![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguinI completed the game on Monday. My interim thoughts on the controls and their unsuitability for mouse and keyboard still stand. Looking at IGN's walkthrough I accidentally learned that when enemies go red, that means their next attack is unblockable, which I think made the final bossfight slightly easier. ("Story" difficulty mode is not actually what it advertises. For all that it was the easiest difficulty available of four, I'd compare it to a hypothetical difficulty level 2.5 out of 4 for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.) Mowing down mooks by yeeting them off ledges or yoinking them into your lightsaber was super fun, though!
Time to beat: 18-19 hours or so? I was very much not speedrunning, though.
I was spoiled for the Second Sister being Cere Junda's padawan Trilla and them destroying the holocron in the end. Also that Merrin/Cal is a thing that will happen in the sequel. What I did not expect was the fight (well, escape) against Vader at the end or Trilla sort of returning to the light there.
The plot itself was sort of circular – all that faffing around over a holocron that would've been better off buried and which they eventually destroyed – but the point was the journey, and the story was about Cal (and Cere) reconnecting with the Force and dealing with their PTSD. True to form, I enjoyed the video game archaeology, even if I was dismayed by the fact that walking up to the pots destroyed them. The lost civilization of the Zeffo turned from a MacGuffin to something thematic: in an extremely good vision sequence, Cal gets a vision where a Zeffo sage says they were doomed by being too stubborn and clinging to the past, then gets to walk through a vision of a future where he and Cere pick up the Force-sensitive younglings – dooming them all when the Empire inevitably finds them. Cal kneeling for the promise of leniency for the younglings and then being made an Inquisitor was a very effective sequence. Also all the literal doors closing on you when you're playing through the section so you have to take a detour. Excellent usage of video game stuff.
The flashback training sequences were a wonderful way to not only give a mini-tutorial on each new skill, but also build up the character of Jaro Tapal, who is dead before the game starts, so that his death in the Order 66 flashback would have meaning to the players, not just Cal. (It also made me retroactively feel bad about customizing the lightsaber. I should've just left all the parts as Jaro Tapal's until Ilum, and only then gone with my sparklesue indigo saberstaff with the Duty & Resolve switch and sleeve.)
Other ways the video game mechanics felt like they had a lore basis were the Force echoes: Cal Kestis is psychometric, so he can sense the past in predefined locations. This was much more immersive than the standard "oh look, click on this lore object here" -type stuff. Having BD-1 walk around with video recordings from Eno Cordova was also a nice way to integrate infodumps into the gameplay and made him a character that felt present in his own right, though he'd died before Order 66. (The "open this crate to receive a customization for your droid/ship/lightsaber!" stuff was much more video game-y, though.)
All in all this was an excellently crafted story. I'm going to buy the sequel at some point when I have the time to play it and the devs have released a few more patches for PC. (Apparently it is extremely unoptimized and glitchy.)
Time to beat: 18-19 hours or so? I was very much not speedrunning, though.
I was spoiled for the Second Sister being Cere Junda's padawan Trilla and them destroying the holocron in the end. Also that Merrin/Cal is a thing that will happen in the sequel. What I did not expect was the fight (well, escape) against Vader at the end or Trilla sort of returning to the light there.
The plot itself was sort of circular – all that faffing around over a holocron that would've been better off buried and which they eventually destroyed – but the point was the journey, and the story was about Cal (and Cere) reconnecting with the Force and dealing with their PTSD. True to form, I enjoyed the video game archaeology, even if I was dismayed by the fact that walking up to the pots destroyed them. The lost civilization of the Zeffo turned from a MacGuffin to something thematic: in an extremely good vision sequence, Cal gets a vision where a Zeffo sage says they were doomed by being too stubborn and clinging to the past, then gets to walk through a vision of a future where he and Cere pick up the Force-sensitive younglings – dooming them all when the Empire inevitably finds them. Cal kneeling for the promise of leniency for the younglings and then being made an Inquisitor was a very effective sequence. Also all the literal doors closing on you when you're playing through the section so you have to take a detour. Excellent usage of video game stuff.
The flashback training sequences were a wonderful way to not only give a mini-tutorial on each new skill, but also build up the character of Jaro Tapal, who is dead before the game starts, so that his death in the Order 66 flashback would have meaning to the players, not just Cal. (It also made me retroactively feel bad about customizing the lightsaber. I should've just left all the parts as Jaro Tapal's until Ilum, and only then gone with my sparklesue indigo saberstaff with the Duty & Resolve switch and sleeve.)
Other ways the video game mechanics felt like they had a lore basis were the Force echoes: Cal Kestis is psychometric, so he can sense the past in predefined locations. This was much more immersive than the standard "oh look, click on this lore object here" -type stuff. Having BD-1 walk around with video recordings from Eno Cordova was also a nice way to integrate infodumps into the gameplay and made him a character that felt present in his own right, though he'd died before Order 66. (The "open this crate to receive a customization for your droid/ship/lightsaber!" stuff was much more video game-y, though.)
All in all this was an excellently crafted story. I'm going to buy the sequel at some point when I have the time to play it and the devs have released a few more patches for PC. (Apparently it is extremely unoptimized and glitchy.)