Anyone else feel Dathomir was supposed to be earlier? (spoilers)

[Malidictus]

As the game stands right now, the conclusion to Dathomir (the boss fight and the tomb) takes place almost immediately before the end of the game. And yet, the way it's presented, it feels like the planet's story was written for much earlier in the game and then had to be moved to the end very late during development. Here are a few reasons I suspect that.

1. Dathomir opens up very early. The player is able to visit the planet straight after Bogano. Sure, the player is also blocked fairly early into the map and told to come back later, but this isn't the case for any of the other planets. Neither Kashyyyk nor Ilum become available until the player has business there, but Dathomir does. Even the crew seems confounded by this.

2. Dathomir gave me a companion. At the end of that planet, Nightsister Merrin chooses to leave her home and travel with Cal, KotOR style. Not only does this happen far too late in the game for her to have much to do, it also comes out of nowhere. Right at the end of Dathomir, Merrin gets a new outfit, then a cutscene plays with body language which suggests "affection" that was never even implied before. It just feels like the two were supposed to have a LOT more on-screen interaction and develop a relationshio, but that got cut entirely. It feels like this was supposed to happen earlier - either near the start or around the mid point, but got moved for whatever reason.

3. The double lightsabre. When Cal fights Jaro in his vision and accidentally destroys his own lightsabre, a LOT of weighty emphasis is put on this being JARO'S lightsabre and how Cal have to build "his own." This prompts a trip to Ilum, where Cal's moment of self-discovery inspires him to combine the wreck of his lightsabre and the one Cere gave him (presumably her old one, similarly broken), forging both of them together into a double blade. He has grown up and made his own weapon. Except... I already had a double lightsabre by that point. I ran up to a random bench in Dathomir and Cal slapped one together without uttering a word of recorded dialogue. It feels like THAT was supposed to be the point where Cal would get the double sabre, but because Dathomir got moves so far back in the game, the developers had push the double blade much earlier so the player actually got to USE it. Because of this, they then had to slap together SOME new ability for Cal so that emotional scene makes sense, hence the ability to dual-wield two lightsabres. Excpet it's clear that was an afterthought since THAT isn't its own fighting style - just one super attack per stance.

4. Kashyyyk. Games are typically developed from start to finish, usually meaning that the beginning of a game is polished and tight while the end is sloppy, buggy and unfinished. As such, the second tomb on Zeffo with its clearly unfinished art assets and holes in terrain all over the place and ESPECIALLY the Shadowlands on Kashyyyk which feels slapped together last-minute are where I started sensing the game was nearing conclusion. Then it sent me back to Dathomir, and I was all of a sudden back to fairly well-polished environments with decent writing and a lot of exploration. It felt almost as if Dathomir had been designed and developed to be somewhere towards the middle of the game with the far end of Zeffo and Kashyyyk being the actual end. Zeffo ends with the 2nd Sister playing mind games with the player, then Kashyyyk concludes with the empire wiping out the rebels there and the 9th Sister testing Cal... Then the Empire seemingly completely disappears while we go fart around on Dathomir. There's also that VERY disruptive segment where Cal gets caputured by Space Pirates, which is where I'm pretty sure the game would have transitioned to either a final boss or some such.

Generally speaking, it feels to me like the second tomb on Zeffo and the Shadowlands on Kashyyyk were meant to be the end of the game originally, and probably in reverse order. Given the imperial presence on Zeffo, I'd have expected the 2nd Sister to be based there. So likely we'd have gone through Kashyyyk, then returned to Zeffo for the a confrontation, then gotten locked into a point-of-no-return rush to the finale, likely with a free roam option at the end. Does anyone remember that Mad Max open-world game? THAT is the kind of finale I thought the game was building up to on Zeffo. For this reason and all of the above, it feels like Dathomir was intitially designed to be somewhere mid-game - probably after the first trip to Kashyyyk, but before the Shadownalds.

[Thumper]

And people tell me I'm long winded. IDK if game developers work the same way as movie directors, But most movie directors film the ending, or other part before they start the begining.

