Jedi: Survivor Made Me Realize A Weird Truth About All Video Game Protagonists

When I was playing , and I controlled Cal Kestis, making blind leaps and trusting that there would be a wall to run along or some other daring aerial parkour available to him, it highlighted how absurd video game action heroes are, though Cal is one of the few with a good excuse for it. Improbable leaps of faith are nothing new to video games. The games have asked that of me for years. As presentation has achieved cinematic realism, it’s harder for me to ignore when Nathan Drake willingly leaps to his death.

Early 2D Platformer games generally featured cartoonish mascot characters, with rare exceptions, like the original. Now, games with more realistic aesthetics and tone still incorporate dramatic leaps. has its professional parkour players, but I don’t worry when a stylized jumble of blocks takes a soaring jump off a cliff. When the reboot rendition of Lara Croft does the same, it’s terrifying. Sometimes, modern over-the-top action games use dramatic stakes to make those sequences feel rationalized. Nathan Drake might have to do some death-defying stunts to escape a sinking boat, not because he chose to.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor's final chapters are extremely tumultuous, putting Cal Kestis and the Stinger Mantis crew through their greatest test yet.

When these well-characterized and fully developed humans risk their lives with nigh impossible stunts willingly, it can eviscerate verisimilitude. The sprawling open worlds of offer a lot to explore. Cal may run along a sheer cliff wall in the hopes that at the end he will be barely within reach to Force Pull a hanging rope towards him just to access a hidden temple. The story has Cal pursuing a mystery to find the elusive planet Tanalorr, but there is no Death Star hovering over Alderaan, so Cal’s risk-taking stunts don’t have urgency to rationalize them.

The yellow paint is the Force, telling you, ridiculous as this may seem, you can climb it.

The gap in abstraction between the player’s experience in a video game