Been playing it the past 2 days, not too far in, on my 3rd planet with a decent number of upgrades unlocked.

I'm enjoying it, though I don't really like the Dark Souls-esque combat system too much. The controls are bit clunky on the PS4, with a lot of wobble when you try and aim him in certain directions. The dialogue is fine, and the supporting cast are enjoyable, with BD-1 being a very fun companion to prowl around with.

The sliding mechanics, can just *bleep* right off though. Seriously, they love sliding sequences WAY too much in that game. The sliding stuff, coupled with drops to your death, coupled with the above mentioned wobbly controls when trying to direct Cal is very frustrating.

Overall though, I'm enjoying it so far. Though it makes me want to play Force Unleashed though, the Force and combat just felt way more polished in those 2 games than this one. Though to be fair, they are going for more of a minimalist combat system, so it's hardly a flaw, so much as just a stylistic choice that I don't enjoy as much.

I'm very hesitant to buy it.

I should like Soulsesque games in theory, but in practice I have not managed to get even a little bit of enjoyment out of anything in the genre that I've tried out. Coupled with platformy stuff with death-drops, this sounds like a game that was custom-designed to make me hate it.

3 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

I'm very hesitant to buy it.

I should like Soulsesque games in theory, but in practice I have not managed to get even a little bit of enjoyment out of anything in the genre that I've tried out. Coupled with platformy stuff with death-drops, this sounds like a game that was custom-designed to make me hate it.

Yeah I am not a fan of Souls combat either, but it's not too bad. You have enough Force powers to give you an edge in combat, but at first, it's mostly just using the lightsaber. Honestly, it's mostly lightsaber all the way through so far. You don't get a lot of combat oriented powers, at least not that I've found so far. It's all utility powers. Of course, Force Push is always a wonderfully useful power in a world without rail safety laws. I actually just had a really great moment. One of the Purge Troopers, trained specifically to kill Jedi, was talking to a regular trooper next to a ledge. The conversation was the regular trooper talking about how their reinforcements were leaving them as a skeleton garrison, and the PT said "Good" and then went into this long rant about how he wanted the glory for himself, and the thrill of the hunt, and how when he met me, it would be the finest moment blah blah blah.....BUUUUT, they had their backs to me, and were standing in front of a bottomless Star Wars pit. So....you know how that ended up. It was so great.

But yeah, the game has genuinely pissed me off a few times, where I had to turn it off and go do something else. Mostly due to the sliding portions of the game. There are a lot of little clunky things here and there, like how I can easily squeeze through gaps to transition between locations, but then I can't squeeze through an equally wide gap in this other spot, because the puzzle is all about me doing stuff with the Force from the other side of the barrier. Even though my guy can EASILY traverse the barrier like 3 different ways, based on other surfaces he's overcome. But the sliding, that is definitely my biggest gripe. The rest of the platforming portion, really isn't that bad, and I'm also not a fan of platforming stuff really.

Overall I like, rate 4/5. My favorite Star Wars videogame release since 2005 ( which remains the Golden Year for Star Wars releases , you can not change my mind ).

Obviously has it's issues: the aforementioned sliding sections are annoying although I have gotten the hang of them. When they finally release a Jedi Outcast/Jedi Academy (or even a Kingdom Come: Deliverance) style combat system in a game again I will finally be happy with a lightsaber combat system in a game. The mashing the X button to fight is lame. The fights however are reasonably well balanced but the dodge/block can be super punishing for any misstep, especially in the boss fights and speaking of boss fights that one boss fight on

was a right pain in the **** even on Jedi Knight difficulty. Even on Story Mode it gave my younger brother a challenge. Some of the puzzles are irritating, but most are no more than a minute of head-scratching. Other than that, figuring out the beat to the fights was both intuitive and challenging. I can safely say that I was one of the first to finish the game in the world (X-Box One achievements registered me as amongst the first 0.09% of owners to complete the main story) and I'm around 92% of the way to total exploration and all collectibles. The ending level, including the final fight and the last moments of actual game time were excellent, but the final cutscene was a let down and I feel like they left it too open in the hopes that EA will let them make a sequel, which I really hope so, but at the same time it's EA so it will probably be a micro-transaction-filled mess.

The planets were very nice and I'm quite happy with their original planets and I'm going to say their take on Kashyyyk is my absolute favorite yet, finally beating out KotOR1 back in '03. Can't say much on the story without going deep into spoiler territory, but overall quite happy with it and I'm glad Star Wars in heading again away from the Jedi/Sith monopoly on the force that Disney was trying to enforce for a little while there.