That said, they could have done JFO the same as a movie in terms of story. They are after all just movie actors playing a part in a video game, right?

Each of the maps/planets require you make 2 or more trips back and forth. You can should you choose not to follow the story and hop from one to another blindly. However this does not always get you the correct upgrades when needed. Hence where you go is based on the developers way you progress thru the game. If you stop short of going to the final planet and decide to backtrack, your now making a 3rd or 4th trip to those places.

I will go from Zeffo, to Dathomir, to Kashyyyk, and Bogano in no said order depending on what upgrades I have and just to pick up extra skill point. So the order of progress is of no matter to me. All this was also part of the developers plan. I'm quite sure others do the same thing as me.

Point being, you have the freedom to go where you want when you can. Planet layout is based on difficulty and when and why Merrin joins our happy little group, is minor. She only has a very small part in the story. Anything more will have to come later (JFO 2 or a DLC)

Pay attentiion to the small talk and banter you hear. Some, well most don't mean squat. IDK how many times you have played thru or what % you have completed. I'm 6-7 runs and 99% complete. No 2 of those runs have ended the same. Each is missing something the others have. If I could combine them all into one, I'd have a 100%.

Thats my take on all this. I could go on, but I tired of typing. So how does it compare to your's?

[Judge Lazar]

Go to Dathomir immediately after Bogano on Grand Master. You will change your opinion lol. Took me like 2 days to get past one gauntlet to get the saberstaff.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Judge Lazar:

Go to Dathomir immediately after Bogano on Grand Master. You will change your opinion lol. Took me like 2 days to get past one gauntlet to get the saberstaff.

Well, yeah - the Night Brothers are end-game enemies, no contest there. In terms of gameplay mechanics, Dathomir is definitely the "final" planet. It also has the widest use of all of the game's traversal mechanics, as well - double jump, push/pull. Not so much need for BD-1 upgrades, but that is thematic for a "savage" planet. I was more referring to Dathomir's place in the story.

The way the game's stakes ramp up, it goes failure on Zeffo to despair on Kashyyyk, so it would make sense for escalation to bring us staight back to Bogano then to Nur for the finale. Instead, we go through what feels like build-up for a climax... Then veer hard right and take a massive detour to Dathomir, then Ilum, then Dathomir again. Only then do we return to the main plot, with the Second Sister having seemingly sat on her hands the entire time.

It just feels like Dathmoir's place in the story was originally meant to sit between the two temples on Zeffo. It would make sense for that section to unlock the double-bladed sabre and to give us Merrin about mid-way through the game, rather than dumping her on us right at the end. She has a TREMENDOUS amount of dialogue recorded, contextual for all of the planets and additionally showing a progression of character development, but that's not going to happen if we grab her and go straight back to Bogano.

Originally posted by Thumper:

But most movie directors film the ending, or other part before they start the begining.

Movies are typically shot out of order, yes. Video games are generally developed front-to-back due to a simple economy of expectation. I remember a statistic suggesting only 5% of people who buy a game finish it. I don't remember the exact number, but it was fairly low. Developers typically bank on impressing people at the start, expecting a majority of players to get bored and quit before the end, hence why more effort is put on the beginning of the game than the end, especially if a game is kicked out before it was ready like this one was. You can typically see this trend in most commercial video games, or at least you could back when people still made games like this.

That's for the game development part, though. I suspect things like scripting, voice acting, performance capture, etc. are done fairly early on since they're generally labour-intensive and since the rest of the game is usually designed around them. Anthem actually ran into issues with this, as they splashed on expensive face capture which then locked them into a script they couldn't change. This resulted in a lot of minor continuity flubs as voice lines didn't match events as the player had seen them. I don't know if Fallen Order is using actual Face Capture, but I wouldn't be surprised if Merrin's entire body of dialgue was recorded long before Dathomir was even put together. Would explain why she has SO MUCH dialogue despite being in the game for the blink of an eye.

Of course, I AM speculating. It's entirely possible that I'm just flatout wrong, but I just don't see why the story would be put together this way. It's very disjointed and feels like it was edited out-of-order.

