Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Was Almost About Bounty Hunters

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was an incredible experience that was met with mostly positive reviews and a hope for continuation. The story of Cal Kestis was surprisingly fresh despite first impressions but what’s interesting is that we almost didn’t get a game about a Jedi in training, instead LucasFilm pitched a game about bounty hunters instead. 

Game director Stig Asmussen recently talked about the game and its development over on the AIAS Game Maker’s podcast (via PC Gamer) and what he revealed definitely has us curious, especially with the wild success that was The Mandalorian. 

“I pitched, ‘Hey what if we do a game about Jedi and Force powers,'” he mentioned in the podcast. “They were not super comfortable with that. They threw it back, ‘What about blasters or bounty hunters?'” Given that lightsabers and the philosophy of the Force is such a vital part of the Star Wars media, it’s a little surprising to see that LucasFilm wanted to counter that. Then again, The Mandalorian was a huge wakeup call for Disney and LucasFilm about the desire to go beyond the Force, which sounds like a solid driving factor for pitching a different angle for the game. 

That being said, Asmussen wasn’t going to be discouraged from his team’s idea:  “That’s not the background of the team we’ve built; you might as well ask me and us to start building a racing game at this point. I don’t think anybody’s going to be really happy with the results of that.”

The director was adamant about sticking with what they knew would be a winning idea, something that he had no problem fighting for when talking with LucasFilm: “The Jedi is the Holy Grail. To make a game about Jedi you’ve got to earn it. There was a little bit of back and forth, but they could see where I was coming from and said, ‘All right, we can start having a conversation about making a game about Force users, but not Jedi.’ And then the game comes out and its name is Jedi.”

Interested in learning even more about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order? Check out our game hub here, including guides for the game, interviews with the dev team, and so much more.