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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order packs a lot of story into its 15 hour campaign. From Jedi-hunting Inquisitors and space-faring gamblers with four arms to giant space bird things, it has a dense narrative that straddles a lot of Star Wars lore, and the occasional cameo. And while we’re only really one game deep into the franchise, it’s still well worth taking a little refresher on the story.
So whether you played the original back in 2019 and want a story recap, are keen to know where Jedi: Fallen Order slots into the canon timeline, or maybe you’re just jumping into Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, let’s break down the story so far. Be sure to read our Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review, and check out the video story recap for more details.
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Now Playing: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review – Fear Itself
Chapter 1
In Star Wars lore, time is marked by the Battle of Yavin, the climactic scene that resulted in the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: Episode 4: A New Hope. BBY stands for “Before the Battle of Yavin” and ABY stands for “After the Battle of Yavin.” Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order takes place in 14 BBY, which means it takes place at the height of the Empire, five years after Revenge of the Sith and the execution of Order 66–the galaxy-wide purge of the Jedi.
Fallen Order kicks off with young Jedi-in-hiding Cal Kestis on the scrapyard planet of Bracca. A former Padawan, Cal has successfully evaded the Empire and their Inquisitors–former Jedis turned Jedi hunters–until his friend Prauf nearly dies during an accident at work, and Cal has to use his Jedi force powers to save him. Unfortunately that selfless act alerts the Inquisitors.
And lo and behold, the Inquisitors’ Second and Ninth Sisters turn up moments later to claim their Jedi bounty. In order to save his work colleagues, Prauf gives himself up as the Jedi outcast, but when the Inquisitors see through his sacrifice, they promptly murder him, which leads to Cal blowing his cover. The young Jedi escapes Bracca by the skin of his teeth, but not without help from a pair of mysterious travelers, Cere Junda and Greez Dritus, who appear pretty much out of nowhere in their ship, the Mantis, and whisk Cal away to an old Jedi sanctuary on the planet of Bogano.
And it’s here where the plot of Jedi: Fallen Order really starts to take shape.
We learn that Cere was also once a Jedi, but she’s locked herself off from the Force for mysterious reasons. She needs Cal’s help to access an ancient Vault built by a race known as the Zeffo–a vault only accessible to those strong in the Force. Naturally, Cal is a little hesitant to take up the whims of a complete stranger, but after the day he’s had, he takes the mission. This turns out to be the best decision he’s ever made, as it leads him straight into the path of the most adorable droid in the galaxy, BD-1, who acts as his faithful companion from there on.
With BD in tow, the pair head off for the vault. There, BD unveils a holographic message from an old Jedi Master known as Eno Cordova, which states that he’s hidden a Jedi holocron with a list of force-sensitive children within the vault. The catch? Well, Cal needs to travel to three Zeffo tombs spread across the galaxy, because let’s not forget, this is a video game, and we need places to explore.
Chapter 2
From Bogano, the game branches out to several more worlds. The first is the Zeffo homeworld, and the second is Dathomir, which fans of the Clone Wars animated series will undoubtedly know as the home of the creepy Nightsisters, as well as the birthplace of one Darth Maul, which should give you some indication that it’s perhaps not the friendliest of places in the galaxy.
If you’re like me, you probably opted to visit Dathomir first to get that sweet double-bladed lightsaber, while dying a fair few times in the process at the hands of the Night Brothers. If that sounds like you, chances are you probably also met the Night Sister, Merrin, as well as a mysterious Wanderer, who claims to be searching for Zeffo ruins on the planet. Don’t forget this creepy lad, as he’ll be cropping up again later on.
As Dathomir presents nothing but dead ends at this stage, the Mantis crew’s next port of call is the windswept wastes of Zeffo, where it turns out the Empire have been busy with an aborted mining project known as Project Auger. They’re still knocking about in significant numbers, but that doesn’t stop Cal and BD from venturing deep into the bowels of the planet to discover one of the Zeffo tombs Cordova has been banging on about. In this Diet Zelda dungeon, Cal relearns his Force Push ability, while BD discovers another holographic message from Cordova, which points them in the direction of the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk and their chieftain, Tarrful, who was a close friend of Cordova’s.