Originally posted by Thumper:

You can should you choose not to follow the story and hop from one to another blindly. However this does not always get you the correct upgrades when needed. Hence where you go is based on the developers way you progress thru the game.

Right, this is what I'm remarking on. While the player is free to explore all accessible areas, progression blockers ensure that events critical to the core plot always happen in the same order. This is different from something like Prince of Persia 2008, where the player could pick unlocks out-of-order and so dialogue had to be entirely independent. In fact, if you listen closely, you can pick the "main plot" dialogue out from the procedural dialogue. After the fight with the Second Sister in the dig site, Cal has a falling out with Cere. Some of their dialogue will reflect this, usually when travelling to the next location in the plot. Other times, their dialogue comes across as neutral, as though they're still on good terms and just having one giant happy-go-lucky road trip.

It's the order of the main story dialogue which leads me to believe that planets ended up being reshuffled. When attaining the Double Jump on Kashyyyk (incidentally, where I suspect another temple was supposed to be), Cal remarks on having returned to his state prior to Order 66. Yet later on Dathomir, he's suddenly revealed to still have lingering doubt. Narratively, it would make sense for Cal to make peace with Jaro first, then remark that he has returned to his original state.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that Taron Malicos himself was a late addition to the game. He gets next to no development, is pulled out of a hat and has very limited voice acting both FROM and ABOUT him. In fact, his character model originally made me suspect he was an older Eno Cordova fallen to the dark side. My suspicion, therefore, is that we were meant to go from Zeffo where we find a positive tomb, to then Dathomir where we find the fate of Cordova and everyone's will is tested, to Kashiik we're exposed to the horrors of war, loss of allies and a fight with the 9th Sister, back to Zeffo where we're finally exposed to the 2nd Sister and Cere's deception is revealed. That sort of progression of stakes makes sense to me.

Instead, we go through the 2nd Sister first, then we're randomly kidnapped for a segment which they could have cut and it wouldn't have affected nothing, then we're exposed to the 9th sister, then they go away from the plot so Cal can have an entirely different crisis of faith unrelated to events. It feels disjointed - like the order of scenes was switched around for whatever reason. Yes, I can play SOME of them out of order - all of the optional dialogue works like that. Those scenes I mentioned, however, cannot be done out of order because level design and progression blockes require passage through one before the next would open.

Jedi: Fallen Order has signs of a rushed development schedule everywhere. Fair enough - we know the troubled history of "EA's single-player Star Wars game" over the last few years. We're lucky to have what we got. This, however, is why I suspect that large portions of the story had to be reordered late in development, likely to account for a major chunk of content having to be dropped from the game to make deadlines. I don't know if a sequel has been greenlit yet, but I'd personally buy and play that. Dathomir's place in the story doesn't really detract from my enjoyment of the game. It just confuses me a little, is all :)

[Thumper]

I can agree in part with the "what if / this or that" and there are parts I find have no purpose to them, yet I'm forced to go there. Dathomir is a fun place to spend time. Even though I've covered it 100%, I still wish there was more to it. Where both Zeffo and Kashyyyk had way more to see and do. I'm still missing only 1 crate and thats on Zeffo.

The game is 50gb large and I'd like to think game size was the main reason for it's short comings and not for reasons other than. But I've been wrong before.

We meet the 2 sisters (2nd n 9th) early in the game and Malicos n Merrin much later.I think all of them were part of the story from the get go. As was the prison escape, that too could have used more content.

The fight with the 9th sister was good and the encounters with Trilla better, but I wanted to finish Malicos myself without any help.

Not knowing if there working on adding more content or new content would be nice to hear. With all the play-thru's I've done, I'd like to think it was not for naught. So far the combat and the platforming has kept me coming back for more. I've found all the echo's and secrets, it's just that 1 missing crate.

So long as I can avoid the nay-sayers and trolls down playing the game, I'll be quite happy with chats like this.

[Judge Lazar]

Originally posted by Thumper:

*****

I think a sequel or at least another game in this style is pretty much a given considering how well it did.

