YMMV / Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Who is the "us" Trilla tells Cere to avenge right before Vader kills her? The Jedi as a whole? The Jedi who were converted into Inquisitors? Or maybe just herself and Cere?
  • Speaking of which, why did Vader kill Trilla? And what did he mean by “ You have failed me, Inquisitor”? When you think about it, Trilla didn’t actually fail in her mission to retrieve the holocron and bring it to the Fortress Inquisitorius. Plus, as a bonus, she even managed to lure two jedi who had escaped Order 66 to the fortress to retrieve the holocron, so she succeeded and then some. So, maybe Vader wasn’t actually referring to her mission? Maybe he was referring to how she couldn’t defeat Cal in her final duel against him? Or maybe Vader killed her because he sensed that she was letting go of her hate and was on the verge of returning to the light side?
  • Did Vader even want the holocron? In his comic series, he acquired a similar list of Force sensitive children (in all likelihood, the same list) and destroyed it rather than let Palpatine have a list of potential replacements for him. Did he change his mind since then, or was he after the holocron to destroy it himself? Trilla claimed that finding the holocron would win her the Emperor's favor specifically, was her hunt for it going behind Vader's back and that's why he killed her?
• Awesome Music:
  • "Sugaan Essena", the Huttese rock song playing on Cal’s headphones in the opening and in the Haxion Brood arena is rather catchy and intense, and fits in rather well in the Star Wars universe. It's sung by Mongolian rock band The Hu in a Conlang invented specifically for the game, and it proved so popular that their sophomore album, Rumble of Thunder, included a Mongolian-language cover called "Black Thunder".
  • The absolutely chilling usage of 'Anakin's Dark Deeds' accompanying Darth Vader's appearance at the end of the game.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The story is chugging along at a steady pace when suddenly the plot comes to a screeching halt as Cal is kidnapped by crime boss and Large Ham Sorc Tormo, who has it out for Greez. After a fairly short mission where Cal escapes, everyone says, "Well that was weird," and the game resumes as normal. The whole sequence has nothing to do with the main plot of the game and its only purpose is providing context for the Haxion Brood mini-bosses and providing an impetus for Greez to open up about his gambling problems and express a desire to move past them.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The Second Sister is Cere's first apprentice, Trilla Suduri. When Cere explains to Cal how she was captured and tortured into giving up information about Trilla's location, there's an uncomfortable pause when Cal asks if Trilla survived and Cere says she didn't. Between Second Sister remaining masked, knowing that the inquisitors were all former Jedi, and Cere simply being a bad liar, it's clear who Second Sister is from relatively early in the game. Just the fact that Trilla is established as being female and the Second Sister is female can let players instantly guess that the two are the same as a (supposed) twist.
• Cheese Strategy: Use the Force Push ability on certain bosses to kill them within seconds. This notably works on all bounty hunter bosses.
• Dancing Bear: Downplayed. While the game was well-recieved at launch for a variety of reasons, a significant portion of the pre- and post-release buzz surrounding it was centered on its status as a fully-singleplayer experience with no microtransactions or live service elements, published by Electronic Arts. Such games had become a rarity from AAA publishers by then, and Electronic Arts in particular had infamously disparaged them as a thing of the past that they no longer had any interest in publishing.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Purge Troopers are fast, resilient and extremely dangerous opponents that can kill Cal in the blink of an eye with their deadly combo attacks. These combos are long enough that parrying them completely is virtually impossible - some hits will break through Cal's guard if you don't dodge in time, and they will mercilessly follow up with more attacks while he's staggered. Purge Trooper Commanders are ranged fighters instead of melee monsters, yet just as deadly regardless. Thankfully they're rare, but the last levels throw enough of them at you to provoke an irrational hatred for the color purple^note their shock weapons are wreathed in crackling purple energy fields that're by far their most visibly striking feature. They have some limited resistance to force powers compared to standard troopers, but they're not completely immune to them. Finding an angle by which you can toss them into a convenient abyss rather than engaging in a minute of swordplay is incredibly satisfying.
  • After Cal's run-in with the Haxion Brood, bounty hunters can be found waiting for him at various locations in the game. The hunters themselves typically aren't too difficult to dispatch, but they're often accompanied by large droids whose attacks hit hard and are hard to avoid. Often time you'll take down the bounty hunter no problem only to struggle against the droid.
