After a few hours with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, I feared it was going to have '168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Hinterlands Problem'. The Hinterlands is the first area in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon Age Inquisition, designed for you to meet some key characters, do some quick quests, then leave and get on with the main story. Only it's not very clear that you should leave, nor is the area's scope immediately apparent, so lots of people stay here for too long, wander aimlessly, pick up quests too hard, and end up hating The Hinterlands, if not the whole game itself. Similarly, Jedi: Survivor plonks you down on Koboh early on, which is also too vast to comprehend in a single sitting, although it has a different approach to help avoid the very same pitfall. But in avoiding The Hinterlands Problem, it creates an entirely new one.
Mild spoilers for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor ahead.
As you wander around Koboh, it's possible to lose hours here, just like The Hinterlands. However, the game clearly signposts when it's time to go, giving you a direct narrative event when you hit the area's hub, and then offering a linear questline from there on out. Even if you ignore this, there are parts of the planet you can't explore yet, so while the world is large, natural obstacles stop you from wasting too much time.
The first problem with this is you will inevitably encounter obstacles you cannot overcome, but blissfully unaware you cannot overcome them. This can leave you wandering around, feverishly searching for a solution, and while the game has a built-in hint system, it will not trigger for these sorts of puzzles - only the ones you can already solve. But also, just don't be a dummy. We know how video games work, I'm fine with areas being locked behind story progression. The second problem however is a little harder to wave away.
After you leave Koboh, you'll fly to Jedah, another open world with a lot of opportunities. Initially, you are put on a more linear path, but in time it opens up and it's the same old story. Then you finish your mission and you go... back to Koboh. Do the Koboh mission and then... back to Jedah. Want to guess where you go next? While there is a moon off Koboh which has a couple of missions of its own, and each narrative adventure on Koboh takes you to a new part of it to keep some variety, it feels a little stale. You feel like you're not flying a spaceship so much as you're riding on a shuttle bus. $5 for a day trip, to Jedah and back again.
Both Jedah and Koboh are fine. In fact, Koboh does a fantastic job of being teeming with life and activities around every corner. But it feels a little artificial, and that is made worse by the fact you're constantly returning to it. The whole planet is a bit like Westworld, before the killer robots took over. Everywhere you turn, there is a fleshed out, epic adventure waiting for you, but also if you don't do it who really cares, y'know? This is where the game's size comes into play.
In another dimension there exists a hypothetical version of Jedi: Survivor where we don't jump between Koboh and Jedah every single time, but instead fly to different planets and moons across the system, each one as vibrant as Koboh, and no longer feeling artificial because they don’t force repeated visits where the same pressing quests await unfinished. This game would be as large as Dragon Age Inquisition, taking 100 hours to sink your teeth into rather than the 35 or so it took me.
But Survivor's story is very personal and character driven, and would not suit being stretched out in this way. Given it's the game's strongest asset, nor should it. However, this small and intimate story does not feel like the right fit for this shuttle bus-style storytelling either. There's another hypothetical version which streamlines events, cuts some of the sidequests, and tells a faster, breezier game in the style of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tomb Raider or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Uncharted.
It can sometimes be the privilege of the gaming journalist to demand triple-A adventures are smaller, thinking of our review lead times and embargoes more than potential enjoyment. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is fine and there's no one mission or side quest that I think the game would be significantly stronger for cutting - I also don't think 35 hours is a particularly demanding time, and I think I could shave ten hours off that if I stayed on the beaten path a little more.
The problem is not really the runtime; hence how it's both too big and too small. The problem is this is a story-driven video game that should keep your attention on the core characters, but shoves in some video game filler anyway. It's good filler, it's stuffed with the finest goose feathers flown in from, erm, some place where goose feathers are luxurious and expensive. But investigating the lost fisherman to help improve the fish tank at the saloon is still filler. It feels like we're pushed away from the compelling main narrative, but always towards the same few things instead of fresh vistas and new goals.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor feels a little too big for a narrative game and a little too small for an open world game. In a lot of ways, that makes it the perfect compromise a lot of people have been asking for - the questing of an open-world game with the respect for your time of a story adventure. I just wish I didn't have to keep getting the bus to Koboh. I don't want to explore the swamp, stop asking me about it.