3 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Doesn't parry work in all directions?

Supposedly, but I've noticed the game's gotten a lot glitch-prone after installing the 1.04 patch.

A great game with a storyline that had me excited from the first to the very last second. It captured skillfully how a survivor of order 66 must have felt. All the protagonists were very likable and though I loved the dynamics between Cal and BD-1 I loved the dynamics between Cere and Cal even more. Greez was great anyways and the akward nightsister is very promising as well. I hope to see the same cast in Fallen Order 2 and how the relations of the protagonists will evolve. All in all a very enjoyable game with a very star warsy athmosphere. More of that and less of this repetetive and boring Battlefront XYZ shooter fest.

And many might disagree, but I personally think that Cal captures the padawan survivor way better than Kanan does in Rebels.

13 hours ago, DarthDude said:

And many might disagree, but I personally think that Cal captures the padawan survivor way better than Kanan does in Rebels.

That's actually a pretty good point.

I think with Kanan, it's more that we don't meet him until well after he's "adjusted" fairly well to life post-Order 66, having a cause and more importantly a support group.

With Cal, we see him in the early stages, where he's still in hiding, pretty much alone, and has largely suppressed his Force abilities. In that vein, when I did a Heroic level build for Cal, I was very much tempted to use an EotE careers/spec for him to start in and add the Padawan Survivor spec. It just so happened that going Jedi/Padawan worked better mechanically given what we see him accomplish fairly early in the game.

19 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

With Cal, we see him in the early stages, where he's still in hiding, pretty much alone, and has largely suppressed his Force abilities. In that vein, when I did a Heroic level build for Cal, I was very much tempted to use an EotE careers/spec for him to start in and add the Padawan Survivor spec. It just so happened that going Jedi/Padawan worked better mechanically given what we see him accomplish fairly early in the game.

I never played in any force heavy campaign and haven't dealt with the FaD books or the force careers in EotE or AoR much. Thankfully Collapse of the Republic and Rise of the Seperatists have those "original" Jedi careers. I could build Cere as a Jedi/master and as you mentioned Cal as a padawan, both maybe having purchased the additional +1 FR for 30XP at char creation. What I still haven't figured out is how all those FaD careers could fit in a campaign with regular jedi set in an prequel trilogy era for instance, if at all (as I remember - but I might be completely incorrect - that FaD careers are rather intended for those "self taught" post order 66 force users who learned the usage of the force by holocron or whatever means).

I really liked the game.
Although I cannot really get behind the padawan survivor (although relatively powerful) and a joke of a jedi without force surviving a direct encounter with darth vader.

I reallly really liked the Darth Vader part, but in my opinion Cal should have died right then and there. (Especially delaying Vader with water? why? how would that stop that guy? xD)

As for the gameplay and feel, I really liked it, brought the padawan / jedi feel really across and also took a really cool twist on the Inquisitors without the silly / ridicilous stuff that rebels did (god I hate that show...).

11 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

I really liked the game.
Although I cannot really get behind the padawan survivor (although relatively powerful) and a joke of a jedi without force surviving a direct encounter with darth vader.

I reallly really liked the Darth Vader part, but in my opinion Cal should have died right then and there. (Especially delaying Vader with water? why? how would that stop that guy? xD)

Regarding Vader, he's pretty much toying with Cal the entire time, since Cal is not any real threat; the only hit that the novice Jedi gets is after his droid buddy creates an opening, and even that does little more than annoy the dark lord. Cere fared a little better, though she was initially drawing on the dark side for a power boost, but even that didn't really help her out. And when she went purely defensive, all she was really doing was delaying the inevitable, as each of Vader's attacks got closer to breaking through, and it wouldn't have been long before her defenses broke.

As for the water, remember they're under an ocean, and Vader is mechanical. Even if his life supporting cybernetics were waterproof (nothing we've seen indicates that they are), that's still a whole lot of water along with an intense amount of pressure that's crashing down on him; it's either stop the water or be crushed by it.

7 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Regarding Vader, he's pretty much toying with Cal the entire time, since Cal is not any real threat; the only hit that the novice Jedi gets is after his droid buddy creates an opening, and even that does little more than annoy the dark lord. Cere fared a little better, though she was initially drawing on the dark side for a power boost, but even that didn't really help her out. And when she went purely defensive, all she was really doing was delaying the inevitable, as each of Vader's attacks got closer to breaking through, and it wouldn't have been long before her defenses broke.

As for the water, remember they're under an ocean, and Vader is mechanical. Even if his life supporting cybernetics were waterproof (nothing we've seen indicates that they are), that's still a whole lot of water along with an intense amount of pressure that's crashing down on him; it's either stop the water or be crushed by it.

Yeah point taken.
We've seen him be in vacuum in that suit though 😕 but yes, water is a bit of a different story.

