With Zero Company and Galactic Racer about to be released, a reader examines what makes a good Star Wars game and what common mistakes the bad ones make.
There is a particular temptation that seems to follow Star Wars wherever it goes. If you are making a game set in its universe, why not put everything in it? Jedi, smugglers, space battles, bounty hunters, Mandalorians, lightsabers, speeders, blasters, cantinas, morality systems, crafting, multiplayer, a few planets – and preferably several dozen. Maybe a loot system while we are here.
It sounds wonderful on paper, but it is also how you end up making a game that spends so much time trying to represent Star Wars that it forgets to be a good game. Some of the best Star Wars games ever made succeeded for almost the opposite reason. They picked one particular fantasy and committed to it.
TIE Fighter did not ask you to experience every corner of the galaxy. It asked you to sit in a cockpit and become very good at following Imperial orders. Republic Commando did not need Jedi powers, open worlds or a morality meter. It let you be a clone soldier with three other clone soldiers and concentrated on making that relationship work.
Jedi: Fallen Order largely understood that if you are making a Jedi adventure, being a Jedi should be the centre of the experience, rather than one system amongst 20 others. Looking across the full history of Star Wars video games, the licence has always contained an almost absurd number of possible games. Lightsabers naturally suggest melee combat, the Force suggests powers and progression systems, starfighters suggest dogfighting, smugglers suggest stealth and reputation systems, bounty hunters suggest contracts, droids suggest hacking, and podracing suggests racing.
The problem has never been a lack of ideas. The problem is knowing which ones to leave out.
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That may be one of the most important skills in making a Star Wars game.
TIE Fighter is still one of the clearest examples. You were an Imperial pilot. That was enough. The game did not suddenly decide that mission seven needed a third person lightsaber section because lightsabers are popular, and it did not make you wander around Star Destroyers looking for crafting components between sorties. It knew what fantasy it was selling.
You climbed into a cockpit, received orders from people who almost certainly knew more than they were telling you, and went to work. That limitation gave the game an identity.
The same thing happened with Republic Commando. In theory, a Clone Wars game could include practically anything: Jedi generals, enormous battles, vehicles, space combat, and half the prequel trilogy’s supporting cast. Instead, it gave us Delta Squad.
Four soldiers, simple tactical commands and the constant feeling that your squad mattered more than whatever enormous war was happening somewhere outside the room. Even the absence of Jedi became part of its personality. You were not the most important person in the galaxy. You were the person clearing the corridor.
That distinction mattered because Star Wars games had already spent years telling us that the natural endpoint of everything was becoming a Jedi. Republic Commando suggested something much more interesting. Perhaps being a soldier was enough.
Oddly enough, the same principle applies when the fantasy actually is being a Jedi. One reason Jedi: Fallen Order worked was that Respawn understood the central promise. You were going to explore strange places, learn Force abilities, fight with a lightsaber and gradually become more capable. Everything else existed to support that.
There were puzzles, cosmetics, exploration, and a sizeable cast of characters, but the game rarely forgot why you bought it. Its systems pointed in roughly the same direction.