When I stop to chat with a miner in Koboh’s main town, I follow a rumor into an abandoned cave. There’s some significant side content nestled in the world too. It’s not a full open world, but Koboh already hits that smaller sweet spot that games like Uncharted: The Lost Legacy have proven works just as well. It feels much more like a true Metroid game in some way, as there’s a ton of space for me to get lost in. Rather than rushing to the main objective, I spend a good 45 minutes poking my head into various alcoves to find hidden chests, collectible seeds, and small side areas where I fight through a patrol of Stormtroopers to claim some rewards.
When I arrive at a cliffside vista early on, I use BD-1 as a pair of binoculars and start placing markers around the map. The difference, though, is that the slice I played is significantly more open-ended. Survivor retains all of the basics, with an emphasis on traverse tools like wall-running and puzzle-solving force powers. Like its predecessor, Survivor is a bit of a genre mash-up that takes the bonfire checkpointing of Dark Souls and smashes that into a light Metroidvania where secrets are locked behind gear upgrades (I’d find a rather direct reference to Super Metroid during my session, as some helpful animals showed me how to wall jump). There’s a lot to unpack there, but my primary focus winds up landing on how the sequel approaches exploration. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, as I leave my session with a notepad full of character names and historical lore to pore over. My mission to repair my broken-down ship takes me through a mining ghost town, where I cross paths with the nefarious Rayvis. I won’t get into story details (mostly due to some convoluted restrictions on what I can discuss), but the slice I played teased a rather sprawling epic with crisscrossing plot threads. My demo begins about an hour into the full game, as Cal Kestis and his droid pal, BD-1, crash land on a planet called Koboh. More open-ended exploration, a better sense of reward, and revitalized combat already have me feeling like it’ll be a top-tier Star Wars experience – one that could make a strong case for the series to move from a film and TV focus to a video game one. Based on what I’ve played, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is in excellent shape ahead of its launch later this month.
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