But don't mistake my criticisms: I'm happy since we've finally gotten a decent Star Wars game for the first time in a decade.

I've not played much, but I enjoy it so far.

I'm only on the second mission (haven't had more than a couple hours to play it), but so far I'm enjoying it. Still getting used to keeping track of what buttons do what, but thus far at least the game isn't overly punishing for not getting the button presses exactly right. It might just be that I'm not used to platformer-exploration style games, but there's been a few points where I've had a doozy of a time trying to figure out where I need to go in order to progress, to say nothing of a couple points in the tutorial mission where it wouldn't let me progress until I did the exact set of button presses that it wanted; I think at one point in that mission I had a dozen or so enemy bodies lying about due to them respawning until I did things exactly the way the game wanted me to do them.

The game does offer some interesting uses for Force powers, such as Bind to briefly lock a moving object in place in order to progress (nice exploration use of what's otherwise a purely combat power), or Enhance's Force Leap upgrade to do wall-running as opposed to the straight-out "leap" that it's usually associated with. I'm curious to see what other tricks Cal unlocks as the game progresses.

My one grievance (if you could even call it that) was sticking with a White Male Protagonist. But given the backlash over Rey and the heat EA's been getting after the Battlefront II fiasco, I can see why Respawn opted to play it safe.

5 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I'm only on the second mission (haven't had more than a couple hours to play it), but so far I'm enjoying it. Still getting used to keeping track of what buttons do what, but thus far at least the game isn't overly punishing for not getting the button presses exactly right.

I had to remap the stim button as I kept hitting Q instead of 1 and wasting those precious heals when I was at full health

10 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

My one grievance (if you could even call it that) was sticking with a White Male Protagonist.

I thought about this yesterday. In Battlefront 2's single player mode you play a female, and then there's Rey in the saga trilogy, it's not like there's a massive lack of female protagonists and central characters in the Star Wars collected media narrative at the moment...? I mean, sure, the Mandalorian is male, and Kaz in Resistance is male, so there are two males in current ongoing stories. Then Rogue One was female-led. ... but then Solo ...

I may be sticking my hand into the hornet's nest now, but I find it hard to accept that whenever there's a male, or white male, protagonist, the creators' are either ignoring women and giving into some oppressive trope, or giving in to MRA backlash. It may be neither, and most likely something else in my book - that is not mired in ideological impairment. He's a ginger though, so I guess they've got that going for them mutants representing!

Anyway, if anything I'm sick of the protagonist being human, but I have no hope or expectation that this will change in the foreseeable future, because the reasons are obvious and have been re-stated too many times. I'd just love to play a Gand or Ithorian Jedi as the main protagonist. It'd be interesting, at least if they tried to go beyond conventional anthropomorphism, and create a different kind of story and perspective, a different moral, real alien like. Probably wouldn't sell - and be pretty crap. But you never know. And it'd be different and fun - challenging the norms we hold on to like false gods of tradition.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

My one grievance (if you could even call it that) was sticking with a White Male Protagonist. But given the backlash over Rey and the heat EA's been getting after the Battlefront II fiasco, I can see why Respawn opted to play it safe.

Hey! The protagonist is a GINGER!! Don't rob this moment in the spotlight for them!! Not even Doctor Who has had a ginger protag yet, despite years of lampshading it!

Jegergryte,
To clarify, I'm not griping about Star Wars video games specifically here, but rather the general trend in long history of video games for the main character to be the White Male Protagonist, who might have an interesting hair style or hair color if we're lucky. And more than a few female protagonists in video game franchises sadly have a tendency to get lumped into the Third Person Seductress trope by general audiences while ignoring their awesomeness; Lara Croft is one such example of this trend, to the point that I remember seeing remarks by one of the developers of the most recent series of Tomb Raider games that they felt they had to downplay her attractiveness for "reasons." There's also the debacle of Metroid: Other M, which took all-around bad-***** armored warrior Samus Aran who took down armies and blew up planets as her day job and subjected her to varying degrees of chickification (how bad it got is up to one's POV; I've a good friend who will go on a minutes-long tirade if that game gets mentioned within earshot of her).

It's really more an issue with the video game industry as a whole, if for no other reason than the commonly accepted "wisdom" was that the principal players of video games were young white males (something we know is absolute bunk). Heck, I'm an old enough gamer to remember the reveal of Samus Aran being a woman was a "big deal" and how some male players felt they'd been cheated at having played a female protagonist; or at least until they realized that if you completed the game within a specific amount of time she took the armor off...

