With less than four weeks until Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment launch their follow-up to the critically acclaimed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Wccftech was invited out to the sunny (and stormy) streets of Hollywood, CA, for one of the few limited opportunities to go hands-on with the next chapter of Cal Kestis’ tale. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor picks up five years after the climax of Jedi: Fallen Order, with Cal immersed in the capabilities of the Force and fully aware of the atrocities committed by the Galactic Empire.

　　Our PC preview session began with a brief rundown of the various systems that we would be able to interact with during three hours to freely run around the planet of Koboh shortly after escaping from a planet commonly referenced within the main Star Wars universe and making an emergency crash landing, events that encompass the first opening hour of gameplay. This distant planet just so happens to be where Greez, a notable ally from the original game whose height was outmatched by his sarcastic wit, has set up shop with the main cantina in town: Pyloon’s Saloon. This same Greez just so happens to have the parts necessary to make Cal Kestis’ ship, the Mantis, skyworthy once more but it won’t be as simple as knocking on his door and asking for a spare set of hyperdrive components. Five years have been enough time for Greez to change up his wardrobe, giving up his red space jumpsuit for a blue denim leisure suit that fits in with his space Italian identity and sideburns that have grown out long enough to be braided at the sides.

　　Even getting to the Cantina is an effort that takes up more than half of the hands-on session. In that time, Cal is thrown directly into waves of alien wildlife, Bedlam raiders, and Imperial Stormtroopers that have their own reasons for exploring the surface of Koboh. To even make it from the wreck of the Mantis to Greez’s Cantina is going to take a mixture of skills that Cal first acquired in the original game. This includes traversing the environment by way of scripted climbing sessions, walking across precarious balance beams, and the odd environmental puzzle of carrying power cables between generator and doors in desperate need of opening (something that players of The Last of Us Part II should be intimately familiar with). And of course, that’s not counting the variety of beasts and humanoids that wish Cal a swift end.

　　Combat in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor builds off the skillset that Cal Kestis had at his disposal by the ending credits roll of Jedi: Fallen Order. While five stances will be available to Cal throughout the upcoming adventure, here we only had access to three basic stances: the traditional single blade that most Jedi Warriors are known for, a double-blade stance first popularized by Darth Maul, and a dual blade stance that permits Cal to swing twice as quickly and deflect any oncoming blaster fire while also being able to automatically parry by holding down Y, albeit at the cost of any accumulated Force energy over time. It’s this third stance that I only briefly experienced in Jedi: Fallen Order and thus spent nearly my entire play session getting the hang of. 

　　At the start of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Cal begins with five skill points to freely invest across the available disciplines that he’s picked up during his years of adventuring and hints of what’s to come as well. From what I could look at, Cal will have one primary Survival tree to gain additional health and other key skills, three Force skills (Jedi Concentration, Telekinesis, and Confusion), and five Lightsaber disciplines. Among the three mentioned above, Cal will also be immersed in the ways of the Blaster stance where he can wield a Blaster in his offhand and a rapier-esque lightsaber in the main hand, and the Crossguard stance that gives players access to a claymore-shaped lightsaber with a flared cross hilt that Kylo Ren popularized in the recent movie trilogy. Respeccing Cal’s skill tree can only be done at meditation rings that function similarly to bonfires from a certain hardcore action JRPG series. The first respec available to me was free, with additional ones requiring the expenditure of a skill point. Cal will also acquire 25 different Perks that customize his playstyle in different ways. One Perk I earned by slaying a Rancor (Shatter) cost two slots of the three available to Cal but increased the damage the main character could deal to the opponent’s block meter on a successful strike.

　　While I didn’t get to go hands-on with these other two stances, Combat Designer Jason de Heras showed off everything in a brief combat demo with constantly respawning waves of stormtroopers (the developers sadly confirmed that this was just something they came up with for this specific preview event). Some of the advanced techniques Jason showed off included throwing the saberstaff and letting it spin in place among a large group of opponents or using the Blaster stance to first Force Lift an entire group into the sky then slow down time with intense concentration and mass lock onto the group and unload an entire Blast clip in a simulation of fanning the hammer (Cal had access to eight plus two shots for a total of ten to fire off in that stance). Other perks available to Cal in that combat preview showed off four guard gauge nodes and 12 stimpacks that BD-1 could administer on the fly in the form of Estus flasks (which recharge when resting at a Meditation point).

