It feels strange to say this about a Star Wars game that acts as a direct sequel to a fairly popular and crowd-pleasing adventure with a well established IP, but I'm going to say it anyway - I think Star Wars Jedi: Survivor could be one of the sleeper hits of the year. I don't love the messy name, but it's a little cleaner than Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, so even that is worthy of respect. Speaking of, ahead of Survivor's launch in April, I've jumped back into the original to remind myself of all the combat I'm going to suck at. What I had forgotten, or perhaps just didn't appreciate at the time, was how hard the opening sequence goes.

It starts off simply enough. Cal is established as just another nobody, which is pretty standard for Star Wars heroes. You walk around a shipyard learning how to jump, climb, run - the usual. Initially, the stakes aren't high, but there's still some drama. Cal is clambering up scrapworks he knows his way around intimately, and he's done it all before, but there's still a huge drop. Before long, these fake stakes are replaced by reality. The Empire attacks the scrapyard and appears to be specifically targeting Cal. Turns out, he's a Jedi - he's a nobody who's actually a somebody. Even more standard for Star Wars heroes.

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After a couple of minutes of just generic movement, you're tossed right into the middle of an explosive set-piece. You must make your way along a speeding train, slick with the inky rainfall of night, leaping from carriage to carriage and dispatching waves of enemies. Some will come at you hard, asking for speed to get the best of them. Others will be fast and light, and must be swept aside with power. More still have bullets, but they are no match for you.

Cal Kestis with a purple lightsaber in Jedi: Fallen Order.

At the end there is your first boss waiting for you, and she taunts your weakness. She killed your mentor, and we aren't told via cutscenes or a text crawl or an annoying companion strapped to your arm delivering facts about the world, but from her own barbs. She barely remembers it. To her, it was Tuesday.

This boss fight is unwinnable, and exists to sell your power (and the lack of it) in the wider universe. Your path will not be easy. Even after all this, things are not over. A surreal dream sequence also features in the opening exchanges, setting the tone for a game that will explore the stranger parts of the Star Wars universe and which will serve up a protagonist with a past worth uncovering.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Cal is central with other characters behind him in a poster-style image

Not since Uncharted 2 has an opening quite hit so powerfully. The fact both are on a train probably planted the seed of Uncharted 2 in my head while playing, but then the fact Uncharted 2 starts in medias res, having us catch up to that sequence across the first half of the game, also makes it seem a little cheap, from a narrative perspective. Star Wars Jedi does see Cal explore his own backstory as he remembers his training and regains his connection to the Force, but Fallen Order still starts at the beginning and lets us grow from there.

I'm sure there are other examples you can think of - don't hold me to Uncharted 2 - but so many games these days are desperate to link the tutorial into the opening exchanges in clumsy ways that are supposed to feel more realistic but only take you out of the experience. Rather than giving you a tutorial in isolation then letting you go, games try to weave the tips into the opening minutes, and everything plods along. Either that or they walk and talk, giving you some control with moving the player around, but essentially making you push forward on the thumbstick while delivering a cutscene of exposition to let you know this is a Very Serious Game with a Proper Story.

Drake swinging on rope under bridge

There is still something of a tutorial in Fallen Order. Those first two minutes of climbing are just your 'how to climb', and the first time you fight enemies it will teach you how to block and attack, followed by parries, followed by combos. However, because you dispatch these very quickly and then continue to race along the train taking out enemies in epic showpiece takedowns, you don't feel as though the game is walking you through things. After this sequence, you get a few cutscenes which deliver the exposition, and on the next planet things go far slower as the more in-depth parts of the game like skill trees, healing, and customisation are delivered in typical tutorials. It does what all other games do, it just lets you get hooked first.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has never been particularly lodged in my brain as all that memorable a game, but the second time around, the opening has its grip on me more than it ever did the first time around. As I make my way back through the game ahead of Survivor, I hope there are more surprises waiting for me, even if I've seen them all before.

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