Jedi: Fallen Order is a game that just beats the crap out of its protagonist.
Poor Cal Kestis can’t catch a break. One day he’s just a young Padawan, honing his force powers through tough love by a Jedi master, then suddenly some jerk says “Execute Order 66” and his world goes to crap. Fast forward five years and he’s hiding out on the planetary junk yard of Bracca, tearing apart Republic ships to sell the scrap metal back to the Empire to make Imperial ships, which is a dirty and dangerous job with a low life expectancy. But, unlike Jedi, it does have a life expectancy.
That is, until your only real friend gets tossed into a !sarlacc pit by an on-the-job accident and you have to use your only reliable force ability to slow his fall long enough to get him out of danger… catching the attention of the Imperial Inquisitors (former Jedi-turned-disciples-of-Darth-Vader) and having to flee for your life.
Cal, as you might expect, has some issues. But while PTSD makes him jumpy, fearful, and reluctant to stick his neck out (and understandably so), it never makes him mean or bitter, and I love the game for it. Cal is not badass. Not even a little. He’s sweet and humble in that Luke Skywalker way, doing his best to do the right thing in a universe where doing the right thing tends to get you horribly mangled or killed. He’s always checking in, looking for the best, and cheering up the companions he picks up along the way, even when almost every one of them screw up in some fashion that makes bad things so much worse. He gets mad about it—he’s not a saint—but he also works through it and looks for the positive (or, failing that, the least awful) outcome in any scenario.
Over the course of the game, Cal doesn’t exactly “get over” his past traumas, but he does undergo significant healing and growth, to the point where, at the end of the game, when confronted with a terror that he can’t possibly overcome and told “you would be wise to run,” he replies with a regretful, “Yeah… probably…” and stands up to the terror anyway, because somebody has to protect the people Cal has chosen to protect, and Cal is the only one there to do it.
And given the shit this game throws at him, that’s probably his most amazing superpower. Slowing time, Jedi psychometry, double-jumping and wall-running, wading through stormtroopers to the point where they’re literally calling for help, these are all useful abilities, but none of them define Cal the way just “being thoughtful and kind” do. In a world where so many game protagonists are grizzled, macho space marines, having a hero like Cal is a breath of fresh air, and makes not just for a good game, but for good Star Wars, which is something I have come to be grateful for whenever I can find it.
I fear for young Cal. Fallen Order 2 is on the way, and given that he needs to be out of the picture within the next ten years in order for Luke to take up the mantle of the last of the Jedi, I can totally see that going the way of Rogue One. But given Cal’s heroic (in the best way) nature… a Jyn Urso-style sacrifice for the greater good seems like his inevitable destination.
-The Gneech