  • The Jotaz is a Fat Bastard of an enemy that doesn't look as fast and as unpredictable as its attacks really are. These giant alien beasts charge towards you with wild swings, which are borderline impossible to parry due to the heavy swings they dole out. They will completely deplete your block stamina and leave you vulnerable to an unblockable slam attack. That's not even counting when they come at you with multiple swings, barreling into you and giving you zero time to react or prepare. And then there's the Rabid Jotaz to consider...
• Designated Hero: Cal's actions on Dathomir can come off as unsympathetic especially to those aware of Dathomir's backstory. Despite being repeatedly told by the native people to leave, Cal intrudes on their home, kills countless Nightbrothers (who, as The Clone Wars reveals, are slaves forced into combat), and devastates their rare wildlife and sacred sites all in pursuit of an artifact that he ends up admitting is too dangerous in his hands and destroys. Cal's plea to Merrin that he's no danger to her thus falls flat, as the revelation that the Jedi didn't genocide the Nightsisters looks irrelevant in the face of this Jedi killing numerous Dathomiri right now. He winds up with an even greater bodycount than Malicos, who's supposed to be this arc's villain.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Prauf only appears in the opening hour of the game, but he received a lot of fans for his friendship with Cal and his final speech to the Empire in which he calls them out for how their atrocities have ruined life for everyone in the galaxy.
  • Nightsister Merrin won many fans despite her relatively limited screen time, only joining the crew near the end of the game. This stems from her interesting story, awesome witchcraft abilities, physical attractiveness once she takes off her hood, helping out in a difficult boss fight, and her Ship Tease with Cal. Her Brutal Honesty and Deadpan Snarker tendencies don't hurt either.
  • The Oggdo Bogdo, an early game optional boss with no story significance, quickly reached memetic level in the fandom. This is because it’s a very difficult enemy for most players at that point in the game.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The Inquisitors certainly don't lack for style and prowess in battle.
  • Many fans genuinely liked the red lightsaber that Cal wielded in the twenty seconds that he did during the Vault illusion, despite the fact that Cal is a light-aligned Jedi who would not use such a weapon. The fact that it is technically a usable variant in-game, just not one Cal can normally access, didn't sit well with a portion of the fanbase, even though the developers have rightly restricted its appearance for lore reasons. An update on Star Wars Day 2020 finally allowed players to use the red blade and Cal's Inquisitor uniform, though only in New Journey Plus.
  • The Purge Troopers, the Empire's Elite Mooks of the game.
  • Darth Vader’s appearance at the close of the game is 10 or so minutes of absolute, unalloyed, terrifying COOL.
• Fandom Rivalry: A minor one with fans of Star Wars Rebels since both works involve Jedi survivors going on adventures in a Cool Starship and fighting the Empire in between Episodes III and IV. Going by Youtube comments, Ezra from Rebels was often compared unfavorably to Cal, who was seen as considerably more mature and much less whiny, though given that Cal is (at least) eight years older than Ezra, this is to be expected.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Probe droids don't deal much damage and can only take two reflected blasts of their own gun, but they hover high enough to be mostly immune to Cal's lightsaber, and once heavily damaged they go into self-destruct mode and charge at him, forcing you to either take heavy damage or waste Force energy to push them away. They become a lot more manageable once you get the ability to override them.
  • Bane Back Spiders can be killed rather quickly, but their venom lingers for a bit after being spit out or after dying and can still damage Cal. Repeated run-ins with them can very easily wear you down to let more dangerous enemies pick you off.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Cere's Disney Death by Vader's hands is this in light of her being actually killed by him in the sequel.
• He's Just Hiding: The Ninth Sister is last seen being shoved off a mountainside by Cal in their final duel on Kashyyyk, but many fans are wary that this was enough to kill her. We never see a body after the fact, and she was left for dead once before in the Vader comics, surviving her own Purge troopers while missing a leg. Many fans outright refuse to believe this was the end of the Ninth Sister until a body confirms otherwise. Even the in-game journal leaves her fate open, lingering on the question if Cal really did kill her or not. The sequel revealed she did survive the ordeal... and Cal beheads her in that game's prologue.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Mark Hamill went from playing a Jedi hero to voicing The Joker. Cameron Monaghan went from playing the Joker to voicing a Jedi hero.
  • Two 2019 entries of the Star Wars canon happen to star a Monaghan — Jedi: Fallen Order with Cameron, and The Rise of Skywalker with Dominic (the two actors are unrelated).