　　Cal Kestis’ combat experience in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor should feel instantly familiar to those that have played the original game or any number of Soulslike or Masocore titles of the past decade. A large group of enemies can easily take Cal to his grave if he isn’t careful but the flow of light and heavy attacks, defensive blocks and parries, and force powers all weave together to make Cal feel like a properly empowered Jedi badass. If the amount of damage inflicted on Cal is too much to keep up with or parry windows feel too tight to pull off reliably, there are a number of difficulty options available that let players adjust these stats in set blocks (with no option to adjust these levels independently).

　　Traversal similarly has been updated with modern animation flourishes but otherwise feels similar to the original Jedi: Fallen Order. Cal can scramble and clamber across the environment and hang from vines stretched across interior ceilings but only in certain locations. Typically what Cal can interact with is accented in a white or light grey hue, a stark shift from the yellow pathfinding of what you’d find in a typical AAA adventure. While this isn’t as distracting from the environment, it has the unintended effect of being difficult to read the room and see just what Cal can climb up from a distance. There were quite a few instances of leaping to what I thought was a safe handhold only to fall half a building’s distance down and have to load back in with a small amount of fall damage as my only reward. This was something I raised during my interview with two of the developers on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, so perhaps we might see some additional accessibility options to make the traversal points more obvious.

　　What might not be instantly noticeable for series newcomers are the enhancements to the map and meditation points. The overall map of the planets has been tweaked and made more legible, with being able to see a more 3D view of the landscape across multiple elevation heights, a breadcrumb trail to highlight where Cal has already been, and automatically updated points of interest that show a locked door or pickup that Cal scouted from afar but had not yet interacted with. This is in addition to automatic sidequest region tracking and half a dozen other icons that could be left on the map to remind the player of other objectives. The other massive improvement is the inclusion of Fast Travel points to warp between meditation points. This will cut down on the amount of backtracking immensely and make gathering those various collectibles much less of a chore once Cal Kestis has his full suite of traversal and combat upgrades.

　　Even on Koboh alone, there were 14 collectibles to discover: 2 chests, 4 data banks, 2 treasures, 1 essence, 1 force tear, and 4 seed pods (out of 145). Cal has eight different inventory slots for these collectibles, so expect quite a few to pick up if you’re aiming for that elusive 100% completion. This is in addition to the 100 Piorite Shards to be acquired and traded into the local merchant for various cosmetic upgrades and such (whether this is solely on Koboh or other planets is still up in the air, although I did acquire around 10-15 of these alone during my session and was able to pay for the key to unlock a door in the back of the shop which yielded an extra stim pack for BD-1.

　　Among the other perks Cal could spend his hard-earned Priorite Shards on was split up between 15 shards for Music packs to change up the Cantina’s BGM (once the jukebox at Pyloon’s Saloon is repaired), 35 shards of hair and beard options, and 40 shards of various outfit options. If you want to give Cal a mohawk or extended mustache, you’ll have to search around Koboh for those hidden Priorite Shards. One you can find hiding within the Saloon itself is in a toilet, where Cal can use the Force to flush and reveal this hidden pickup. Down in the basement of the Saloon, I found Cal Kestis’ Scrapper outfit from Jedi: Fallen Order for players that yearn for that iconic look (and you can unlock both a man-bun and mullet for Cal shortly afterward to complete the look). Other customization options include designing all seven components of a lightsaber with designs acquired through regular adventure and nine different Kyber crystal colors. Cal and BD-1 also similarly feature a wide array of customization options that will need to be unlocked as rewards for various tasks. Cal has 27 options for hair and beard alone and another 39 for clothing split up across jacket/shirt/pants.

　　While there was much more that I was able to see and explore, there are secrets that players should be able to see for themselves when Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launches later this month. For a perspective on just how much there is to a single planet, I had only reached 16.9% completion for the planet of Koboh by the time my three-hour preview session wrapped up. You’ll just have to wait and see the next stage of Cal Kestis’ story for yourself when Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, and PC on April 28th.