The only 3 things that are a negative in this game for me. First no kind of arena/replay mode. I would play the crap out of it. The boss duels were really good once you had a feel for it. At first it was just a horrible slog, dying 40 times on a boss, but then it was so satisfying when you finally beat it.

Tied to that, I really dislike when games are giving you new abilities or tools right at the end of the game. That applies to any game, but it was especially annoying in this game. I prefer when a game gives you all of your abilities at or before the halfway mark. Killing stormtroopers was already pretty fun, but if you had the kind of abilities I used fighting Malicos, man it would be epic.

Lastly, the animals. I rarely came out of an encounter with the games animals with a satisfying feeling. Some of them are just totally unfair and basically an RNG brick wall to beat your head against. If they do make another game like this, I hope they leave out non humanoid enemies.

https://youtu.be/X2WnQR_n0nc?t=245

[Thumper]

@ judge lazar. Yeah, best guess sez your right about something in the works, as to when, I would expect maybe end of year. I'll agree with the combat, boss's and the bounty hunters and there bots. I looked forward to those fights now.

The animals were only good for the 1st kill and scan for the XP. After that they were a PITA.

Yes skills were slow to earn, both Cal's n BD-1. Zip line and force pull made for alot of back-tracking. Go from story mode to jedi knight difficulty and "what and when" skills you select come into play and changes things up a bit.

As for beating up an old man, well I'm 69, and fighting an old man is a lose / lose, if the old man beats you up, your friends will laugh at you. if you beat the old man, again your friends will laugh at you for picking on an old man. I use to tell the guys in the dojo that once they stepped onto the mat with me. But that was long ago and far away.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Judge Lazar:

I really dislike when games are giving you new abilities or tools right at the end of the game. That applies to any game, but it was especially annoying in this game. I prefer when a game gives you all of your abilities at or before the halfway mark.

Agreed. Being able to play with all of your cool toys for a good chunk of the game, rather than unlocking some of them right before the end generally leaves me with a good feel. Granted, a lot of games "fake" this by having you backtrack through the entire map collecting things with an end-game ability. Darksiders stands out in my mind by giving me the Mask of the Phantom which unlocks parts for the Armageddon Blade, but even then I'm honestly fine with it. The Surge 2 did something similar, as well.

Originally posted by Judge Lazar:

Lastly, the animals. I rarely came out of an encounter with the games animals with a satisfying feeling. Some of them are just totally unfair and basically an RNG brick wall to beat your head against. If they do make another game like this, I hope they leave out non humanoid enemies.

I honestly find it irritating whenever Star Wars games have me fighting the local wildlife. Sure, fighting the occasiona giant monster with telegraphed attacks in the style of a miniboss - that can be cool. Running around slicing bugs worms and rats, though? Why? It does make for some cool moments where Storm Troopers end up fighting giant spiders on Kashyyyk, but those are fre and far between.

Originally posted by Thumper:

So long as I can avoid the nay-sayers and trolls down playing the game, I'll be quite happy with chats like this.

Certainly. I'm not trash-talking the game by any means. Fallen Order turned out altogether really good, and easily among my all-time favourites thus far. Sure, it has technical issues and I feel a few pacing issues here and there, but these are easily overlooked in an otherwise really entertaining game. I'd do more playthroughs of it, certainly. Maybe not IMMEDIATELY since I'm likely to burn out, but this is definitely on my list of favouties.

At the same time, I find it interesting to speculate about the development process behind the finished product. I tend to find that budget, design, schedule and business concenrs tend to leave tangible fingerprints on video games, and not always for the worse, either. I'm honestly kind of happy that Dathomir was left for last, because that planet doesn't really unlock anything meaningfully new. It gives me an extra twin-sabre attack which is "nice" but not too distinct from the standard heavy attack and it gives me climbing claws which only make me climb a little faster. Yes, they open up a few extra climbing walls, but those exist on Dathomir and nowhere else. So in a way, setting the planet where it is means I get to run around with the majority of my full kit for quite a while, fighting fairly strong enemies and experiencing the game as a full-fredged Jedi :)

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

No, fighting a symbol of the Jedi Order’s failure makes sense as the climax to Cal’s backstory, before finishing up the present story.