Now, given the wide breadth of species in Star Wars that are pretty much humans with a few variations, they could have easily gone with one of those near-human species, or better yet allowed the player to customize the main character while providing them with a unisex nickname, something that Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy did was able to do without much problem, and even the mobile-app game Star Wars: Uprising (though in that instance it was entirely cosmetic). Heck, KOTOR was able to give the player a measure of freedom in what the protagonist looked like, as even if all the options were human, there was a mix of skin tones and a choice of gender in there (with the gender choice having an impact on some relatively minor elements of the overall gameplay).

Granted, as a white male myself, I probably would have made the lead character a white male, but it would have been nice for there to be other options for players of different ethnicities and genders to explore. Hopefully, if Respawn does more games in this series, they'll be willing to open the door to either have something other than WMP as the lead, or better yet let the player customize what the main character looks like. Seeing as how the game is getting a lot of critical praise, it just remans to see if the sales are strong enough to warrant further titles in the series.

Edit: I will admit that this whole bit of "why did they go with a White Male Protagonist?" is definitely a personal quibble on my part, and doesn't thus far detract from my enjoyment of the game. It may not be a thing that bothers others, and that's fine.

Hi everyone! I am writing to you from Poland. I have been playing the Fallen Order since the premiere and I am delighted. Of course I also play SW Force and Destiny. There was a lot of cool information in Jedi: FO. Many new monsters, plants, planet and location details. Maybe a little hardware and a few NPCs. I am troubled by the question, do these things get to some sourcebook? That would be great.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Jegergryte,
To clarify, I'm not griping about Star Wars video games specifically here, but rather the general trend in long history of video games for the main character to be the White Male Protagonist, who might have an interesting hair style or hair color if we're lucky. And more than a few female protagonists in video game franchises sadly have a tendency to get lumped into the Third Person Seductress trope by general audiences while ignoring their awesomeness; Lara Croft is one such example of this trend, to the point that I remember seeing remarks by one of the developers of the most recent series of Tomb Raider games that they felt they had to downplay her attractiveness for "reasons." There's also the debacle of Metroid: Other M, which took all-around bad-***** armored warrior Samus Aran who took down armies and blew up planets as her day job and subjected her to varying degrees of chickification (how bad it got is up to one's POV; I've a good friend who will go on a minutes-long tirade if that game gets mentioned within earshot of her).

It's really more an issue with the video game industry as a whole, if for no other reason than the commonly accepted "wisdom" was that the principal players of video games were young white males (something we know is absolute bunk). Heck, I'm an old enough gamer to remember the reveal of Samus Aran being a woman was a "big deal" and how some male players felt they'd been cheated at having played a female protagonist; or at least until they realized that if you completed the game within a specific amount of time she took the armor off...

Now, given the wide breadth of species in Star Wars that are pretty much humans with a few variations, they could have easily gone with one of those near-human species, or better yet allowed the player to customize the main character while providing them with a unisex nickname, something that Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy did was able to do without much problem, and even the mobile-app game Star Wars: Uprising (though in that instance it was entirely cosmetic). Heck, KOTOR was able to give the player a measure of freedom in what the protagonist looked like, as even if all the options were human, there was a mix of skin tones and a choice of gender in there (with the gender choice having an impact on some relatively minor elements of the overall gameplay).

Granted, as a white male myself, I probably would have made the lead character a white male, but it would have been nice for there to be other options for players of different ethnicities and genders to explore. Hopefully, if Respawn does more games in this series, they'll be willing to open the door to either have something other than WMP as the lead, or better yet let the player customize what the main character looks like. Seeing as how the game is getting a lot of critical praise, it just remans to see if the sales are strong enough to warrant further titles in the series.

Edit: I will admit that this whole bit of "why did they go with a White Male Protagonist?" is definitely a personal quibble on my part, and doesn't thus far detract from my enjoyment of the game. It may not be a thing that bothers others, and that's fine.

I think the issue they might be running into these days, is with the photo-realistic, mocap method they use to develop the characters, having them have things like dangly head tentacles, might just make it more difficult to code it all cleanly. Plus, given the graphic quality of things like, the Wookiees in Fallen Order, they might've just decided. "...yyyeah, let's just stick with human, clearly our graphics engine is shite when trying to make non-human people look real when up close." Seriously, the Wookiees look TERRIBLE in FO. They've never been done well IMO in any of the games, but they are especially weird in this new game.

