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Basically. I'd just like to see interesting alien characters.

Funnily a story driven game will have lots of people discussing the thing that will drive its story.

"We wanted to tell a unique story across vast alien worlds and new planets so we chose this white guy because it's a perspective we haven't seen before"

Truthfully he reminds me of Matt Damon. Specifically Bourne Identity Matt Damon, who can't stay out of trouble because he's constantly acting suspicious and twitchy.

I have a feel most of the story and character discussions will focus on 'why is SteveDave such an idiot?'

 Gael Knight wrote:
Wow I can't wait to get the chance to play *checks notes* a white dude Jedi. Not seen that before.

Link to the quote from Respawn that there will be no character customization, please.



As for the rest of it -

I'm optimistic. Respawn has released three games, and they've all been successful. My biggest concern right now is probably that the fact that they've only had one game with a single-player component - Titanfall 2 - and all of their games are built around multi-player. That isn't the case this time, obviously, so it's possible that inexperience will trip them up. On the other hand, the single-player campaign in Titanfall 2 was fun. So there's obviously some potential. We shall see.

And if it does well?

It's been, what, a decade since the last good Star Wars game?

I’d say yet another Jedi game probably bores me more than a generic protagonist. There smugglers and troopers, and all kinds of cool stuff. EA has had this license for awhile now and we’ve gotten what?

Two mediocre bordering on bad shooters. That’s it. They come up with something not shooter and it’s a still generic looking Jedi game.

Why isn’t there a Star Wars stealth action game? Star Wars horror? It’s a big universe. There is lots of stuff. No idea why everything needs to be about Jedi and human characters. Both of the projects EA canned were more interesting than this but then It’s EA so not shocking.

Eumerin wrote:

 Gael Knight wrote:
Wow I can't wait to get the chance to play *checks notes* a white dude Jedi. Not seen that before.

Link to the quote from Respawn that there will be no character customization, please.

Probably the fact that they hired a specific actor to play the role, you absolute melt.

 Melissia wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Given how many of those characters are quite well known and popular..

The games they're in are well known and popular, but the characters themselves are often ultimately kind of interchangeable and forgettable.

Citation needed. Many people are quite thrilled to see such characters when they arrive in various other media that isn't just their own games, otherwise people wouldn't have cared to see Frank West arriving in Marvel vs Capcom or Solid Snake in Smash Brothers.

Also as for forgettable.. Yeah, I sincerely doubt that.

[edit - probably takes the convesation in the wrong direction.]

 Yodhrin wrote:
And them having a different skintone or dangly bits

I was talking about their personality, actually. Not every "grizzled white guy" has to be bland and boring. I give an example to you of Duke Nukem, in the much-maligned Duke Nukem Forever. He had a distinct personality, making the game actually kinda interesting to play just to see how he'd interact with the world in fun and funny ways as well as serious one-- people mocked the game as aged, but as far as actual story and personality I'd put it well above a generic game protagonist like whoever the boring forgettable main characters from some Call of Duty game was. I've played several games from the Modern Warfare series, as well as the Gears of War series, and I honestly couldn't name a single player character from any of them. The Doomslayer from the more recent of the Doom series is another example-- a man with a well-defined personality in spite of rarely ever talking, who told his tale entirely through his actions, but the animations told it well enough without words, giving personality to an otherwise bland action hero in a way that was critically acclaimed and rightfully so. You don't know his name, you never hear him speak, but you know exactly what he's about and what he's feeling at any given time.

The problem, quite simply, is that most video game protagonists had a personality that could be summarized as "determination! fury! grrr!" with the occasional snark and humor thrown in to break up the tension, because the devs decided they wanted to have the main character be a conduit for the player's own personality when playing the game... and unfortunately for the characters in question, most games aren't Deus Ex or Mass Effect and don't really give the player much opportunity to channel their personality through the character, so it just leaves each of the characters to blend in with the next one. There's very little thought given in to the player character's personality in most of these style games.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Given how many of those characters are quite well known and popular..

The games they're in are well known and popular, but the characters themselves are often ultimately kind of interchangeable and forgettable.

Citation needed.

It's called an "opinion".

That response actually makes me sad, Melissia

Duke Nukem doesn't have a personality. He's a parody stereotype from bad action movies and almost *all* of Duke's lines are ripped from said films. He specifically *is not* a character in his own right. That was the joke, and one of the reasons the franchise didn't age well.

And yet somehow in spite of that he still has more of a personality than Generic Grim and Gritty Soldier Protagonist Number Eight Hundred and Ninety Three.

I doubt that the majority of game protagonists are memorable so much as the games they were in were memorable, and the characters are thus remembered by proxy.

Yeah, that's pretty much the point I was going for.

 LordofHats wrote:
I doubt that the majority of game protagonists are memorable so much as the games they were in were memorable, and the characters are thus remembered by proxy.