Chapter 3
Landing on Kashyyyk is something of a problem, as the Mantis crew find themselves in the middle of a raging battle between the Empire, the Wookiees, and a group of freedom fighters, led by grizzled war veteran Saw Gerrera, seen here nearly 15 years before his fateful part in the theft of the Death Star plans in Rogue One.
Unable to land, Cal and BD take a plunge into the waters of Kashyyyk and hijack their way onto an AT-AT in an awesome sequence that’s equal parts Uncharted and Shadow of the Colossus. After taking out an entire platoon of Stormtroopers, Cal and the Mantis team rendezvous with Saw and his insurgents, who are in the middle of relinquishing a sap refinery from Empire control. Cal agrees to help in the hopes of finding the whereabouts of Tarrful, who is nowhere to be found once they take the refinery back and free the enslaved wookiees. Just as Cal’s about to venture deeper into the rainforests of Kashyyyk, Cere urgently drags him back to the Mantis after receiving word that the Empire are close to discovering another tomb back on Zeffo.
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The crew rush back to Zeffo to beat the Empire to the punch, but it’s a trap. While it’s true that the Empire have discovered a second Zeffo tomb, the message Cere received was a ruse laid by the Second Sister, who ambushes Cal and–twist!–reveals herself to be Cere’s former Jedi Padawan, Trilla. After a fierce battle in which Cal is completely out of his depth, he manages to escape only through the timely intervention of BD-1. Escaping into the second Zeffo tomb, Cal and BD start scouring the ancient ruins for any clues left behind by Cordova. On their jolly old way, they’re ambushed by Trilla for a second time.
They manage to escape while Cal relearns another Jedi technique, Force Pull, and BD discovers another encrypted log from Eno Cordova, which explains that the key to the Bogano Vault is something known as the Zeffo Astrium. But on their way off-world, the pair run into a spot of bother in the form of a bounty hunter, who knocks Cal out cold.
Chapter 4
Cal wakes up in an unknown jail in an unknown place, even in an unknown system. Turns out he’s in the lair of the infamous Haxion Brood–a cartel of mobsters who kidnapped Cal to get to the Mantis’ pilot, Greez, who’s racked up a pretty penny of debt in his time.
He takes out a veritable menagerie of beasts laid on for him by the Haxion Brood in a Gladiator-like colosseum. This batch of bloodthirsty entertainment is put on hold when the Mantis crash lands right into the middle of the arena to rescue Cal. Back aboard the Mantis, Cal lays into Cere about, well, everything, but their squabble is cut short by a transmission from Kashyyyk with the supposed location of Tarrful. Landing again on the Wookiee homeworld, Cal and BD venture their way through Kashyyyk’s Shadowlands to the last known location of the Wookiee Chieftain, where they finally catch up with him. He immediately sends them on their way to the Origin Tree–basically a big sacred evergreen for the Wookiees, where they encounter the mystical Shyyyo Bird. After a tussle between the Shyyyo bird and the Ninth Sister’s ship, Cal and BD nurse the giant bird back to health, and for their troubles, they get a lift right to the top of the tree.
At the top, they discover that Cordova had found an Astrium years before, and that there might just be another one in a Zeffo tomb back on Dathomir. But before they can hightail it back, the Ninth Sister ambushes the pair and kicks off another boss battle. Cal, now with a little experience fighting Inquisitors under his belt, manages to dispatch the Ninth Sister by force pushing her right off the top of the tree. And with that, the pair hitch a lift with the Shyyyo bird back to the Mantis and their next destination of Dathomir.
Chapter 5
En route to the Zeffo temple, Cal and BD are not only ambushed by the Night Brothers (again), but by Merrin, who unleashes a horde of undead Night Sisters on the unwitting pair, before the coup de grace in the form of the dreaded Gorgara–a giant winged bat-dragon thing that hunts the pair through the skies of Dathomir. Regardless of the perils of this scenic detour, the pair finally make it to the Zeffo temple, where Cal encounters a dark Force vision of his old Jedi Master, Jaro Tapal, who overpowers his former apprentice and destroys the young Jedi’s lightsaber in the process.
