Like its predecessor, Jedi: Survivor is somewhat hemmed in, on a narrative level, by the big-screen trilogies that flank its position on the Star Wars timeline. At no point in Jedi: Survivor does it feel like Cal could take on the whole Empire himself-not least because the game is set nine years before Episode IV, when new hope is hard to come by. “The Empire is only growing stronger.” And yeah, he has a point. “Everything I’m doing feels pointless,” Cal laments toward the beginning of the sequel to 2019’s Jedi: Fallen Order.

Jedi: Survivor made it feel like a home in a huge and dangerous galaxy that I was reluctant to leave. By the end of the game, that room at Pyloon’s wasn’t just a save point. If this was goodbye, I wanted to part at Pyloon’s so that when I cut our connection and returned to real life, I could comfort myself with the thought of Cal and droid sidekick BD-1 ensconced in their cozy quarters. I may spend more hours in Cal’s company-those dark blots on the map promise much more for us to see and do-but big games are no longer held for the holidays, and I’m already feeling the Force pulls of Burning Shores, Tears of the Kingdom, and Diablo IV. Instead, I endured some extra loading time to travel between planets and deposit him in his humble room in the basement of Pyloon’s Saloon, a run-down dive in a prospectors’ town on a backwater world called Koboh. When I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, after roughly 35 hours of conversing, traversing, and coercing, I didn’t abandon Cal Kestis at the site of his final battle.

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