While Cal Kestis was part of a crew in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – exploring the galaxy in the Stinger Mantis ship with his mentor, Cere Junda; its captain, Greez, and (eventually) his former bitter enemy turned bestie, Nightsister Merrin – once he was boots on the ground planetside, it was largely a fairly lonely adventure. Outside, of course, of the companionship of the ever adorable BD-1.
That changes in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor thanks to the addition of Bode Akuna, a new character in Jedi Survivor, played by Noshir Dalal, who can be seen in the reveal trailer lending a hand to Cal both in a cutscene and in gameplay where he executes a cool tandem finisher on a Scout Trooper. But Bode’s presence as a companion character goes far beyond just cool finishing moves. It’s actually part of a system that Respawn has dubbed “Character-in-Gameplay.”
Characters-in-Gameplay is a term used internally at Respawn to differentiate between NPCs that accompany Cal in actual gameplay segments from characters that stayed behind at specific narrative hubs. As Senior Game Designer Jason Zhu explains it: “There was a desire for NPCs to be used as guides in the levels, and while talking it through, one thing led to another until people started wondering, ‘Why don’t we have NPC’s travel and fight alongside Cal?’”
There was a desire for NPCs to be used as guides in the levels.
The team then evaluated whether implementing such a system was feasible with the tech they had, and ultimately decided that it was worth the time and effort to create a system that allowed for companions to join Cal in battle. There was even a precedent already set back in Fallen Order – the boss battle against Malicos where Merrin supports you throughout the battle. That served as the jumping off point, and the character-in-gameplay system is largely an expansion of what players saw during that boss battle.
When he’s accompanying Cal, Bode will actively participate in the fight. He can attack and kill enemies on his own, draw the attention of some enemies to take pressure off the player, and you can command him to help you out by doing some sort of special move on a single target to disrupt them.
To give a specific example, Narrative Technical Designer Joanna Robb said, “When you see a good opportunity, you can give Bode the signal to perform the attack, and he’ll use his jetpack to ram the enemy with a brutal dropkick, and then he quickly follows it up by slamming down a shock grenade to stun other nearby enemies. It’s a great way to send a tough enemy flying, taking them out of the fight briefly, or you could run them down with a sprint attack to get a quick hit in.”
When he’s accompanying Cal, Bode will actively participate in the fight
Robb goes on to say that there are also a lot of custom behaviors for Bode that help make him a dependable ally. Bode will respond to your own abilities and attacks with a technique of his own. If you force push an enemy, Bode will fire a charged shot that deals a ton of damage. You can even force grab a Probe Droid, toss it at a group of Stormtroopers, and Bode’s shot will essentially detonate the droid causing a big explosion that takes out the group of enemies all at once.
“We don’t necessarily tutorialize all of these behaviors, they are just designed to give you these emergent moments that are totally your own, but feel almost choreographed like you’re in one of the movies,” said Robb.
Outside of combat, Bode will follow you through the world, using his jetpack to reach places that Cal’s force powers typically allow him to reach via double jumps, wall runs, and so on. Robb said that one of the coolest parts about making an AI companion that can travel such complex spaces is how it pushed the team to develop a new Motion Matching animation system for Bode.
Don’t expect Cal to always have someone covering his six.
“He needs to be able to think very quickly about where he should go and how to get there, and the Motion Matching system allows the animations to drive his movement, which makes him much more responsive and dynamic than our other AI characters. It really makes him feel like he’s on the same level as Cal as a character with agency in the world, not just a combatant who happens to be on your side,” explained Robb.
Don’t expect Cal to always have someone covering his six, though. According to both Robb and Zhu, the prevalence of companion characters is really driven by the story. If you’re spending time exploring all of a planet’s side content, Bode will stick around on the Mantis. Robb added that, “There’s a nice rhythm to it. When the plot is reaching a peak, the companion will give extra momentum to both the narrative and gameplay.”
As far as whether or not there will be more companion characters than just Bode, Robb did say that Bode will be the first character that Cal would team up with, but rather than talk about characters that would be joining Cal as a combat companion, she preferred to rule one out.
“I’m sure many fans of the first game are dying to know if everyone’s favorite member of the Mantis crew, the stowaway bogling that Cal adopts, will also be a Character-In-Gameplay, and I regret to say that they will not,” said Robb.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
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