[Thumper]

So far this has been a good discussion from the start. Nobody has come in and said something stupid. We've made good progress and I'm re-thinking how I play. Since the start of this I've gone from Zeffo to Bogano before the final fight. I'll recap what I've done before I continue or I may not finish this time as there is nothing to gain after this point. End games have a way of doing that.

The remaining 4 skill points missing are max force and HP, both not needed. Hence if I continue past Trilla to the exit, there in nothing more to gain. it's more like a step backwards then forward.

Knowing this brings up the NG+ topic I see so much of. I think the developers and you will agree why add a NG+ when getting there is half the fun and it makes you lazy if you restart using it.

[Petroleum]

I agree that Merrin just is so limited in her development due to how far back she shows up.

Which makes me think they're working on a sequel to expand on that development, cause it's just so rushed and feels so unfinished in terms of her character. (fingers crossed)

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

No, fighting a symbol of the Jedi Order’s failure makes sense as the climax to Cal’s backstory, before finishing up the present story.

I agree, but that doesn't seem to be how the game's actually using him, though. At no point in the game is the validity of the Jedi Order ever in serious question from the audience's perspective. Malicos criticises it, yes, but he's presented to us as the villain and thus we're trained to take everything he says with suspicion. The characters never seen to take him serious and never doubt the righteousness of their mission of restoring the Jedi Order. Only the methodology of taking children from their families is in doubt, and it's not even Malicos who introduces it. It's Merrin who consistently cautions Cal about placing the children in danger and robbing them of their choice.

Malicos comes across less as an indictment of the Jedi Order and more as a cautionary tale of what could happen to Cal if he were to fall to the Dark Side. The conflict between them isn't framed as "revive the Order or don't," but rather "train the Jedi children for good or for evil," broadly speaking. This is a lesson reinforced by the Cal's vision in the mirror wall, where he fails and becomes an Inquisitor himself, leading an army of brainwashed force wielders. In short, Malicos' role doesn't seem to be criticising the Jedi Order, but rather criticising Cal himself, and serving as just one part of his personal growth.

There's also the issue of "power." By the time of his final confrontation with Malicos, Cal is basically at the height of his power. He has all of his Force powers regained and (in my playthrough) all his abilities upgraded. This is the same Cal who not half an hour later would be soloing the Second Sister and at least surviving against Darth Vader... But he still needs help with Taron Malicos? To the point he would have died if Merrin hadn't interfered? Narratively, that's a regression of the stakes and it serves to undermine the game's final boss by having us beat something stronger shortly before.

The Malicos fight feels like it was designed around a much weaker Cal somewhere in the middle of his character growth, possibly at a moment of weakness. Though its timeline is shifted around, Fallen Roder still has the requisite "second act drama" when Cere's deception is revealed. That's when Malicos would have been the most effective. Cal is at his lowest point, doubting and secretly resenting his companions and having second thoughts about his mission. Here comes this powerful, charismatic and most importantly HONEST old man who offers him an alternate path. He exposes the core of Cal's mission as hollow by showing the Jedi Order to be incompetent and corrupt, and offers a new pact, instead. Cal resists the Dark Side and refuses, Malicos attacks. Locked in a fight with a much more powerful Jedi, Cal flashes back to visions of his master overlaid on top of the Malicos fight. Eventually he fails, loses his lightsabre and is about to die when Merrin attacks. The two escape back to the Mantis and THAT is when Cal has to go through creating a new one. Then we proceed with the Shadowlands as per usual.

Granted, I AM speculating again. It just feels to me like the way Malicos is presented, he feels more like a mid-boss meant to be a wake-up call for a weakened Cal, representing his lowest point and sending him on a journey of recovery. Hell, we could have fought him twice - once where he first shows up to warn us, once again in the temple.

Originally posted by Thumper:

So far this has been a good discussion from the start. Nobody has come in and said something stupid. We've made good progress and I'm re-thinking how I play. Since the start of this I've gone from Zeffo to Bogano before the final fight.

