I’ve begun to play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor during what limited time I’ve been able to put toward video gaming (which isn’t much between unpacking, settling in to my apartment, recovering from total exhaustion, and my busy day-job). It has been a lot of fun, even if it feels like a weird experience compared to what I remember of the first game. I’m not certain the game itself is any different, but the way I’m experiencing it very much is. I played Fallen Order on my PC the first time, struggling through what felt like odd computer controls as I stubbornly refused to consider playing it on a console. I’d already bought it on the PC, after all. Why should I spend MORE money on it just to make my experience better? Eventually, my protests faded away and I played my two subsequent play-throughs (one full and one partial) on the PS4, though most of that was during my “listen to a podcast while playing a video game so my eyes, ears, and hands were completely occupied at all times” phase, so the experience of the game didn’t really stick with me.

It’s an odd thing, these days, to play a game that is mapping itself close to but not actually aiming for hyperrealism (or at least as close as video games can get these days). There’s a lot of motion-capture type stuff, a lot of heavy focus on realistic hair movement, and some absolutely gorgeously rendered cutscenes. It put a lot of effort into being as “real” as it can possibly be. A lot of which is sort of undercut by the cartoony nature of much of the alien life that isn’t human-adjacent. I say “sort of” because the alien character models all look great. There’s a lot of clipping issues as the active, motion-capable parts of the model come into contact with the parts that don’t move, but only a few egregious examples come to mind and most of those have to do with aliens who have both large, bulky bodies and tentacles instead of hair. It’s not a bad look, most of the time, but it definitely isn’t “realistic” in the way that most games aim for when they are depicting humans.

Because of this need to move the game’s visuals toward something that, by its very nature, can’t be hyperreal, the human character models have to be shifted away from it as well, in order to keep them from sticking out in the otherwise un”real”istic environments that Star Wars is full of. Because of the work the game’s designers put in to head in the hyperrealistic direction at all, the human-looking character faces win up all feeling less real in Survivor than they did in Fallen Order because they’re now being pulled in two directions by the conflicting design needs of the game. Sure, FO had a bunch of odd expressions that didn’t really map as well into the gameplay portion of the game as they would have into a cutscene in the game, but at least they felt natural. Now, in alot of in-game scenes (not the cutscenes since are all visually stunning), I’ve seen the protagonist’s face move in ways that have immediately reminded me that I was playing a video game.

Part of what probably helped FO fly under the radar for me was that the whole game was darker. Not just in a “adjust the brightness” kind of way (though I’ll admit I usually turn the brightness up on my TV screen and down on my PC just because of my proximity to the location the image is being displayed and because the of the ambient light levels I’m usually working with), but in an overall lighting kind of way. Fallen Order was a game about trying to survive and figure out what comes next, grit and all, while Survivor seems mostly to be about what to do now that you’ve survived and no longer need to fear for your life every waking moment of every day (though I’ll admit there’s probably more to it than this since I’m only on my second planet and have been losing myself in the “explore every inch of the world” grind that I love so much). Survivor feels brighter and better lit than Fallen Order was, and the things I was able to overlook in the darker environs of FO are being quite literally highlighted in Survivor.

It’s just a rough experience when compared to the two other games I’ve been playing recently: Tears of the Kingdom (even though it’s been 3 weeks since I last played due to my move and then other games coming out) and Diablo IV. Tears of the Kingdom is visually stunning, as it embraces a slightly darker lighting than Breath of the Wild, in addition to absolutely knocking it out of the park when it comes to improved textures and visuals. Diablo IV, even with my crappy old computer and it’s nature as a rather zoomed-out game, still looks incredibly crisp and with distinct visuals that look great no matter if I’m catching glimpses of my barbarian as they whirling through hordes of enemies or are appearing in a cutscene. Neither game went for hyperrealism, each of them chooising high-definition styliziation over something that looks or feels “real.” Both are visually stunning games that leave me wondering how they can run so well on the least powerful current-gen console (which almost feels last-gen at this point, despite not having a replacement yet) and the PC I built to be middle-of-the-line eight years ago (and haven’t done anything beyond adding more RAM to it since then).

I do want to emphasize that this sort of visual immersion-breaking in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor isn’t ruining my experience with the game. It’s barely impacting it at all, since I’m already struggling to stay immersed in it when I’m so exhausted and tired and struggling to deal with the continued onslaught of exhausting things I keep finding myself sinking into. I would probably notice it less if I was more immersed in the game, but I’ve had the same immersion struggles with both D4 and TotK, so it’s not like I can blame any of it on not being swept up by this particular game. Nothing is sweeping me up these days, other than books (which don’t so much sweep me up as catch me as I collapse into them), and only Survivor is making me stumble over odd visuals in literally only the human character models.

Which, you know, is pretty impressive that this is my only complaint after ten or so hours of play. I haven’t encountered a single game-breaking bug or weird bit of mechanical gameplay that isn’t enjoyable and there’s enough established about the game so far that I’m pretty sure this will stay true for the entire thing. Sure, I wish I had some radial menus or something so I wouldn’t be forced to equip only two lightsaber forms, but I mostly only use the two-weapon form and occasionally swap to the double-bladed form only when I’m facing a large amount of blaster-fire so it hasn’t ever been an issue. As long as this stays as my only complaint, I think this is going to be a fun, enjoyable game. It just really stood out to me right now, thanks to the stunning visuals of the other two games I’m playing. I just wish more games chose style and high quality stylization over trying to get as close to hyperrealism as they can manage. Most hyperrealistic games from six years ago look bad nowadays while Breath of the Wild is going to look beautiful forever.