I recently got to chat with Star Wars writer, Matt Michnovetz, about his work on Jedi: Fallen Order! We talked about how Matt started on the story, Cal's character, and more!
Conor: Matt, glad to finally chat with you! So the first question I need to ask is how did you start working on the game/story?
Matt: Man, that’s a fantastic question. You know, just to take it back and to be thorough with my answer, I started working on LucasArts games back in 2008. We were working on a bunch of stuff that either didn’t get made or got made into different forms that weren’t exactly what we intended. One of the most high-profile projects I worked on was Star Wars 1313 and the thing is, we got so far with that and it didn’t go anywhere and that was such a huge disappointment.
So I think around 2016, Stig reached out to me and it was through a couple of different people, like I was recommended by a couple of mutual friends. My friend Gus who was a fantastic, brilliant graphic designer, worked on 1313 and had done some work for Respawn on [Fallen Order] and then also from my guys at Lucasfilm, who had me on a shortlist with some super talented people, and Stig reached out and we hit it off. It turned out the Respawn offices were actually not far from where I was living at the time out in the valley. So I could go in and they were getting up and rolling, it was very early days. It was a very small team. Stig had this brilliant vision for the game. He wanted to do this kind of Metroidvania structure. He had an idea of the main characters and we just started from there.
We shifted the MacGuffin a couple times…at one point, it was a lost starship, it was gonna be a quest for this lost starship, and then eventually it became the holocron. We were gonna do an Underground Railroad for Force sensitives, get them out in safety away from the Empire. We had all these crazy ideas, we’re gonna have to find someone who knows about it or stop someone from revealing it. We had our heroes trying to find the location of the Inquisitor’s secret prisons. So that of course became Fortress Inquisitorius, which is great and very interesting. At one point, we were tossing around the idea of an Imperial Tribunal Citadel, which became the Fortress, HQ of the Inquisition. We talked about doing a samurai story. So that was the idea essentially at its inception, these kinda blue-sky high-level ideas, which fomented into this… what it is now, which is fantastic.
Conor: This question is kind of a pretty loaded question, but how did you create Cal Kestis as a character and his “Jedi Hero’s Journey?”
Matt: Great question again! It’s like, because it’s a game, we had certain requirements and because it’s a Jedi game, they wanted to set it in a certain time period and they set it in this period where it was the Dark ages, the Dark Times. So we had certain requirements that checked those boxes and painted somewhat of a picture of where we went. We had to figure out then what the character’s backstory was, finding essentially some version of the most dynamic fit of where to start him, who his master was, where he came from, that type of stuff, trying to do things that we hadn’t done before on some of the other series that we worked on or in the comics or other games for that matter. We basically took it from there.
We had to figure out the themes which led to his arc, what are the mistakes he’s gonna make, what are the lessons he’s gonna learn, and try to tell a different story from what we had seen. We wanted to take a heavy and grounded approach that feels meaningful because it’s real and relatable. Changing times, darkness is rising, oppression is in the air, always present. It’s felt in both the beautiful and severe, it cannot be escaped, to fight against it means a constant struggle for survival. So that’s essentially the DNA we wanted to put into this character. I can tell you that originally Cal’s character’s name was Boone.
Conor: Very Western!
Matt: Yeah! That was the idea, we wanted him to be somewhat laconic and quiet and very Clint Eastwood western-like and untrusting. Unlike some of the other characters we had seen, we wanted him to be a Padawan who had already begun some formal training. But unlike them, he quit being a Jedi, basically. So he’s a bit of a hybrid and a blank slate, which is great for the player because he’s given up the Order. But he still has some powers and he knows how to use them but needs a little more discipline and he’s prone to these kind of conditions, whereas Cere was sort of the opposite. She’s given up or lost her powers in some way, but not her belief in the Order. So she’s able to provide him with that discipline he needs to complete his training. Here’s something funny. We wanted “Boone” "is working in a Jiffy Lube Tosche Station-like place repairing and maintaining starfighters, speeders, and mech stuff." So that’s great!
Conor: And it pretty much speaks to his Scrapper Guild origins. So I had a lot of questions with Cal, like how did you guys come up with his arc of reconnecting with the Force and what ideas did you provide and what ideas did Stig provide that made it into the character?
