Whether it’s a TV show, a movie, or a video game, if one of those properties can become a franchise, people will expand upon it. Sometimes with direct sequels, sometimes with spinoffs featuring popular characters. It just depends on the circumstance. But as recent history will happily tell you, there are limits to how far you can push things. If you can’t maintain the quality, things will fall apart. The upcoming Star Wars Jedi Survivor is the highly-anticipated sequel to Respawn Entertainments’ foray into a galaxy far, far away. But if you ask the head of the game, he’s already got an idea for the next game.
Stig Asmussen is said director, and in his mind, the journey of Cal Kestis was always one meant to be a trilogy:
“I always wanted to see this as a trilogy,” he told IGN in an interview. “How can we take Cal and the crew to new places beyond what we were doing in the first game?”
He also noted that when it came to making Star Wars Jedi Survivor, the team at Respawn knew what they wanted to do with the crew and where to set it in the overall timeline of the universe:
“We had a pretty decent idea of timeframe where we wanted Survivor to take place, what the stakes were going to be, what the tone of the game was going to be, what Cal was going to be up against, and how the crew was going to factor into that. And there’s ideas of what we could do beyond that as well.”
That’s definitely an exciting prospect, especially if the sequel maintains the quality of the first game and expounds upon it. If it sells like the first one, there’s little doubt a third will be made, especially given the state of other titles in the Star Wars gaming universe.
But there’s another thing to consider here. Another reason to end the tale of Kal Cestis is, quite simply, he was made for the video games. He was born within them. He was never in the other media of the universe. So while many would love to see him depicted in live-action via his voice actor, whom they modeled the Jedi’s looks after, that’s not a guarantee.
The longer Cal is in the universe, the further he threatens to destabilize the lore. That was one of the biggest flaws of the original game. We knew Cal would fail to restore the Jedi Order. So ending his story before it gets “too big” might be best.
