Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will only ever be as difficult as you want it to be. For those fans of the globally successful sci-fi series who perhaps aren’t as gifted at playing video games as others, that one sentence will undoubtedly prompt a sigh of relief.
Due out in just a matter of days, Respawn Entertainment’s own addition to George Lucas’ universe has received a great deal of attention over its gameplay – particularly combat – in previews and pre-release events. Having been likened to that of FromSoftware’s ball-bustingly difficult Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice on more than one occasion, Respawn was in danger of scaring casual audiences away.
Comparisons between the two titles remain as accurate as ever, though more so in terms of mechanical depth rather than challenge, it’s emerged. Fallen Order will continue to test the resolve of skilled gamers come launch day, but only should they choose for it to.
In discussing changes that have been made to Cal’s adventure since this year’s E3, game director Stig Asmussen confirmed to Eurogamer that one major tweak has been the introduction of multiple difficulty levels.
We did playtesting before E3, but we’ve done a lot since. And probably the biggest change that we’ve made is difficulty in the game. Most of us at work like a challenge, but we recognise this is Star Wars, [which has] a huge audience, we don’t want anybody to feel left out. So we made some adjustments, we added a new story difficulty mode, overall we kind of tweaked things down a little bit for our default mode. And then we made an even harder mode. And all that was influenced by what we were finding in the playtesting, and iteration.
In essence, the developer has come to recognize the wide-reaching appeal of Star Wars and that, ultimately, sticking to a single difficulty option wouldn’t be fair on portions of the fanbase that potentially wouldn’t be interested in pushing their hand-eye coordination skills to their limits. In order to address that potential pitfall, a new Story Difficulty will be available to those whose primary concern is enjoying Fallen Order‘s narrative.
Among other things, the change has allowed Respawn to make Fallen Order‘s hardest difficulty mode even more brutal than its original default, so hardcore fans still have plenty of room to test their mettle against the Empire. Good news all round, then.
Which difficulty mode will you be tackling Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in come November 15th, though? Sound off in the comments below!