Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
​Respawn Entertainment

 Role: Senior Level Designer
2020 - February 2022 | October 2022 - April 2023

Description

The story of Cal Kestis continues in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor™, a third-person, galaxy-spanning, action-adventure game from Respawn Entertainment, developed in collaboration with Lucasfilm Games. This narratively driven, single-player title picks up 5 years after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order™ and follows Cal’s increasingly desperate fight as the galaxy descends further into darkness. Pushed to the edges of the galaxy by the Empire, Cal will find himself surrounded by threats new and familiar. As one of the last surviving Jedi Knights, Cal is driven to make a stand during the galaxy’s darkest times — but how far is he willing to go to protect himself, his crew, and the legacy of the Jedi Order?

Dredger Gorge

Originally, Dredger Gorge was meant to be our second tutorial level. Coruscant would teach the player their verbs, while Dredger Gorge would be where they were introduced to the staples of our level design: shortcuts, looping levels, and gates. Ultimately Coruscant expanded  until it eventually covered much of this ground, but the bones of Dredger Gorge remained the same.

One of the interesting challenges was introducing gates without any new ability in the level. To deliver on this I created the roller mines as a level mechanic. The player encounters multiple walls they clearly want to destroy, yet they don't have the means. When the roller mine is introduced it is meant an 'a-ha' that reveals how the level can be traversed. This loop is kept small so the player can clearly make the connection between the two game objects.

Looking back on it, I'm quite proud of how dense this level is. I don't feel that any individual element overstays its welcome, and the player is reliably given fun level or narrative moments. Ultimately this came down to great collaboration with some talented folks, like the encounter designer Lee Cudney and the writer Pete Stewart.

Stone Spires

The design brief for Stone Spires was to create a level that highlighted glide and introduced the Koboh Grinder.

My primary inspiration for the level were Zelda temples, particularly those with central puzzles that you re-traverse and/or use in multiple ways. I wanted that sort of central element that the player is continually returning back to.

In Stone Spires this ended up being wind vents which the player turns on after they complete various side areas. Each wind vent allows them to reach successively higher locations with the glider, ultimately leading to the objective of the level: an abandoned home on the top of a tall spire.

Originally, these wind vents were meant to also incorporate the Koboh Grinder, requiring the player to do some positional puzzle solving. Ultimately however, in playtesting, we found this was one logical leap too far for players. They would regularly get lost or confused at the very end of the level, leading to frustration.

To solve this, I moved the bulk of the puzzling to the side areas themselves, and turned the central geysers into primarily a navigational element that the player could reliably progress.

Though it wasn't my original intention, it worked out quite well I think, and at the end of the day, I think the puzzles that shipped were better than the original central one I had planned.

Rumor System

I worked in collaboration with our Design Director to design the Rumor System which was introduced in Jedi: Survivor. Though in some ways it resembles a traditional quest system, it had a different design goal and some challenging design restrictions.

The design brief was to create a system which highlighted content the player had missed. This had been a problem on Jedi: Fallen Order. If the player looked at their map, they could see red gates (gates they had never opened) but there was no good indication how much content was beyond one of those gates. Rumors ideally would tell the player "hey, if you go here, there's definitely some cool stuff that is worth your time."

It felt natural to add narrative context to these rumors. If NPCs are giving these out, why are they mentioning them? Why do they care about them? How can we make the player excited to do them?

However, there were some pretty severe design restrictions that hampered building those stories. The content had to exist, and be completable, whether or not the player ever took the rumor. Additionally, no content or reward could ever be gated behind a choice or narrative interaction.

Ultimately, I think these restrictions ended up controlling what Rumors could become. They fulfilled their initial purpose, but I don't think we achieved what was possible with them.

I learned a lot of lessons from this process, and took those lessons forward into my next project at Respawn Entertainment, hoping to fulfill more of the promise of the system.