  • Jokes about "What if EA made Dark Souls?" on YouTube becomes a lot funnier considering Jedi: Fallen Order has been compared to the former.
  • The game's tone has been frequently compared to the Uncharted series, which in turn is seen as a Spiritual Successor to the Indiana Jones franchise. Both Star Wars and Indiana Jones have some of the same creators (including George Lucas) behind them, so we've come full circle by combining them.
  • It wouldn't be the last time the Fortress Inquisitorious would be flooded, as Obi-Wan would also repeat the same feat just five years later.
  • When Cal unlocks BD's ability to hack droids, he mentions off-hand to them that he would feel bad about hacking people, too. Years later, he gains the ability to perform Jedi mind tricks, effectively 'hacking' people.
• I Knew It!: People were able to predict that Dathomir would appear in the game.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Fans of Cameron Monaghan have shown interest in the game after it was announced he would be playing the main character.
  • Inquisitor fans and Barriss fans are enticed by the game featuring Inquisitors on the screen again, additionally with hopes that the Second Sister or another Inquisitor turn out to be Barriss. But alas, she isn't.
• Magnificent Bitch: Trilla Suduri, the Second Sister, is one of the smartest of the Inquisitors and among the most skilled of their number. Tortured into the Dark Side after being betrayed by her mentor Cere, Trilla becomes a ruthlessly effective servant of the Empire's Inquisitorius. Hunting down Cal Kestis and Cere so she may find a Holocron that contains the location of every force sensitive child known in the galaxy, Trilla manipulates Cal into doing all the work to open a path to the Holocron so Trilla may take it from him, all while she works to sow doubt in his heart over Cere. Even upon the possibility of redemption being denied to her by the arrival of Darth Vader himself, Trilla manages to compose herself and die with dignity, her final words being a plea for Cal and Cere to avenge the victims like her.
• Memetic Badass: Oggdo Bogdo, due to being a tough boss many players will encounter at very low level and thus be repeatedly killed by, gained a reputation as one of the most powerful beings in the Star Wars universe. The developers seem to have caught onto Oggdo's reputation, as one of the new bosses in Jedi: Survivor is Oggdo's spawn, who is not only one of the toughest bosses in that game, but is joined in battle by the original Oggdo later in the fight.
• Memetic Loser: Malicos, for being a "space hobo".
• Memetic Molester: The Purge Troopers, mainly because they seem way too enthusiastic about fighting Cal, with combat dialogue that borders on uncomfortably sexual and masochistic.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Trust no one/Don't stand out.^Explanation Used cynically by people apprehensive about EA proudly advertising the game as single-player without microtransaction, seeing it as the company attempting to sweep their prior incidents under the rug. It was also used to reference EA shooting themselves in the foot if the seemingly promising game ended up having microtransactions post-launch.
  • The pink poncho cosmetic unlock, which became a punchline for any joke about underwhelming collectibles. The response was almost certainly linked to a comment EA made during the development of Battlefront II about how they can't add cosmetics to their Star Wars games that break canon, specifically citing bright pink skins as their primary example.
  • "Grab some seat kid.", one of the first things Greez says to Cal when he boards the Mantis. The odd phrasing of it has not gone unnoticed.
  • Pretty much anything from YouTuber Zanny for his silly commentary of the game.
  • Where's his health bar?!, and its variations. Basically a lot of people's reaction to seeing that we have to face Darth Vader himself. When people see that he doesn't even have a health bar, like all other enemies in the game, players know THEY'RE SCREWED, and their only option is to get the hell out of there.
• Narm:
  • After Cal reveals himself in the opening level and ignites his lightsaber, he gets force pushed into and subsequently grabbed by Ninth Sister who exclaims "I found the Jedi", as if she discovered Cal hiding all by herself, instead of her opponent obviously revealing himself in front of tens of witnesses, and attacking a colleague. It's so out of place that it comes across as reusing voice acting from an earlier draft of the scene. See it here.
  • The bright-pink "Sumi" poncho. The big Tear Jerker moments of the game unfortunately become harder to take seriously when Cal is wearing it.
  • The final Eno Cordova recording is a very touching scene, reassuring Cal about his failures and giving him the courage to continue forward, even when all seems lost, but its effect is ruined once you realize that the recording, played by BD1, somehow shows the robot in third-person as well, as if it was filmed by someone else.
