Survivor – Lucasfilm Originally Wanted Respawn To Create a Shooter Title With a Bounty Hunter or a Smuggler

Ahead of the release of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor this month, director Stig Asmussen spilled some beans about the Star Wars Jedi games from Respawn Entertainment. According to a recent interview, Lucasfilm was initially sceptical about introducing a new Jedi via a game. They even suggested basing the game on a bounty hunter, instead of a Jedi. Here’s more on what happened behind the scenes.

Lucasfilm was uncomfortable with Jedi in the game

Stig Asmussen, who is also known for having worked on God of War games previously, is now gearing up for the launch of his next Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. This game is the sequel to 2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, which is set five years after the events of Revenge of the Sith. But as it turns out, there was a chance that we wouldn’t even have one of these Star Wars Jedi games, let alone a sequel.

In an interview with The Guardian, Stig Asmussen revealed that when they pitched the idea of a third-person action adventure featuring a Jedi with lightsabers, Lucasfilm quizzed them hard about their intentions. He says, “to Lucasfilm, the Jedi are like the holy grail. I mean, it’s something that they’re probably the most protective of, except for maybe Baby Yoda. So we had to kind of earn that. We had to go through a whole process of, why do you want it to be a Jedi? What do you want to do with the Jedi? They were really uncomfortable with Jedi, and they said, ‘Let’s reset this. Let’s call this character a force user.’”

That’s when Lucasfilm went on to pitch the idea of a bounty hunter or a smuggler, but that again was something that Asmussen couldn’t bring himself to do, especially given his inexperience with shooters. Asmussen then apparently put down his foot, as he explains, “I’m like, well I think you have the wrong person for the job. That’s not my background. My background came from God of War … I’ve never worked on a shooter, and you need a different team to do that. You might as well be asking me to make a racing game. And eventually over time, we built that trust to the point where we ended up calling [the franchise] Jedi.”

Asmussen also added how the journey that goes behind the making of a Jedi, is perfectly in line with the concept of a video game, that just wouldn’t have caught the same colours, had it been a shooter. Talking about the character development of Cal Kestis, the protagonist of these games, he said as a somewhat inexperienced individual, Kestis was not even considered to be a fully-fledged Padawan and has been living in seclusion for a while. The player also begins with limited knowledge and skills and progresses as the story advances. Along with the significant story developments, the player will obtain new abilities and tools that would aid in rethinking the world, just as Cal develops and becomes more aware of the universe.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was originally set to launch earlier in March this year, but it’s now been delayed to April 28. The game will be launching on Xbox Series X/S, PS5 and PC.