Matt: Aaron came on board, which was great! So you put the three of us together and so it’s hard to say who exactly had what ideas in a writer’s room. The ideas are flowing and they’re everywhere. But it was a great, like, perfect storm of ideas that molded in to make this guy who he was.
Conor: When Cameron was cast, did he bring a lot of unique changes to Cal where you guys thought, “Oh, this sounds good”?
Matt: He brought a lot! I mean, there’s the quantum leap between what’s on the page and in the design to getting Cam in there to give life to this thing. We gave him the meat suit and he just put the soul in there. All the nuances, all the inflections, knowing where to hit those beats, and then Tom [Keegan], the director, and those two finding that magic. I mean, that’s really why it’s amazing. It’s like you’re cooking and you put all these great ingredients in and you got some great chefs and you’re just making this thing and it’s interesting, it takes quantum leaps in each phase of where it goes to get to where it ultimately lies and no one person can take the credit because we have such an incredible and talented group of people working on this thing. We’re so grateful. It was magic!
Conor: This might sound redundant because it seems it was set in stone. But what was the initial theme or idea you guys planned to explore in the story?
Matt: We went through a number of themes. Obviously, survival was a big one but that’s a broad theme. So one of the things that we ended up with, because it was an evolutionary process. But one of them where we ended up was essentially letting go. It was the opposite of control. So it was trusting in the Force. Letting destiny work itself out based on doing the right thing, which is something that I think we can all strive for. We wanted something positive in these dark times and the idea of not trying to vie for control, letting it go and going with the will of the Force so that the Force essentially creates your destiny as opposed to trying to influence others or put them under control, which is exactly what the Galactic Empire does. It’s oppression. That’s what we wanted to end up with, the idea of him having to eventually let go of the Holocron and allow the destiny of all those Force-users to evolve on their own. Give them free will because the second you intervene in their free will, it’s different.
If the Jedi Order were there, they could be properly… you have a better support system in place but because of the Dark Times, you’re putting them at risk, you’re putting their families at risk, everyone at risk, and you’re changing their lives tremendously and you’re not giving them that opportunity. So it’s a little bit like forcing someone to take the pill in the Matrix, basically, the red one or the blue one, go down the rabbit hole as opposed to letting them choose their own path.
Conor: I love how with Cal destroying the Holocron, it’s very opposite of the Jedi Order of the Prequels because they would probably control the will of those children and not let them decide their own fates whereas Cal is like, “I’ve learned what happens. I’ve lived through that oppression of the Order” and so he doesn’t want to bring that about to those children.
Matt: Yeah, I mean, poor choices! The Jedi have this support system, they have the wisdom. But they were operating, by the time of the war, under immense pressure and making poor choices. Malicos even goes into what the faults of the Order were and we did a lot of it on Clone Wars, the idea that they’re essentially creating child soldiers at that time and putting a lightsaber in their hand at a very early age to force them off to fight. It’s more reactionary as opposed to letting the universe take its… reacting to external forces based on fear and anger and frustration as opposed to letting the universe fall in line and happen in its own design.
Conor: Could you talk about why you guys decided to kill Trilla off because I freaking loved her character.
Matt: Aww, poor Trilla. Yeah, we love her and the actress that played her, she’s fantastic, Elizabeth’s great. It’s a game, so that was basically the boss battle. So Cal defeated her but he wouldn’t kill her, which is great. So she had to be defeated. But we needed… for her arc to sort of complete itself and to service where we were going with Cere’s story, we needed a force of evil to do that. We needed it to come full circle for Cere and so we needed Vader to come in and essentially be that unstoppable, immovable object that crushes her ultimately, and seals her fate, which is what it is. It’s a tragic story. But I felt like we did it organically. It was handled properly and it gave us the emotional context for those character’s arcs to come full circle in that particular story.
Conor: I assume the next question, it kinda answers it. Vader was sort of the big boss instead of the Grand Inquisitor? Because I know the Grand Inquisitor is in the artbook.
Matt: Yeah, we talked about… I mean, Inquisitors don’t really kill other Inquisitors. That’s what Vader is for. So it felt like the Grand Inquisitor wasn’t really our story to tell and Vader seemed like this symbol of ultimate evil. He seemed like the right kind of cameo because we talked extensively and worked close with Story Group at Lucasfilm about who the cameos were, where do they go, what would be a proper, respectful, quality cameo as opposed to throwing somebody in there for the sake of a cameo. We did it with planets too. We used our discretion in making sure that it was meaningful to the story and unique!