Right, and I thank you for humouring my speculation. Writing and storytelling is something of a passion of mine, and Fallen Order honestly has one of the more interesting stories in recent times. Star Wars' themes of Light and Dark as a reflection of our own maturity have always interested me, and this game tends to handle them with a fairly deft touch. In this case, the Dark Side is seen as one's inability to move past trauma and the Light Side as the tranquility of coming to terms with one's own mistakes. "Failure is part of the journey" is a commonly repeated theme.

This is part of why I felt Dathomir was supposed to be the mid-point, rather than the end point. As I said above, the fight with Malicos feels like it was set up to be a failure and what sends Cal on a journey of finding a new lightsabre. The inherent darkness of that place, the darkness of that particular temple and a fallen Jedi representing everything Cal stands to lose feel like they would be a great low point. Instead, all of this ends up coming near the end, creating at least in me quite a bit of emotional whiplash. The way the story presented Cal's journey, he seemed to have gotten over his issues by Dathomir, then the temple vision happens and a lot of old themes not referenced for a very long time are brought right back up - almost as if these events themselves were meant to be wrapped up a long time ago.

The way the story is structured now still works, of course - not saying it's terrible. Having Cal's journey end by facing his master, crafting his own lightsabre and facing the antithesis of the Jedi is equally valid. It's the... Framing around it that brings me pause. Constant insistence on Cal still using "his master's lightsabre" make no sense when Cal has already built his own earlier in the game. The concept of crafting a second lightsabre at the end of his own makes no sense when - again - Cal's already done this. This would have made sense of Cal were still using the initial weapon, still shot in half with wires dangling off the end, repairing it by incorporating another's sabre as a sign that he's willing to trust again. But gameplay-wise, this already happened, from my perspective LOOONG ago in the game's timeline.

Narratively, the story works. It's the framing device and other development concerns which make me wonder.

[(Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

No, fighting a symbol of the Jedi Order’s failure makes sense as the climax to Cal’s backstory, before finishing up the present story.

I agree, but that doesn't seem to be how the game's actually using him, though. At no point in the game is the validity of the Jedi Order ever in serious question from the audience's perspective.

Actually there is. The fall of the Zeffo, which we learn in the vault on Bogano, is meant to parallel the fate of the Jedi Order. They held their power through hubris and dogmatic tradition, rather than trusting the force as they were meant to.

The party believes they should continue the traditions of the Order when they were a part of it, going after the children and teaching them to be Jedi. By the end however, they realize the mistakes of the Order, how they strayed from their origins like the Zeffo, and instead decide to follow the path the force as they were always meant to. This is why they destroy the holocron in the end.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by (Edgy) Asriel Dreemurr:

The party believes they should continue the traditions of the Order when they were a part of it, going after the children and teaching them to be Jedi. By the end however, they realize the mistakes of the Order, how they strayed from their origins like the Zeffo, and instead decide to follow the path the force as they were always meant to. This is why they destroy the holocron in the end.

Right, but Malicos plays no real part in this narrative. It's the fate of the Zeffo told through the temples and Merrin's natural distrust of authority which push Cal towards changing his mind. If the failure of the Jedi Order palyed a part, none of the people involved in that decision ever said anything about it - not on-screen in my playthrough, anyway. Near as I can tell, all of them remain committed to rebuilding the Jedi Order, just not THAT way.

That's why I say that Malicos seems to serve a more imprtant role as a cautinary tale to Cal for his own character growth than he does as a cautinary tale against the Jedi Order. In fact, Cal kind of says the opposite - claiming that Malicos might have once been a Jedi, but he had become "something else" by the end. Cal seems to absolve the Jedi of their failures, or rather accepts those failures as part of the journey of a Jedi, and appears no less resolved to restore the order at the end, as long as he doesn't expose innocent people to needless danger.

That's my reading of it, anyway.

[Thumper]

Your welcome my friend, TBH I didn't think this was going to go so well. I'm glad it did. It was a fun ride.


On the other side of that. You could talk the ears off a wooden Indian.


I hope we meet up again.