Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Developers Explain Why They Chose a Male Human Protagonist

In an interview with Game Informer (as spotted by PC Gamer), developer Respawn spoke about Jedi: Fallen Order‘s protagonist and why they ultimately decided to make him a human. 

“Ultimately we didn’t go with an alien race because we felt like—no pun intended—that would alienate a lot of people,” said Jedi: Fallen Order director Stig Asmussen. “We wanted to make sure that there was a real human connection to the character that we have in the game, although I personally—I mean, that’s more kind of like [a] broader decision why we did it—personally I think it would be really cool to have an alien protagonist.”

Without reading too much into that statement, it does sound like the decision to make Fallen Order’s protagonist a human may have come down to input from marketing and maybe even publisher EA who felt that a human would appeal to as wide of a group of gamers as possible. We’re sure there are some numbers to back such decisions up but (as PC Gamer also points out), there have certainly been complaints that Fallen Order‘s protagonist suffers from a bit of a generic look. 

On that same note, Asmussen also noted that the team looked at a different gender for Fallen Order‘s protagonist, but decided against it for a somewhat odd reason. 

“At the time Rey was kind of the thing for Star Wars,” said Asmussen. “So it made a lot more sense for us to have a male protagonist.”

What’s odd about that logic is that many of the complaints about Fallen Order‘s “generic” protagonist stem from the fact that we’ve seen similar designs in Star Wars heroes from Luke Skywalker to Kyle Katarn. As such, it probably wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch to have two female protagonists leading two major Star Wars projects at the same time if Respawn wanted to go that route. 

Regardless, there are still some questions regarding whether or not Fallen Order can live up to fan expectations despite its similarities to other hit Star Wars titles. 

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.