For our story, he’s the quintessential fallen Jedi. He’s symbolic of the fallen order. He’s also the big bad face of the Empire and the Inquisitors have to answer to him. So the Grand Inquisitor, to some degree, felt like another victim just like Trilla. With Vader, it was the right time and the right place for that moment in all of their arcs. They had gone into the innermost cave and they were gonna face the ultimate evil and pay the price to some degree. We’re not following the Hero’s Journey specifically because you don’t really wanna do that entirely. But the elements are there and you see those pieces where it’s like they return with the Elixir.
Conor: So shifting from the villains to the… heroes, I don't know. How did you guys come up with the Zeffo and their history? Because they’re super interesting.
Matt: You like that, really? Thank you. Yeah, that’s a great question. They were really a cool evolution. Stig and Aaron, I have to give tons of credit to for that because they brought all these sort of fantastic elements together, realizing that we needed a mythology to provide a historical context for the Jedi’s fall because we were experiencing the Jedi’s fall, still, in real time and we needed this mythology that would tie in the locations as well as the core concepts. We knew we wanted Cordova to be this character who had gone and studied lost civilizations. We knew we had some game requirements in the sense that we wanted to be exploring these cool, awesome places and fantastic levels that the level designers just blew everybody out of the water with. So it came down to designing this lost alien race. They had a similar trajectory as the Jedi that played a role in our theme. The Zeffo had made similar mistakes and it’s like ancient Egypt and we wanted something new and cool to explore.
I love pushing Star Wars, pushing the world, and not doing anything we had seen over and over and over again and finding new things that kept the Star Wars DNA but just sorta our own stuff, just slightly. We got a little weird with it! There’s some weird stuff in there. But it seems to work. I gotta credit the whole Respawn team with that because they pulled that off and they look great! It pushes the galaxy. It makes the galaxy a little bigger and gives a little more history, it makes the history more richer, the world a little deeper for everything that we do because of that.
Conor: I have to agree, the history of the Zeffo and how they mirror the fall of the Jedi, from what we got, is incredible. This might be an easy question. But how did you and the team decide, narratively, what planets they would go to? What planets ended up on the cutting room floor?
Matt: That's great. I actually have notes on that. Gotta give a lot of credit to level design because they came up with a lot of great stuff. We created a list and then Respawn narrowed down which ones they thought would make a great, fun game based on our criteria for the story. They knew they wanted more wild and feral environments as opposed to urban ones. Ones that were very playable, some creatures. We tried to avoid ones that, while they were recognizable and marketable, they didn’t necessarily make sense for the story, like Hoth. There’s no reason for the guys to go to Hoth, the movies make a big point that it’s a remote location.
We had cameos we were gonna try to squeeze in there and we just went through one by one. We had Utapau, Umbara, Saleucami, Raxus after the war, Skako, Dathomir, Christophsis, Mon Cala, Mandalore. We wanted to do an asteroid base, I’m a big fan of asteroid bases, so we ended up doing that with Ordo Eris. We thought about using Moraband, which was in TCW, some kind of Sith planet, and just came up with a bunch of crazy stuff like Bogano, it was one of those. We just wanted to come up with something fun and satisfied that requirement for that level of the story and what does it mean thematically for Cal’s journey and where we want to put him? Kashyyyk! I knew we threw out Mustafar at one point. Then we came down and did a planet for the Inquisitor's base and they were like “water planet.” Like, right! Freaking cool. So it was kinda the perfect little meld of ideas, mesh of cool environments, and creating the mythology for them as well.
Zeffo, I know they did a vertical slice with this wind planet and then we came up with Zeffo and started expanding that, started figuring it out and the civilization that was there. You work on these things for so many years and they’re so rich in detail. I personally like seeing new places. I mean, you want some familiarity, but I like the new planets, I like the new places. I loved what they did with Kashyyyk because you always want to play that, that never gets old, you see it in other games. But seeing new facets to that is always, to me, really super exciting and being able to understand it and being able to play it! They told me there was a giant bird, I was like “What?! You had me at giant bird!”