Still, this ending didn't feel right to me.
Its highly subjective, but for me these turn of events really took and amazing part of the story (vader and all) and twisted it in the wrong way for me, I somehow felt robbed of a proper, satisfiying ending (and yes it's kinda weird since the player is supposed to root for the lead character I know), but that's how I felt 🤨
Apparently in my subconscious the appearance of Vader meant death for the Cal and Cere from the very moment we heared his breathing.

4 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

We've seen him be in vacuum in that suit though

When?

1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

When?

To be honest I tried looking it up, couldn't track it down.

But I can remember that I saw it in one of the old comics that came out at the start of the EU way back when.

So to be fair, that's a long time ago and I might be remembering it wrong.

47 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

To be honest I tried looking it up, couldn't track it down.

But I can remember that I saw it in one of the old comics that came out at the start of the EU way back when.

So to be fair, that's a long time ago and I might be remembering it wrong.

If it was before the canon reset, it's moot anyway.

9 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

Still, this ending didn't feel right to me.
Its highly subjective, but for me these turn of events really took and amazing part of the story (vader and all) and twisted it in the wrong way for me, I somehow felt robbed of a proper, satisfiying ending (and yes it's kinda weird since the player is supposed to root for the lead character I know), but that's how I felt 🤨
Apparently in my subconscious the appearance of Vader meant death for the Cal and Cere from the very moment we heared his breathing.

I was very terrified and had an OMG moment, when Vader appeared. I also thought, that this is the end for Cere and Cal.

But they escaped so narrowly and there was so much tension in their flight, I was relieved when those two characters I came to care for did manage to make it. Not any second did I have the impression that both had any chance to oppose Vader in earnest.

21 hours ago, DarthDude said:

I was very terrified and had an OMG moment, when Vader appeared. I also thought, that this is the end for Cere and Cal.

But they escaped so narrowly and there was so much tension in their flight, I was relieved when those two characters I came to care for did manage to make it. Not any second did I have the impression that both had any chance to oppose Vader in earnest.

Going by a number of streamer react vids that I watched on YouTube, you weren't alone in feeling that sense of panic when Vader's breathing was heard. There was one chap that was pretty much quietly uttering "oh crap, oh crap, oh crap" pretty much through the entire sequence, and gave a yelp of surprise when Vader suddenly showed up after Cal thought he'd managed to get away. Most of the streamer reacts were pretty much "run Cal, RUN!" as soon as Vader's intro cinematic sequence ended.

My own reaction was "well, Cal's probably toast at this point, but I'm at least gonna go down swinging!" Granted, it didn't help, but at least it matched up with the Confident!Cal that I'd been going with (picking all the dialogue options that were optimistic/confident about the mission and his abilities).

As for both Cal and Cere surviving, I can't help but wonder if there was any involvement from Lucasfilm on that. In the past, when it came to Star Wars video games, the "canon" endings were always the good/"light side' endings, such as with the KOTOR and Force Unleashed games. Having both Cal and Cere die would have likely caused problems for what EA and Lucasfilm are hoping will become a new franchise, and the ambiguous "so what next?" ending alludes to there being a follow-up title.

As someone who was watching someone else play via YouTube (strategy games are more my thing, and I've never liked lightsaber combat in any game other than the Lego games, oddly enough), I was rooting for Cal/Cere to get killed off by Vader. It just didn't seem right for them to escape for some universe reasons but also because Vader doesn't take failure lightly. He'd be likely to hound them to the edge of the empire (see what I did there ) to wipe out the failure. Considering they also killed at least one inquisitor and led to the death of a second, he's even more likely to take a personal interest than send out more inquisitors.

As for the Canon endings being light side endings, with Force Unleashed and KOTOR, the light side vs. dark side has extremely dramatic ramifications for the universe. This, not so much. A dark side ending here wouldn't break anything.

4 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Considering they also killed at least one inquisitor and led to the death of a second, he's even more likely to take a personal interest than send out more inquisitors.

Considering how Vader views Inquisitors, I don't think killing them is something he cares about one way or another, or that it draws his interest.

18 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Considering how Vader views Inquisitors, I don't think killing them is something he cares about one way or another, or that it draws his interest.

I'm saying that since they've killed inquisitors, they are clearly more of a threat and thus something Vader would be more interested in dealing with personally. Plus, there's no use sending good money after bad. If they're just going to kill the inquisitors, why would he send more?

35 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I'm saying that since they've killed inquisitors, they are clearly more of a threat and thus something Vader would be more interested in dealing with personally. Plus, there's no use sending good money after bad. If they're just going to kill the inquisitors, why would he send more?

I understand what you're saying. In my opinion Vader holds Inqies in such disdain that killing one isn't something he finds impressive enough to warrant his attention. He was there because of the holocron, not Trilla, Cere, or Cal.

15 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

I understand what you're saying. In my opinion Vader holds Inqies in such disdain that killing one isn't something he finds impressive enough to warrant his attention. He was there because of the holocron, not Trilla, Cere, or Cal.