Then we'd better hope it's a good game then.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
I doubt that the majority of game protagonists are memorable so much as the games they were in were memorable, and the characters are thus remembered by proxy.

Then we'd better hope it's a good game then.

I think Respawn definitely knows how to make a good game.

I am curious how they'd approach this kind of game though. Most of Resapwns work as said by someone earlier is shooters. Developers have traditionally not done great when switch genres. Part of me wonders if this is one of those AAA bait-switches, where a team is handed to an experienced developer to work on a new game with that developers name on it, but the actual developer everyone knows and trusts isn't the team making the game. It wouldn't be the first time EA has done it either. They did it multiple times with Bioware, often only revealing the fact just before or just after release.

The teaser doesn't really tell us much, though some of the scenes look like they're from test game play.

 Melissia wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
And them having a different skintone or dangly bits

I was talking about their personality, actually. Not every "grizzled white guy" has to be bland and boring. I give an example to you of Duke Nukem, in the much-maligned Duke Nukem Forever. He had a distinct personality, making the game actually kinda interesting to play just to see how he'd interact with the world in fun and funny ways as well as serious one-- people mocked the game as aged, but as far as actual story and personality I'd put it well above a generic game protagonist like whoever the boring forgettable main characters from some Call of Duty game was. I've played several games from the Modern Warfare series, as well as the Gears of War series, and I honestly couldn't name a single player character from any of them. The Doomslayer from the more recent of the Doom series is another example-- a man with a well-defined personality in spite of rarely ever talking, who told his tale entirely through his actions, but the animations told it well enough without words, giving personality to an otherwise bland action hero in a way that was critically acclaimed and rightfully so. You don't know his name, you never hear him speak, but you know exactly what he's about and what he's feeling at any given time.

The problem, quite simply, is that most video game protagonists had a personality that could be summarized as "determination! fury! grrr!" with the occasional snark and humor thrown in to break up the tension, because the devs decided they wanted to have the main character be a conduit for the player's own personality when playing the game... and unfortunately for the characters in question, most games aren't Deus Ex or Mass Effect and don't really give the player much opportunity to channel their personality through the character, so it just leaves each of the characters to blend in with the next one. There's very little thought given in to the player character's personality in most of these style games.

Right, yes, but that's exactly what I'm saying - the issue is that this style of game always goes for a cipher character. Whether that cipher is male or female, black or white, human or alien, it would still be the same character, and yet when people reach for a criticism the first place they land is "pale stale male, ugh"? And of course we don't know that he is a complete cipher, he could be an incredibly nuanced character with an interesting story to tell - not likely, I admit, but not as impossible as some folks' reactions would suggest.

It just seems like people are making a lot of assumptions based on nothing more than a short story teaser trailer and the sex & skin colour of the protagonist.

Another thing to remember is that since most players of a game project themselves onto their character, making that character an approachable blank slate is the best choice. Hence why most of the time the player's character is a dude, at least in games where you aren't given any customization options. Human is also the best choice for approachability. It lets people relate to the character and know their point of view more readily. Heck, this even applies when people are given character creation choices. Its not a coincidence that the most common DnD character is a Human Fighter, whose direct analog in Star Wars would be a human jedi.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Another thing to remember is that since most players of a game project themselves onto their character, making that character an approachable blank slate is the best choice. Hence why most of the time the player's character is a dude, at least in games where you aren't given any customization options. Human is also the best choice for approachability. It lets people relate to the character and know their point of view more readily. Heck, this even applies when people are given character creation choices. Its not a coincidence that the most common DnD character is a Human Fighter, whose direct analog in Star Wars would be a human jedi.

Uh, no? After multiple attempts at mapping Star Wars to RPGs (specifically D&D multiple times), Jedi end up as wizard + other classes (like monk, sometimes others based on edition) and fighter = soldier (often as literal copy paste).
Jedi don't really do soldier things at all. They do weird mystic crap and sword fight, which is an experience no one has, so it can't be relatability thing. A power fantasy thing makes a lot more sense, though I don't get why these devs think its so one dimensional.

"Human Fighter"'s analogue in the SW universe is "Human Soldier", not "Jedi". Jedi is the most iconic character of the setting, but not the most basic.

I actually played a Warrior in the Dragon Age series and Soldier in ME, because I felt that the main character was my "vantage point" into the series - like Night Owl in Watchmen, the character lets "you" participate in the universe, and learn about Biotics/Magics/space-tech from Kaidian/Morrigan/Tali.

However, in the SW universe, there really isn't a need for that; Jedi are too heavy a part of pop culture. So it's a lot more "natural" to play a Jedi in SW than a Mage in Dragon Age or a Biotic in Mass Effect.

End result is that most people would play a human Jedi in SW, for reasons similar reasons as to the Human Fighter; however, they are not direct analogs.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Right, yes, but that's exactly what I'm saying - the issue is that this style of game always goes for a cipher character. Whether that cipher is male or female, black or white, human or alien, it would still be the same character, and yet when people reach for a criticism the first place they land is "pale stale male, ugh"?