  • Upon leaving Ilum, Cal will have a genuinely heartfelt and touching conversation with Greez and Cere, thanking them for their help and support, with them replying in kind, assuring Cal they'll be there for him... which can be immediately ruined if you try to talk with them again, because they'll respond with a canned "Not Now, Kiddo" voiceclip that completely contradicts the tone of their prior statements.
  • Cere repeatedly refers to how she used the dark side to escape imperial captivity, leading players to wonder just what happened. But when we are treated to a flashback of the event, the event proves to be hilariously anticlimactic with the reveal that she let out a single anger-fueled Force Repulse, which resulted in what appear to be the KOs (or, at the worst, deaths) of not civilians, but imperial torturers. THAT is the event that caused Cere to consider herself fallen and to give up on the ways of the Jedi.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: In sharp contrast to EA's previous Star Wars games, this game is generally well-received for providing the Star Wars Jedi fantasy with an accessible story and free of microtransactions. While the game does borrow many of its gameplay elements from other games, like Uncharted and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, the execution is competent enough that most fans don't mind. If anything, the game received better reviews than many of LucasArts's previous Jedi games.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first Star Wars game to have AT-ST drivers evacuate from their walker upon having it destroyed. This can also happen in Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, which was released in 1997.
• One-Scene Wonder: Darth Vader appears on-screen for only five minutes. They're easily the most memorable five minutes in the entire game, showing us exactly why Vader is so feared.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: This game, along with the Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith comic series, is credited with making the Imperial Inquisitorious intimidating again, after they suffered serious Villain Decay in Star Wars Rebels. In particular, the Second Sister's and the Ninth Sister's use of the (in)famous "helicopter lightsabers" does a lot to redeem that variety of hilt in the eyes of fans, showing how potentially lethal they can be in the hands of practiced Force users and pragmatic villains.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • A Darker and Edgier Star Wars video game that bears superficial similarities to the Uncharted franchise? Probably the closest we'll get to actually playing 1313.
  • Since this is an action-adventure game centered on a lightsaber-wielding force user fighting the empire in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, Jedi: Fallen Order might as well be the third The Force Unleashed game.
  • Given its mix of lightsaber styles, force powers, and general feel of the game, Fallen Order feels like the modern successor to the Jedi Knight/Jedi Academy games we have wanted for so long.
• That One Achievement: "Kickoff" and "Kicking Back" require the player to kill an enemy using only dodge kicks and kick a phillak that has kicked them, respectively. The tutorial for the dodge kick doesn’t explain the move very well, making it difficult to pull off if you don’t know what you’re doing, and in the latter case it could also be fairly difficult to get a phillak to kick you at all if you can't find an opening to dodge behind it, due to its tendency to just spam its headbutt to stunlock Cal in place.
• That One Boss:
  • The Ninth Sister is a major Wake-Up Call Boss once you get to her at the end of Kashyyyk, and any player that has not quite mastered lightsaber combat will find themselves in for a bitter surprise come her boss fight. Her attacks deal a lot of damage, and she loves to spam an insanely annoying combo that includes pushing the player to make them fall and then leaping at them while Cal is trying to get up. Attacking her also causes little damage, so expect to be in for one looong fight.
  • Dathomir is full of Demonic Spiders, so naturally the bosses will be tough as well... as seen in Gorgara, a true testament to screwing over Soulsborne players. Her front is 'armored' with an incredibly vacant hitbox, meaning natural counterattacks and targeted attacks barely faze her. While her reflexes suck, she can spam wide area attacks and uses shockwaves to hit anyone who isn't used to jumping evades over timed rolling. And of course, she prefers long-range attacks in a game where you're limited to melee attacks, psychic powers she's naturally resistant to, and throwing your sword (if it can reach her). So in general, skill in souls-likes translates poorly to stabbing this apex of fake difficulty bosses.
  • It's fitting that Dathomir would have a very difficult final boss, and the game doesn’t disappoint in this regard, with fallen Jedi Taron Malicos beating up on the player with a combination of rapid lightsaber flurries, unblockable leap attacks, and flying debris. After reducing him to less than half health, Nightsister Merrin will occasionally intervene and stagger him, but his attacks also become more vigorous. Most frustratingly of all, the closest save point is behind another enemy encounter, which means many players will have partially depleted healing stims and force power before the fight even begins unless you realize you can just run past those. Malicos is, for all intents and purposes, a whole new version of the equally infamous Kazdan Paratus.