Conor: I agree with Kashyyyk. The second trip to Kashyyyk, for me, that’s the reason it’s my favorite planet in Star Wars now. It’s just so expansive and rich. If you could pick any moment or scene that was your favorite to write, which one would that be?
Matt: That’s a good question. Off the top, I wrote this scene, we went through a ton of different rewrites on it and Aaron did an amazing pass on it as well. Basically, we refer to it as the “campfire” scene and it was originally in front of a campfire because the ship was parked and they built a camp outside the hub. It became the “Fractured Trust” scene between Cal and Greez when Cal’s sleeping and Greez comes to him on the Mantis and discuss the relationship with Cere. To me, that was one of my favorites because the actors crushed it. It ended up taking on a new life of its own. But even in the beginning, there’s so much emotion packed into that moment and it was really important to their arcs, to all the character’s arcs, because we see the emotional side to Greez. They paid some prices already along the way. We see Greez kinda pulling Cal and Cere together. He’s the glue! He was always sorta the glue. But this is the one where he really comes together and it’s the glue to our heroes' relationships. That particular moment, for me anyway, is a turning point, sort of, in all of their arcs and it’s got some great flavor and great emotion. It hits the spot for where it needs to go in the story. What’s your favorite scene?!
Conor: Oooh, I don’t know! It’s a toss-up between the two Dathomir scenes, the “You are no Jedi!” scene and when Cal returns to Dathomir. To me at least, they’re Dagobah but 100 times better. You guys really took that foundation in Empire and just ran with it.
Matt: That’s great! Malicos, you like Malicos?
Conor: Oh, I freaking love Malicos. All the characters in the game are so rich and compelling. They really are and Cal is… Dathomir, Ilum, Dathomir is probably my favorite storytelling sequence in all of Star Wars. It’s just such a wonderful little part of his arc with him confronting his fear and realizing a lightsaber really isn’t what makes you a Jedi, which leads into the next question. How did you guys craft the Jedi philosophy centered around Cal and his lightsaber?
Matt: That’s good. Yeah, it was tricky. You’re making a Jedi game, so you gotta be careful with that. I always go back to the six movies that George made. He laid out six movies and some television. But six movies, it’s all there, and he expanded the world with the Prequels. I had those guys look at the Clone Wars series too and the rest of the team did a fantastic job, I mean, they just crushed it. So it’s a lot of philosophy. It’s a lot of this Jedi philosophy and then we threw in a tiny bit of Alan Watts for good measure to round out the edges, a little Zen Buddhism that supports our themes like letting go. So that helped tremendously sell that and we worked with the Story Team closely to make sure we got all the elements. There’s a ton of stuff I don’t know and those guys help with figuring out the mechanics/study of a lightsaber and we pepper that into this larger scope of the Jedi and their philosophy. You’re finding this and hopefully translating that into the player and we pushed a little bit too!
Conor: Yeah, it’s good! That was probably the most interesting aspect of his arc because it’s very opposite of what the Jedi Order of old [The PT] felt; in many cases, that lightsaber defined you and for Cal, it was in the manifestations of his worst fears in Jaro Tapal… it’s a very small moment, but I especially love when Travis Willingham [Jaro Tapal voice actor] puts an emphasis on “proves” in “You think that lightsaber proves you a Jedi?” It’s like, “do you think this singular object proves your entire worth?” and Cal’s answer is “No.” It’s so good.
Matt: It’s an incredible team, everyone that worked on that game, pros.
Conor: How did you and the team make the Force unique with the meditation points, Cal’s visual design, and “Trust only in the Force?” which- so good.
Matt: That’s a good question. It’s like, a lot of that goes to the team at Respawn and the designers and Aaron and Stig. I just tried to reinforce the theme wherever we could and we had some great people working on all those Force visions and the echoes and the environmental storytelling; the team they have there, all the writers doing the environmental storytelling are extremely talented people and just figuring out so much that goes into it. Every little look and easter egg and detail. Some of those visions, the psychometry, it was cool! I mean, I still get blown away watching it.
Conor: Thank you! I obviously have a ton of more questions, but we don’t have enough time for you to answer all of them. Matt, I really can’t thank you enough for taking time out of your day to answer some questions.
Matt: You’re welcome! Thanks for playing it! Thanks for being a fan!
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