Trying to allow the mocap realism of the actor, AND couple that with a modular species system is probably just too clunky, and leads to Uncanny Valley protagonists. I mean, how do you code, cleanly code the model with the right physics for different head tentacles, costume variations that might clip into the body (like the Togruta tentacles that tend to come forward across the chest, getting in the way of clothing options with different outfits), different body model sizes because some species are just larger than a human, or smaller. It just seems like a lot of extra work, that probably wouldn't look very good in the final result, given the system they were using.

This is speculation on my part, I acknowledge, I have no idea. It could just simply be the dreaded MWP scourge, but I like to think that a LOT of factors come into play for a lot of things, and it's not always easy to find the happy medium.

Beat the game on Jedi Knight, loved it. Some of the boss fights were a little unfair, but with enough determination and experimentation, you'll win the day. It was cool finding things off the beaten path and the game really reignited my interest in playing a FaD game.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

Trying to allow the mocap realism of the actor, AND couple that with a modular species system is probably just too clunky, and leads to Uncanny Valley protagonists. I mean, how do you code, cleanly code the model with the right physics for different head tentacles, costume variations that might clip into the body (like the Togruta tentacles that tend to come forward across the chest, getting in the way of clothing options with different outfits), different body model sizes because some species are just larger than a human, or smaller. It just seems like a lot of extra work, that probably wouldn't look very good in the final result, given the system they were using.

It depends on which species they make use of. Mirialans, Chiss, and Zabraks are so close to being human in appearance that the differences are mostly cosmetic, so simply changing hair and skin color (or adding some horns for Zabraks) isn't exactly an insurmountable obstacle. Twi'leks are a bit trickier with the lekku, but even that's not impossible to overcome, and a Togruta doesn't necessarily need to have the long head-tails either, especially if it's a younger protagonist (I'm figuring Cal is in his early 20's at best given when the game is set).

I agree that getting the weirder looking species isn't feasible, but adding in species that are virtually identical in appearance to humans isn't impossible. It's just something that Respawn chose not to do for whatever reasons they had.

40 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

It depends on which species they make use of. Mirialans, Chiss, and Zabraks are so close to being human in appearance that the differences are mostly cosmetic, so simply changing hair and skin color (or adding some horns for Zabraks) isn't exactly an insurmountable obstacle. Twi'leks are a bit trickier with the lekku, but even that's not impossible to overcome, and a Togruta doesn't necessarily need to have the long head-tails either, especially if it's a younger protagonist (I'm figuring Cal is in his early 20's at best given when the game is set).

I agree that getting the weirder looking species isn't feasible, but adding in species that are virtually identical in appearance to humans isn't impossible. It's just something that Respawn chose not to do for whatever reasons they had.

Maybe because that actor would look really weird and silly, with various, multi-species cosplay stuck on him? As I recall, the actual facial structure for the different species, in the various games, would usually alter in small, but significant ways, even in the presets. Namely Twi'lek Male Preset 1, wouldn't have the same basic facial structure as Togruta Male Preset 1. And since they were actually using that actor and his actual body for the performance, and didn't want to fiddle with it as much, they decided to just go with the vanilla human. One thing I think we forget, is that not all special effects/visual/graphical effects departments are created equal. And not every game engine is designed to handle all different aspects of gaming equally well. I suspect, that whatever engine they are using, just doesn't do body models very well, as evidenced by the way the people look in the very game we are talking about. They all look very Uncanny Valley to me, with the actress playing Cere especially standing out as inhuman. The amount of forward eye bulge she ended up with with the final rendering is kind of terrifying really.

And so they decided to not try and come up with some system that would actually make the main character, the person in every single shot of the game, that the player will be looking at nearly constantly, come across as really creepy and off-putting. He already looks a little UV as is, and it's just his regular face, and given how nightmare inducingly bad the Wookiees look, and Saw, and Cere, and basically all the models, I think they just cut their losses.

That's my theory anyway. But "Make him a standard WMP because marketing" could be just as possible as well, *shrugs* I dunno.

Yeah, I watched a game-movie of Fallen Order and ironically, the only one of the main characters who didn't look creepily in-human was Greez!

I really struggled to look at Cere, something was just really, really off. The hair of the various characters also looked a bit weird.

