Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Ignores the Value of Architecture.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order follows a young man through a fairly typical coming of age story and it expresses the story well. It addresses guilt and regret in a way that most AAA games do not while keeping on track for the heroes journey. The relationships along the way feel authentic and meaningful, particularly with your droid buddy BD-1. The force powers have all been done before, but I think Fallen Order puts them to use in interesting ways. The puzzles, graphics, action set pieces, and sound design are all impeccable. If you don’t mind quite a few bugs and awful combat, I think Fallen Order is worth playing if you like Star Wars. That said, the architectural design was totally pointless and arguably non-existent.
There are several planets with their own unique aesthetics and each one of them abandons any semblance of architecture. Like Wile E Coyote painting a tunnel on the side of a mountain, the aesthetics of architecture are pasted onto boring level design. On top of that, the aesthetics themselves are a super cut of every sci-fi fantasy trope in existence.
I’m not talking about aesthetics derived from the Star Wars movies (which I think did an excellent job if you ignore the Death Star vents). The image above (a temple) is one of the most bland depictions of an incredibly important space I’ve seen in video games. It looks like a background piece in Halo or borrowed aesthetics from Mass Effect. New architecture doesn’t need to be developed for every little detail, but to not even try on one of the most important spaces in the entire story is lazy.
Military bases fail to feel like military bases littered with random elevators strewn about the structure. Towers express no function (or even path to enter). The level is painted with the industrial military aesthetic present in the Star Wars movies, but fails to elaborate.
One planet utilizes primitive doors alongside trope-ridden sci-fi doors. Am I supposed to believe that a culture that has the capability to build giant metal energized doors can’t figure out walls?
Random features are added for the sake of level design that serve absolutely no functional or aesthetic purpose except to break up the monotony of walking in a straight line. The trope of squeezing between tight walls, which is used far too often in video games, is fun the first time it’s used because it feels like you are sliding through utility spaces. Eventually, it tires and breaks the 4th wall when it only functions as a loading screen and not as legitimate architecture. Ridiculous examples include front doors to temples and random wooden structures built in cave outcrops which lead to questions of how these were even fit into the space.
Worse yet there are structural elements that appear to be preventing cave-ins and holding up ceilings, yet when they are cut (some spaces contain dozens of these columns) nothing happens.
The one space that seems bone deep in its design is the ship. It is supposed to be your residence, and it functions as such. It’s small and comfortable. Every time I returned to the ship, I did not want to leave. I chatted with friends. I gazed out the skylight or the front window. I tended to my plants. I’d meditate in the back and work on my lightsaber. The reason the ship is able to feel like architecture is because it doesn’t have to function as level design. It’s simply a space to load new planets and advance the story. It gave the designers freedom to build the space they wanted to experience.
Ultimately, Fallen Order is a victim of this game type more than anything else. Assassin’s Creed Origins has similar problems and if I ever finish that game, I’m sure I’ll be saying a lot of the same things. The Uncharted games have similar issues as well.
I don’t doubt that most players will ignore the design flaws in Fallen Order, given that people tend to not notice design in their day to day lives. That is no excuse for laziness. The experience in Fallen Order would have benefited from realistic architectural design. As everyone’s favorite Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks once said “Ooey, Meesa hate think the architecture in Fallen Order falls flat”.
i just started playing this game for the first time today and totally agree. it takes you out the experience. The part where you have to slide down the thiing to catch up to your friend at the start, i spent the first part trying to climb up to him instead because there were things that looked climbable. when i was on the train i went to grab rails on the left but had no choice but to grab the ones on the right despite them being the same. It reminded meof Uncharteds train section. full of platfroms that would fall when you let go, but were no real danger, and forcing you to climb an exact way whilst also having elements that look visually climable from a realistic point of view but weren't. believability just doesn't exist a lot of time. For example the plants on Bogdo (i just got to the temple btw) don't seem strong enough to hold a person. there is grating in the most convenient places that make no sense environmentally in their placement. pots just collapse when you walk into them or hit them instead of being solid if you bump them and slicing where you slice them, and yet other stuff that a lightsaber should also make mincemeat of is somehow impervious. even lego star wars let you destroy most things with a lightsaber. Cal feels like he ha no weight to him like say GTA V or ghost of Tsushima characters do, and is very slidey and twitchy. theres weird tubes to slice sometimes that look like you could just walk through them tbh. the wall run only works on grooved walls? instead of just any wall which would have been cooler. the cables you slide down....you can't grab to shimmy back up like you could irl, and they are also way to close to the edge when jumping on them. its this that bugs me. when something looks like you could do something with it in real life and it doesnt do it. ''oh i could duck under the ship to see whats on the other side in real life'' nope, invisible wall and cal won't even duck. ''shouldn't i be holding on for dear life on this railing outside the speeding train? ''nope, cal is literally taking a sunday stroll with hair and clothes barely blowing in the wind, and despite it raining his hair just shines slightly instead of actually going flat like say, the kids hair in The Last Guardian does when wet. ''the force is telling me that that building is where we need to go'' really, it wasn't the droids map that it showed you just two minutes ago that clued you in, or the woman on the ship that bought us here that literally said thats where we need to go that clued you in? ''i sense there was a camp fire here'' force told you that those remnants of a camp fire were camp fire remnants? it just feels like theres a lot of lazy stuff going on here on top of something that started good. like they started with great ideas, and someone came along later in production and cut them back. like you can cut the grass on Bogdo but you can't break open boxes? also the water outside the temples entrance has a reflection 1 pass render that has trees in it that when you tilt the camera gets covered by the lazy screen space reflections of the place without. there's a few instances of reflections like this. like they were putting in the work to create reflections by hand, and then someone came and went ''naa, just screen space em'' and then forgot to remove the stuff they had made previously. this is all just gripes from the first part, i haven't even been IN the temple yet. i hope it gets better but i'm not holding breath. Game companies have just got lazy, and if there was a switch that would make games for them, they'd use it. raytracing is already partly that. waste of computing power for something they could create by hand that would be less intensive on the computer. there's no love for the craft anymore unless its indie devs. As soon as money becomes the main goal of the creation of something, its just a hollow shell. whereas the things made for the love do well. look at death stranding. and its trailer for its sequel. games that are classed as walking simulators have more wow factor than games that try and be wow with guns and quips like say suicide squad kill the justice league.