I recently wrote about Cal Kestis being one-note in Jedi: Fallen Order – I thought Respawn had made a valiant effort to represent trauma through Cal, but it was a swing and a miss. Fallen Order’s backstory does most of the work in giving Cal any personality at all, and the game itself doesn’t give him a chance to shine. I’m delighted to say Jedi: Survivor has made him far more likeable, and in fact, he might be one of my current favourite video game protagonists right now, alongside Ellie from The Last of Us. Some mild spoilers up ahead.
I’m fairly far along in Survivor, and while the game’s events have led me to believe there’s still surprises in store for Cal’s development, I’ve liked him a lot more overall. He’s just funnier in this game, and having companions helps show that through conversations he never got to have in Fallen Order. He bounces off his friends Bode and Merrin in conversation, quipping and joking. He’s a little sassy, even, eavesdropping on his enemies’ conversations and replying derisively after cutting them all in half.
That’s not all, though – Cameron Monaghan can act, and he’s finally been given a chance to prove it. Survivor has given Cal layers of complexity that he previously lacked. We see him go through an ordeal that reminds him of his childhood trauma, and the emotions that pass over his face made my chest hurt. He feels fear, and then we almost see him slipping inside his own mind to hide. When it ends, there is a grimness to the way his jaw is set, and he makes a weak joke that barely hides how difficult it was for him to go through that.
Throughout much of the game, Cal seems far more weary. He’s a funny guy, sure, but we get the sense that his seemingly dauntless optimism is being ground down by the constant hardship he faces. Sometimes he says things that seem like they would be perfectly punctuated with a sigh and an eye roll, like he really is tired of fighting, but feels like he has to because nobody else will. People keep telling him that he is more than just a weapon and that he deserves to find peace, but he can’t accept it. It’s incredibly poignant, reflecting on the nature of active resistance and martyrship, and it breaks my heart.
It shows as well in his reluctance to make choices that he doesn’t want to make, whereas in Fallen Order, it felt as if he went with the flow simply because he was told to. I said that the game’s story didn’t solidify him as selfless or selfish because he didn’t make the choices, but Survivor puts his agency firmly in his own hands. He is making his own decisions, driven by his own desires and perceptions of what needs to be done. He is both selfless and selfish, and wrestling with it in a way he did not in Survivor’s predecessor.
I worried that Jedi: Survivor would disappoint me and Cal would be the same as he’d always been, but it seems my worry was misplaced. Where Fallen Order failed, Survivor rose to fill the gaps. There are few protagonists I’ve rooted for so hard, wishing that for once, they would just catch a damn break. Cal’s persistence, previously his greatest strength, leads him to heartbreak and grief over and over again. His desire to see the best in everyone and everything backfires, over and over.
I said I didn’t want to see him turned bitter and angry without a redemption arc, but Respawn did me one better – it gave us a Cal who was still hopeful, but closer than ever to despair. It gave us a truly human protagonist, not one that was a blank slate for the Jedi code. It gave us a man struggling with understanding what he truly wanted, and what was right for him, finding his own path instead of following the one he thought was set for him. Jedi: Survivor has its flaws, but its character development is one of its biggest strengths.