Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Wasn’t Originally In the Cards, According to Respawn
It took some convincing to make Lucasfilm give Respawn the greenlight to develop a Star Wars game about Jedi, according to Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order’s game director Stig Asmussen.
In fact, Asmussen said in a recent interview that the film company initially suggested that Respawn should make a Star Wars shooter about bounty hunters instead.
“I pitched, ‘Hey, what if we do a game about Jedi and Force powers?’ And they were not super comfortable with that,” Asmussen told game development podcast Game Maker’s Notebook. “They kind of threw it back and were like, ‘What about blasters, and maybe bounty hunters?’ I was like, that’s not the background of the team that we built. You might as well ask us to start building a racing game at this point. I don’t think anybody’s really gonna be happy with the results of that.”
“What I came to learn and find out is that, for them, the Jedi is the Holy Grail. To make a game about Jedi, you’ve gotta earn it,” he explained. “There was a little bit of a back and forth but they could see where I was coming from. So they said, ‘Alright, we can start having a conversation about making a game about Force users. But not Jedi.’ Then the game comes out and its name is Jedi, so obviously there was a big relationship that needed to be built there.”
Additionally, there were instances when Lucasfilm dictated what Respawn could include in Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, said Asmussen.
“They own the license. It’s their responsibility that we stay in line and play by the rules,” he said. “At work I might be like, ‘Yeah, I spoke with Lucasfilm and they gave us a hard no on this one thing.’ ‘Why? Why can’t we do this?’ Sometimes we didn’t get a very good explanation, and that’s because they couldn’t tell us why. Which is a very fair response when you’re working with such a big franchise.”