One thing to bear in mind whenever someone talks about how "all video game protagonists are white males" is that most gamers are white males. If most gamers were black women, most video game protagonists would probably be black women. And when the complaint is that most of the women end up (at least) half-naked at some point, most gamers are guys. Nuff said. It's just trying to get them to play the game, so they do what they think is most likely to appeal to the largest number of people who are most likely to want to buy their game.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Yeah, I watched a game-movie of Fallen Order and ironically, the only one of the main characters who didn't look creepily in-human was Greez!

I really struggled to look at Cere, something was just really, really off. The hair of the various characters also looked a bit weird.

One thing to bear in mind whenever someone talks about how "all video game protagonists are white males" is that most gamers are white males. If most gamers were black women, most video game protagonists would probably be black women. And when the complaint is that most of the women end up (at least) half-naked at some point, most gamers are guys. Nuff said. It's just trying to get them to play the game, so they do what they think is most likely to appeal to the largest number of people who are most likely to want to buy their game.

Following the money can often result in racist practices, yes. You've got that right.

2 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I really struggled to look at Cere, something was just really, really off. The hair of the various characters also looked a bit weird.

I'm pretty sure it's the forward placement of her eyes. They look like they've been pushed out of her sockets a bit. I've actually looked at real photos of the comedian/actress that did her, and her eyes are not that prominent. So that's my guess on the "really really off" bit you are getting from her.

And yes, Greez doesn't look weird, because he's fully alien in proportions, so he doesn't look "off". The wookiees look off because we all know what they should look like, but their hair is just WRROOOOONG, on so many levels.

Also, as it was called out - and in these Mandalorian days - I found the mention of Yaddle cool, also that Greez found her attractive... Cool.

The gameplay is fun, running, jumping, rinse and repeat, but I find the conversations fun, informative, and better than a lot of the jumpy-bumpy twirly-swirly glowstick show.

I'm just glad we didn't get some rage-based hatewhiner as protagonist.

18 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Maybe because that actor would look really weird and silly, with various, multi-species cosplay stuck on him?

Hey, if Benedict Cumberbatch can mocap for Smaug, what's Cameron Monaghan's excuse?

31 minutes ago, Kaigen said:

Hey, if Benedict Cumberbatch can mocap for Smaug, what's Cameron Monaghan's excuse?

Smaug didn't physically LOOK like Benedict Cumberbatch, Cal looks just like Cameron Also the team that worked on that film, isn't the same team as the gaming company, and using totally different assets

Seriously, just picture the avatar of Cal as he is, and then, assuming they keep his body the same, now stick blue skin on him, some head tentacles, of varying types (because we are allowing for multi-species choices in the game), and then look at him. I'm sorry, I like the guy, I think he does just fine in the role, but I don't think he can pull off multi-species cosplay and not look absolutely ludicrous, given the quality of the body graphics they used in the game. It would look silly as heck, and pull people out of the game even further. Games like Jedi Academy could pull it off, because the models are fully digital, not mapped off an actual person. So they can tweak the cheekbones here, the eyebrow width there, to make it look more fitting for a *insert species in question*. But they can't do that with Cameron's head, or at least not without making it look silly, or with more time/resources than they felt like investing. My theory anyway.

I wonder if a large part of why the human characters look "off" in this game (I also find Cere's face to be rather unsettling) boils down to budget and time?

Yeah, this might be a Triple-A game, but a number of video game publishers can be notoriously stingy on how much resources (time and money) is allocated to allow a game to be developed, with more than a few stories coming out about rather brutal working conditions in some of the top-tier studios; big to-do was made over the working conditions at NetherRealm Studios (they of Mortal Kombat fame), with some suspecting that the delays in DLC content for the game is due to revamped work practices so that their employees aren't under nearly as much stress as they'd been when working on MK11. Another infamous incident of a design studio not being given enough time was Oblivion and KOTOR2, leading to a game that got rushed out with a train-wreck of a final segment (where it starts going bad is YMMV, but most seem to agree that the final planet is the definitive "off the rails" point) since LucasArts refused to give the studio additional time to complete the game, even when Oblivion offered to do so on what amounted to their own dime after the game was released.

Mocap characters in films don't suffer from this as movies invariably have far more time to get the effects "right" and a far larger budget for the effects than what most development studios have, especially those owned by larger publishers like EA. And it also depends on the experience of the studio with translating mocap into graphics. The Marvel films have gotten heaps of praise for the effectiveness of their de-aging CGI (especially for Michael Douglas in the first Ant-Man film, who looked like he'd just walked off the set of Wall Street after giving his "greed is good' speech), but other studios haven't done as well in spite of Marvel Studios aptly showcasing that the technology exists and the effects can be done. I don't know much of Respawn's development history, but if they've not done much with translating mocap performances to characters that are meant to look human prior to this game, that might explain it. I haven't dug in to see if NetherRealm used mocap for MK11, but it's safe to say that the human characters generally look human (far more so than they did in MK9 or MKX).

