Lucasfilm Was Initially Hesitant To Let Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Be A Jedi Game

Star Wars Jedi series director Stig Asmussen seemingly nearly walked away from the project after Lucasfilm initially pushed back against developer Respawn’s idea to make a game featuring Jedi. In an interview with The Guardian, Asmussen said Lucasfilm was so very protective of Jedi in terms of Star Wars canon that they pushed for a change to call the characters in Respawn’s game “Force users.”

“To Lucasfilm, the Jedi are like the holy grail. I mean, it’s something that they’re probably the most protective of, except for maybe Baby Yoda. So we had to kind of earn that. We had to go through a whole process of, why do you want it to be a Jedi? What do you want to do with the Jedi? They were really uncomfortable with Jedi, and they said, ‘Let’s reset this. Let’s call this character a Force user,'” Asmussen said.

Lucasfilm, Asmussen said, wanted to change Respawn’s game to focus on a bounty hunter or a smuggler. At this point, Asmussen–who previously worked on the God of War series–said he considered dropping out.

“I’m like, well I think you have the wrong person for the job,” he said. “That’s not my background. My background came from God of War … I’ve never worked on a shooter, and you need a different team to do that. You might as well be asking me to make a racing game. And eventually over time, we built that trust to the point where we ended up calling [the franchise] Jedi.”

In the end, Respawn convinced Lucasfilm and created a series focused around a Jedi named Cal Kestis. His story continues in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which releases on April 28 for console and PC. You can read more in our Star Wars Jedi: Survivor preview.