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.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
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.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.