I think it's even shown in the second run of Vader comics (taking place shortly after RotS) that when he's introduced to the Inquisitors as they're being placed under his direct command by the Emperor that he is not the least bit impressed by them. Heck, in that story arc he even murders two of the Inquisitors for "lacking devotion to their duty" because the two Inqys were on friendly terms with one another and stopped at a cantina to share a drink.

Given that the best of their number (the Grand Inquisitor) was taken out by a former Padawan who'd yet to complete his training, Vader's disdain for the Inquisitors seems well-placed. If one takes Filoni's statements about why there's no Inquisitors by the time of the OT as gospel, then that disdain was eventually shared by the Emperor, with the two Sith deciding the Inquisitor's purpose as specialized attack dogs had served its purpose; most likely, what few (if any) surviving Inqys that remained were "forcibly retired."

Vader might hold the Inquisitors in a slightly higher esteem than most of the Imperial officer corps, but that's simply because the Inqys are willing to go "boots on the ground" and "into the trenches" to get their hands dirty in direct combat, much like Clone Troopers and Imperial stormtroopers did. But at the end of the day, to Vader the Inqys are simply tools; generally effective in their purpose of rooting out Jedi survivors and burgeoning Force-sensitives, but tools none the less.

4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I think it's even shown in the second run of Vader comics (taking place shortly after RotS) that when he's introduced to the Inquisitors as they're being placed under his direct command by the Emperor that he is not the least bit impressed by them. Heck, in that story arc he even murders two of the Inquisitors for "lacking devotion to their duty" because the two Inqys were on friendly terms with one another and stopped at a cantina to share a drink.

That's exactly what I'm referencing. And the mutilation Vader inflicts on the Inquisitors is mentioned in the game, too.

On 6/23/2020 at 12:08 PM, Donovan Morningfire said:

But at the end of the day, to Vader the Inqys are simply tools; generally effective in their purpose of rooting out Jedi survivors and burgeoning Force-sensitives, but tools none the less

I absolutely agree, and it's one of the major plot points in a game I'm running that this is the case.

In my games, everyone below the Emperor in the Imperial hierarchy is a tool being used by someone else, all of whom ultimately serve the Emperor's purposes. They've been deceived, twisted and ultimately enslaved, and - while their loyalty is fragile because of it - their will to free themselves of their oppressors was broken long ago (be it in the Imperial Academies or Coruscant, or the Fortress on the moon of Nur). Some of them aren't aware they're nothing more than indentured servants, but the higher up the chain they go, the tighter the noose.

I'm convinced that true redemption for any of the Inquisitors requires someone to show them how to rise above it who has also been through their experiences. I also think that the abuse they have suffered means they're vulnerable to being deceived a second time, even while in Vader's service. I'm sure many Moffs or Grand Admirals would make great sacrifices in order to gain the hidden loyalty of an Inquisitor, or someone with similar abilities...

(I liked Fallen Order by the way)

On 6/22/2020 at 2:48 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

A dark side ending here wouldn't break anything.

1 minute ago, SufficientlyAdvancedMoronics said:

It would feel a bit flat to have Cal fight Malicos and go through his trial with Jaro Tapal on Dathomir and then have a dark side moment at the end of the game, but I like the idea of an alternate ending.

Would it be weird to have the choice for an alternate ending during his trial on Dathomir, and then it has small effects on the final chapter of the game, and ending with Cere's death on Nur and Cal escaping with Merrin and deciding to keep the Holocron? Then the credits can roll to the audio from the vision when he got the holocron being repeated. (all the kids learning from Cal, being hunted by the stormtroopers, and Cal becoming an inquisitor)

By "dark side ending" I meant he loses to Vader (though I can see that wasn't entirely clear from context), and my point about "wouldn't breaking anything" was just referring to Canon. It wouldn't break the universe for Cal to get offed by Vader.

On 6/29/2020 at 11:48 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

By "dark side ending" I meant he loses to Vader (though I can see that wasn't entirely clear from context), and my point about "wouldn't breaking anything" was just referring to Canon. It wouldn't break the universe for Cal to get offed by Vader.

Depends on what the sequel is gonna be about.

37 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Depends on what the sequel is gonna be about.

That's the important thing. If the sequel involves Cal as the protagonist or has him taking up the role of mentor to a new protagonist, then killing him off at the end of Fallen Order constitutes a significant change.

Granted, depends on whether Respawn had planned for a series of games from the onset or if Fallen Order was conceived as a one-off and Respawn & EA are just now trying to plot out the sequel games. I'm leaning more towards them planning on a franchise, as that seems to be default practice with Triple A games these days (if only to milk the customer base for as much cash as possible), so keeping Cal and Cere around was a conscious decision on their part.

Of course, neither of those two are assured to survive the sequel, with Cal's status depending on if he's the protagonist again or if he's not. If not and he's playing mentor this time around, then he's got a decent chance of having a Kenobi Moment.