Said "cipher character" always is "pale, stale, male", but that's an entirely different complaint than the one I was making. That said, it IS a legitimate complaint. If the character is a bland player-stand-in, then there's no reason not to let the players customize them to begin with these days. I point to a game like Anthem as an example of a company that did this particular aspect of player character design right. Whatever else Anthem did right or wrong (and there's a lot it did wrong as well as right), its main character is a "cipher character" type, but the player has just enough customization to make this kind of character more immersive during the non-combat portions of the game which the character is visible. It's entirely within reason for a dev to not implement this kind of thing, but it's also within reason for a potential customer to be disappointed in them not doing so.

Voss wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Another thing to remember is that since most players of a game project themselves onto their character, making that character an approachable blank slate is the best choice. Hence why most of the time the player's character is a dude, at least in games where you aren't given any customization options. Human is also the best choice for approachability. It lets people relate to the character and know their point of view more readily. Heck, this even applies when people are given character creation choices. Its not a coincidence that the most common DnD character is a Human Fighter, whose direct analog in Star Wars would be a human jedi.

Uh, no? After multiple attempts at mapping Star Wars to RPGs (specifically D&D multiple times), Jedi end up as wizard + other classes (like monk, sometimes others based on edition) and fighter = soldier (often as literal copy paste).
Jedi don't really do soldier things at all. They do weird mystic crap and sword fight, which is an experience no one has, so it can't be relatability thing. A power fantasy thing makes a lot more sense, though I don't get why these devs think its so one dimensional.

Mystic Crap and Sword Fight? That would be a Magus in Pathfinder or a Warlock in D&D 5e. Also, having played a lot of the Star Wars pen and paper games, I don't remember them being a wizard+other class in them at all.

I remember them being really, really powerful unless someone went deep in to the shopping list and abused some rather cheap items like flamethrowers, stun weapons, and laser shotguns. There was one that was like the "Deck-Clearing Blaster" that was particularly useful against jedi at short range. Course, surviving an encounter with a Jedi at short range was rather difficult, but hey, if you're a non-force sensitive fighting Jedis, you'll be wearing mandalorian armor or equivalent, anyway.

You’re getting hung up on the mechanics of a character and not the style of that character within the setting.

A human Jedi in Star Wars is the same sort of vanilla that is a human fighter is in DnD.

Good to see people complaining over what the character is rather than who the character is. More surface-level criticism from the crowd that wants to put everyone into racial, gender and sexuality boxes...

 Yodhrin wrote:
And of course we don't know that he is a complete cipher, he could be an incredibly nuanced character with an interesting story to tell - not likely, I admit, but not as impossible as some folks' reactions would suggest.

It just seems like people are making a lot of assumptions based on nothing more than a short story teaser trailer and the sex & skin colour of the protagonist.

Watch as they make him gay and the same people bitching over nothing fall over themselves to praise how progressive and forward thinking the game is.

It wouldn't be too much to ask to make the character an alien.

Even the black woman that's his mentor is lame. Make at least one of them an alien.

All these people need to do to "survive" is not use their force powers. At least the alien aspect brings up some problems in the xenophobic Empire.

Protagonist looks and sounds pretty interesting to me. I like the idea of a younger character who is trying to balance the idealism of what he was taught, as well as the idealism of his own callow youth, against the cynicism of being a “public enemy” in a gritty world. The setting may be grizzled, but the character definitely is not.

E3 alpha footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8939aURV9Dc


Yeah... not impressed. I get that its alpha footage but... it struck me as nothing but an oh so incredibly standard spectacle fighter, with shades of 'Press X for 'quicktime' event'.

The people look absolutely woeful at the start.


Some site today mentioned this wasn't originally started as a SW game- I can see it, somewhat. The vines from nowhere and wall-running (and webbing) remind me of spiderman more than anything.

Is... is he calling the cutesy robot sidekick 'VD?'

Haven't watched the video (I'm at work). But what you're describing sounds suspiciously similar to on-foot gameplay in Titanfall.

The trailer basically looks like Force Unleashed, which is a rather dated kind of game for the current market imo. Still, the gameplay seemed solid enough. Maybe the story will impress but I didn't feel like we got a good sense of the story other than what has already been known.

This leans heavily on the meh side. They gotta spice this up hard if they are going to get my interest.

I feel like they shoot themselves in the foot each time they put another game in the Skywalker era, specifically the during Galactic Civil War/First Order Era. It just further limits design space and storytelling with the desire to shove in cameos. 1313's concept would have worked way better than this, and combat seemed too clunky and iffy with the health bars for me to be interested in this.

Man, someone just take the damn SW license away from EA already. 4 years and all they have to show are 3 garbage games. Whatever happened to stuff like Republic Commandos, Jedi Knight Academy and KOTOR?