Respawn’s Stig Asmussen has been talking with StarWars.com about the newly announced Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
StarWars.com: To start, Jedi: Fallen Order obviously went on to be a huge hit with fans. What I always find interesting is that when you work on something, you don’t really know how it is going to be received. What were your feelings when Jedi: Fallen Order was on the cusp of release?
Stig Asmussen: [Laughs.] That takes me back a few years. I was very anxious at the time. We had done a lot of internal play tests of the game and we were getting good feedback, but you never know once it goes into the wild with the public. Star Wars fans expect the best, so I didn’t really know. I knew that I loved playing the game a lot. I hoped that people would feel the same way that I did and people on the team did, and it turns out it worked out.
StarWars.com: And when the game came out and it received all that acclaim, and all the amazing reviews, what did that mean to you and the team?
Stig Asmussen: It was validation for all the hard work that we put into the game and the work that we did with Lucasfilm. I didn’t sleep leading up to the release, and I didn’t sleep afterwards because I was reading all the reviews. The points good and bad were fair, and those are things that we use to grow and build on the next game.
StarWars.com: One thing I really liked about it was that I found Cal Kestis to be a really great audience surrogate. I felt like you really did identify with him, because Cal was on a journey of discovery and you were discovering things with him. What did you want to achieve with that character?
Stig Asmussen: Well, it turns out it worked out for us very well, because we wanted to make a Metroidvania-designed game, and that kind of means the player is in lock step, one-to-one, with the main character. We got to see Cal growing from kind of this unfinished Padawan into a Jedi, and you got to experience it each step with Cal. And I think there was a connection for the player with this character, because as you get these new mechanics, as you get these new Force abilities, you were really feeling like you were in the journey with Cal.
And Cam [Monaghan, who portrayed Cal Kestis] did a fantastic job really discovering and identifying who this character was. There was what he had in the script, on the paper, but also what he did and how he expanded off of that into a really relatable character.
StarWars.com: What would you say were your big learnings about bringing Star Wars into the gaming medium with Jedi: Fallen Order?
Stig Asmussen: I would say, for the team, our biggest learning was just learning Star Wars more than anything else. You know, everybody comes in, they can be the biggest fan, they think they understand Star Wars. But until you’re living and breathing it every day, you won’t understand that you haven’t really scratched the surface yet. I considered myself and members of the team as students of Star Wars. I know how to make a game, but making a game that works within this universe that feels legit and substantial was a learning process every single day.
StarWars.com: Yeah. And with modern technology in current consoles, you have so much more you can do, but how do you execute that?
Stig Asmussen: Yeah. The bottom line is Star Wars is an amazing toy box, ready-built with all these creative problems that are already figured out. Especially when you’re dealing with a Jedi. You’ve got Force powers, lightsabers. You have all these different worlds and planets that you can travel to, established characters that everybody understands and has expectations for. That’s all there. But you have to make sure, while you’re using these tools, that you’re building something that works with them and fits with them, and that’s where it becomes somewhat complicated, because you’re making mechanics that feel fun for the game, but they also have to feel right for Star Wars.
StarWars.com: Is there a specific aspect to Jedi: Fallen Order, whether it’s a gameplay mechanic or a moment, that you’re especially proud of?
Stig Asmussen: We had three major pillars. We had our combat, we had our exploration, and we had our story. Finding a way to marry those together at all times, that was our biggest challenge. But there were some places where I think that we really achieved that. I would say maybe the AT-AT moment on Kashyyyk, where Cal and BD-1 hijack and pilot the AT-AT and basically lay waste to the Empire. That is probably the pinnacle of all those pieces coming together.
StarWars.com: Fans were very excited when a Jedi: Fallen Order sequel, which we now know is officially called Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, was announced in January. When did you start hatching ideas for what a follow-up could be, and developing them with Lucasfilm?
Stig Asmussen: So we started working, in earnest, even before we finished Jedi: Fallen Order with ideas of what the second game could be. There were a lot of things that we left — I guess you would call on the editing room floor — from Jedi: Fallen Order that we knew that we wanted to put into the sequel. Some of that comes down to like, more stances for combat, or where we’re going to go with the story, how Cal and the crew are going to evolve and grow, how we’re going to approach the worlds and the levels in the game, and expand them and make them more vibrant than they’ve been in the past. But yeah, you’re thinking about this stuff every day. [Laughs.]
