This documentary was so useful when designing the set. As all of our submission is online now, I thought using a game as my primary source, where everything is digital anyway, would be extremely helpful and would make things a bit more straight forward. Watching the documentary and seeing how the artists work there has increased my interest in 3D modelling and the video game industry.
Upon making the game, the studio had a huge amount of work to do, and extremely high expectations to meet. The Star Wars fan base can be very hard to please, as the franchise is legendary and the fans would be devastated if the game wasn’t up to standard.
The story was such an important part of the game, as there’s so much history and law in the Star Wars universe. Hard core fans notice tiny details too, which again, is a huge amount of pressure. In the studio team they of course had the Story team and it was lead by Megan Fausti, but they also had Star Wars specialists on the team. The Star Wars specialists need to know every detail about the Star Wars universe and the history, it’s their job to make sure everything is historically accurate and makes sense. Lucasfilm helped out Respawn studios by sending in people from the storyteam for the films too. The story of Jedi Fallen Order is extremely character drive, and I personally as a player of the game felt a massive connection to the main character Cal Kestis. He is a down to earth character, that has a kind heart and is lost and needs to find his way. The story is also so appealing as the player is on a journey to becoming a Jedi, a dream of many Star Wars fans, but you’re certainly thrown into the deep end as it’s quite a challenging game and the journey is very important.
Another aspect that was strong in this game, is the collaboration. After reading numerous interviews from the studio, they say about how all the teams combined their ideas and everything linked perfectly together. For example, the Concept and the Art team would work together with the level designer, to ensure the Star Wars inspired environments had the right features such as vegetation to climb up, or mossy ground that the player can slide down.
Unfortunately there isn’t a huge amount of information about how the games were actually made, especially when talking about the environment design. I did however find one of the artists on Artstation and had a look through his page. I also found a few of the other prop and environment artists on there too. Based on their profile, the main software they use to create the environments and props is Maya, substance painter, zbrush and unreal engine.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gJN08x
https://www.starwars.com/news/inside-star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-interview