  • The final fight against Second Sister (Cere's apprentice, Trilla) lives up to its place as the final proper boss in the game. Second Sister is extremely fast, constantly zipping around the arena, and employs long and damaging lightsaber combos and Force Attacks. Some of which, such as her Force shockwave, she can employ during her lightsaber combos. She also has an insanely cheap Force Choke command grab, accompanied by an agonizingly drawn out animation, that can one-shot you if you're below half health. And will one-shot you regardless of your health on Jedi Grandmaster difficulty. Add onto this a surprisingly small arena and her plethora of ranged attacks and you have an intense, claustrophobic final fight.
• That One Level:
  • Nobody likes Dathomir, even reviewers who otherwise would sing the game's praises from a mountain top. The game's overall map layout received minor flak for being too long and tedious, with frequent forced backtracking needed to find collectibles or just to even get on with the story. Dathomir in particular is very lousy about this, especially around the double-jump platform leading up to the Tomb of Kujet, as it has a long slope that takes the player down to the Collapsed Settlement. Unlike Zeffo and Kashyyyk, which at least have methods of quickly travelling between distant areas of the map in the form of elevators and the Shyyyo bird, respectively, Dathomir has very few. This compounded with the sheer amount of one-way ledge drops and slopes around the Swamp of Sacrifice means players who fell down into the subterranean village area have to navigate for close to half an hour just to get back to where they were. Have fun hunting for collectibles on this planet.
  • Zeffo can be this for a lot of players too. Not just because of the difficult enemies that can found there, but also because of how huge it is and how long it takes to complete. In fact, even when you use the map, the level is so massive that most players will get lost and have a pretty hard time getting back to the ship once their mission is over. It’s not helped by the fact that there’s no fast travel in this game. There’s also a lot of difficult puzzles on this planet. Have fun hunting for collectibles on this planet too.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite the character's history, his master's last words, and even the tagline of the game - "trust only in the force" - Cal's trust issues never really come up as a significant character element. He's spent most of his life on the run from the Empire and being suspicious that anyone could potentially betray him; this seems to be setting up an arc over his code of survival and his want to help others, but Cal never suffers any kind of inner conflict over his paranoia and is all too willing to take people at their word. Even when he's presented with reason to doubt - such as when the Second Sister's backstory comes to light - he continues to trust his new allies despite knowing next to nothing about them. While this shows that Cal is a genuine hero who has unwavering faith in his friends, Cal doesn't really have the arc the story sets him up to have.
• Ugly Cute: The Binog, the dragon-like Kaiju that lives on Bogano, has a rather canine-looking muzzle, making it look like a reptilian version of Falcor. The fact that it can occasionally be seen rolling on its back like an oversized puppy certainly helps.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Jaro Tapal is a Lasat, though he's depicted with more humanoid eyes rather than the huge eyes they're supposed to have.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Many people were surprised to see Saw Gerrera make an appearance. Tarfful coming back and playing a prominent role in the story also caught many by surprise.
  • The Second Sister isn't the only Inquisitor showing up. Alongside her is the Ninth Sister, who was last seen being left for dead and at the mercy of rogue Purge Troopers after getting her leg cut off by the Sixth Brother.
  • Darth Vader returns as the final opponent of the game, his inclusion being a major shock to players.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Greez for some players. He spends the better part of the first several hours of the game being rude and obnoxious, like he’s trying too hard to be a funny, lovable asshole... when he really just comes off as a plain old asshole. Some players weren’t particularly moved when the game’s records began writing about how he began to see the crew as his family in one of the game’s biggest cliches, since they felt Greez had done nothing to earn that. While he does mellow out at the end of the game, for some, the damage had been done.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Along with Need for Speed Heat which puts higher emphasis on single player and base game content, many were pleasantly surprised that EA would publish a single-player Star Wars game without DLC or microtransactions, as EA had a notorious reputation for preferring service-based online games with microtransactions, having rejected exclusively single-player games as "unprofitable" in recent years.
  • The gameplay reveal at E3 2019 received a mixed reception due to its linear Uncharted-like gameplay. However, those who saw additional behind-the-scenes footage reported that the game would be more similar to Metroidvania with a touch of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, reigniting interest.

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