additionally, those who pre-ordered the game on Sony's PlayStation store will receive a unique theme for their PlayStation 4, and buying Fallen Order via the Epic Games' store also unlocks an exclusive Imperial Stormtrooper skin in Fortnite, though this skin was added to later Star Wars item shop updates. Then there's also the Deluxe Edition with its unique skin pack for BD-1 and the Stinger Mantis. The pre-order cosmetics were later added to the game for all players in a free patch in January 15th 2020.
- Video Game Caring Potential: When there's nothing for BD to hack, pressing the button will have Cal amicably ask how his droid buddy's doing.Cal: Hey, BD?
BD-1: [beeping]
Cal: Just making sure you're still here. - Video Game Cruelty Potential: You could defeat your enemies using your lightsaber and cool Jedi moves.... or you could just use the force to push them into the abyss.
- Villainous BSoD: The Second Sister/Trilla Suduri has one when she is given a last chance to redeem herself and move away from her pain and hate. Unfortunately, Darth Vader doesn’t accept failure, let alone resignation. Trilla still manages a final cry of "Avenge us!" before Vader executes her.
- Vine Swing: Cal can swing on forest vines as he moves through the jungles of Kashyyyk.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: The Oggo Bogdo is located on Bogano in one of the first areas Cal can reach. So, that must mean it's an easy Warm-Up Boss, right? Wrong. If the player hasn't got to grips with the game's mechanics yet and/or hasn't leveled up sufficiently, it can provide quite a challenge, especially given the tight confines of its lair. Fortunately, it can't follow Cal into the nearby tunnels, so this can allow for a tactical withdrawal or even cover from which to use hit and run tactics.
- Wall Run: Cal can run on walls, presumably utilizing his Force-increased agility.
- We Can Rule Together:
- Taron Malicos, a fallen Jedi that crash landed in Dathomir after Order 66 and went mad with power, makes this offer to Cal, believing that the Jedi Order doesn't deserve being brought back and that they should exploit the planet's magical power instead. Cal naturally refuses, and a boss fight ensues.
- Darth Vader invokes this trope at the end when Cere draws upon the Dark Side to stop him, stating that she would have made a "strong Inquisitor".
- Wham Line:
- Cal realizes who the Second Sister is through his exchange with her after their duel on Zeffo. She admits that Cal is really good regarding his abilities, though not as gifted as Cere's last apprentice, Trilla. Cal asks her how she knows her so well, and the Second Sister tells him that she never would've become an Inquisitor if it wasn't for Cere ratting her out to the Empire. She then removes her helmet, revealing a young woman corrupted by the Dark Side. And then it hits Cal.Cal (realization dawning): You're Trilla.
Trilla: In the flesh. - At the end of the game, you hear an all too familiar sound...guttural, rasping breathing.
- Cal realizes who the Second Sister is through his exchange with her after their duel on Zeffo. She admits that Cal is really good regarding his abilities, though not as gifted as Cere's last apprentice, Trilla. Cal asks her how she knows her so well, and the Second Sister tells him that she never would've become an Inquisitor if it wasn't for Cere ratting her out to the Empire. She then removes her helmet, revealing a young woman corrupted by the Dark Side. And then it hits Cal.
- Wham Shot:
- From a series-wide perspective. The arrival cutscene to Ilum shows that the planet resembles Starkiller Base, one of several hints heavily implying they become one and the same by the time of The Force Awakens.
- The player is prompted to activate their lightsaber to use as a torch in one of Cal's visions. Cutting through the darkness is a red lightsaber, and Cal in an Inqusitor uniform.
- Several after one another at the end of the game. You've managed to best Trilla, and she seems to be willing to forgive and forget, perhaps return to the light. But alas, a familiar-sounding breath is heard, "Anakin's Dark Deeds" begins to play as Trilla realizes who is coming...and Darth Vader himself arrives, deeming Trilla a failure. He strikes her down, seemingly does the same to Cere with ease, then warns Cal it would be better if he gave up. He still fights...and there's NO HEALTH BAR.
- World Tree: The massive Tree of Origin can been seen in the distance from various locations on Kashyyyk, and is of incredible religious importance to the Wookies. One piece of dialogue suggests it’s directly connected to the planet's core. In one of the game's grander set pieces, Cal must travel to the top.
- Wrecked Weapon: At the entrance to the Tomb of Kujet, Cal encounters a vision of his late master Jaro Tapal, victim of Order 66, who unexpectedly declares him to be a failure and unworthy of being a Jedi. As a result, Cal's lightsaber ends up smashed and broken in his hands. It is ambiguous whether the phantom in question shattered the lightsaber itself (because it grabbed the lightsaber itself to hold Cal in place), or the stress of the situation caused Cal to accidentally crush it himself.
- You Have Failed Me: Said almost word by word by the Trope Namer himself, Darth Vader, just before he cuts down the Second Sister after being defeated by Cal.
- You Will Not Evade Me:
- The Oggdo creatures can shoot out their Overly Long Tongues to snatch Cal back into biting range if he moves far enough away from them without dodging.
- Cal's Force Pull action can do the same: Weak enemies are pulled towards him and he can follow up with a close-range lightsaber attack.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Cere does not take it well when Darth Vader compliments her use of the Dark Side.
- Zerg Rush: The standard tactic of Undead Nightsisters. Though individually fragile, they swarm Cal in groups and flail away at him.