Maybe Respawn would have been better served going for a more stylized approach to the game's characters, which in turn might have allowed them to have a broader range of options to customize the main character's gender and appearance?

46 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I wonder if a large part of why the human characters look "off" in this game (I also find Cere's face to be rather unsettling) boils down to budget and time?

Yeah, this might be a Triple-A game, but a number of video game publishers can be notoriously stingy on how much resources (time and money) is allocated to allow a game to be developed, with more than a few stories coming out about rather brutal working conditions in some of the top-tier studios; big to-do was made over the working conditions at NetherRealm Studios (they of Mortal Kombat fame), with some suspecting that the delays in DLC content for the game is due to revamped work practices so that their employees aren't under nearly as much stress as they'd been when working on MK11. Another infamous incident of a design studio not being given enough time was Oblivion and KOTOR2, leading to a game that got rushed out with a train-wreck of a final segment (where it starts going bad is YMMV, but most seem to agree that the final planet is the definitive "off the rails" point) since LucasArts refused to give the studio additional time to complete the game, even when Oblivion offered to do so on what amounted to their own dime after the game was released.

Mocap characters in films don't suffer from this as movies invariably have far more time to get the effects "right" and a far larger budget for the effects than what most development studios have, especially those owned by larger publishers like EA. And it also depends on the experience of the studio with translating mocap into graphics. The Marvel films have gotten heaps of praise for the effectiveness of their de-aging CGI (especially for Michael Douglas in the first Ant-Man film, who looked like he'd just walked off the set of Wall Street after giving his "greed is good' speech), but other studios haven't done as well in spite of Marvel Studios aptly showcasing that the technology exists and the effects can be done. I don't know much of Respawn's development history, but if they've not done much with translating mocap performances to characters that are meant to look human prior to this game, that might explain it. I haven't dug in to see if NetherRealm used mocap for MK11, but it's safe to say that the human characters generally look human (far more so than they did in MK9 or MKX).

Maybe Respawn would have been better served going for a more stylized approach to the game's characters, which in turn might have allowed them to have a broader range of options to customize the main character's gender and appearance?

Dunno, hard to say. I suspect it's probably a little of Column A, B and C. I personally think any attempts, using a real person to do alien costumes, cosplay or "real" for a production or whatever, always just look like " a person in a costume" to me. I don't see a Twi'lek, I see some woman with a headdress, and if she turns her head too much one way, oops, you see the bend in the material, clearly indicating it's not her body. But with animation, I don't have this issue, because, I don't know? I guess it just fits the rest of the setting, since everyone doesn't look "real" (like the humans in Rebels for example), there isn't a baseline "normal" to compare them to. I guess, its easier for me to see the Twi'lek as looking just fine, when it's Hera, who is a stylized animation, when the human she is standing next to, is equally stylized. But when it's Random Jedi Extra 22 standing next to Sam Jackson, or Ewan McGregor, I just go "no, that's just...no, that's off, SO off."

And I suspect the flip of that is true for the mocapping, at least in this context, with such variations as you can have in SW. Using that one actor's body as the template, and then just adding on the other stuff, I think it would push the Uncanny Valley even further, and just look bad. And for all we know, they did try that, and just looked at the results and were like "...yeah no, we're not doing that." Because I'm sitting here, actively trying to imagine Cal as any of the afore mentioned species, but with the actor's same features, and they just look really silly to me.

I've seen enough behind the scenes clips of game devs, talking about how they made some games, and the hurdles they ran into, and things they had to cut due to technical issues, so it wouldn't be odd to me to think something like that happened. *shrugs* Or maybe they did just say "meh, just stick a white guy in there." Dunno.

"We talked about doing an alien creature. We talked about different gender," Asmussen said in an interview with Game Informer . "We arrived at where we were because at the time, Rey was kind of the thing for Star Wars and it made a lot more sense for us to have a male protagonist. Ultimately, we didn't go with an alien race, because, no pun intended, we thought that would alienate a lot of people."

https://www.newsweek.com/jedi-fallen-order-main-character-male-protagonist-rey-1448158

Guess they think gamers couldn't have handled a female protagonist after seeing a movie or two with a female lead 🤷‍♂️