As soon as he’s able to escape the Zeffo temple, Cal bumps back into the creepy wanderer from earlier, who reveals himself to be Taron Malicos, a former Jedi who has now become something of a wrongun by studying the dark side of the Force. Before he can recruit Cal into his nefarious plans, he’s interrupted by Merrin, who raises hell in her attempts to destroy them both. Cal, without a lightsaber to defend himself, escapes back to the Mantis through sheer luck. And having been through an emotional and physical rollercoaster, he immediately opens up to Cere about his traumatic experience of Order 66, which he also escaped by the skin of his teeth. His former master, Jaro Tapal, wasn’t as lucky it turns out, and Cal has blamed himself for his death ever since. With his lightsaber in tatters, Cere gifts Cal her old hilt, and charts a course for the planet of Ilum, which young Jedi Padawans used to visit to find Kyber crystals for their first lightsabers.
After landing on the ice planet, Cal and BD venture deep into a set of caves that lead out from an ancient Jedi temple. With a Kyber crystal calling out to him, Cal makes his way towards it only for the ice beneath him to shatter, throwing him into an icy pool. He’s saved by the ever-reliable BD–who’s tallied up a fair few rescues of Cal by this point–but the Kyber crystal isn’t so lucky, splitting into 2 pieces. Cal, armed with both his old master’s lightsaber and Cere’s, combines them both with the 2 crystal pieces to create a Frankenstein’s Monster of a weapon, that can be single-bladed, double-bladed, and dual-wielded.
With a flashy new weapon and a newfound sense of purpose, Cal journeys back to Dathomir to face Evil Jaro Tapal once again. After defeating Jaro, Cal and BD enter the Zeffo temple and encounter Merrin once again, who seems a little bit more receptive to talking than before. The pair bond around the morbid topic that they’ve both survived massacres of their respective people–Cal with the Jedi during Order 66, and Merrin with General Grievous’ slaughter of the Night Sisters back during the Clone Wars. This, combined with the fact that Cal disavows Taron Malicos, sees Merrin side with the young Jedi and become a powerful ally for the Mantis crew, and she makes this support known with her part in dispatching Taron in battle moments later. Cal and Merrin venture forth into the temple to secure the Astrium, and with that in the bag, the Mantis crew set sail for Bogano and the Zeffo Vault.
Chapter 6
Back at the Vault, Cal uses the Astrium to secure the Jedi Holocron, but is immediately thrust into a vision of the Empire’s purge of Jedi younglings. Snapping out of the vision, Cal comes face to face with Trilla once again, and this time he’s able to overpower her. But in the process of nabbing her lightsaber, Cal is swept up into yet another vision, this time spurred on by the darkness in Trilla’s weapon. This vision is nearly as brutal as the last, detailing Trilla’s capture and torture at the hands of the Empire, as well as her Master, Cere’s, escape. While Cal is on his Jedi mind trip, Trilla escapes with the Holocron back to the Inquisitors’ HQ, the Fortress Inquisitorius, which is basically a giant space castle in the middle of a vast ocean. It’s not a cheery place.
Cal comes to and hightails it back to the crew, and the newly formed quintet decide to chase after the Holocron. Using some nifty space magic, courtesy of bonafide space witch Merrin, they’re able to slip by the brace of Star Destroyers protecting the Inquisitors’ base, and get down to the planet. Cal and Cere infiltrate the base, confront Trilla, and take the Holocron back by force.
But suddenly Darth Vader appears and joins the fight. He promptly murders Trilla in cold blood before Force-flinging Cere to her presumed death. Cal, the cocky fool that he is, puts up a wholehearted fight, before realising maybe he’s a little out of his depth. He makes a run for it, escaping Vader’s attacks by the barest of all margins, and is finally rescued by Cere, who uses the Force for the first time in forever to stall Vader’s attacks. Cal repays the favor by attempting to flood Vader at the bottom of the Inquisitors’ base of operations. While Vader’s holding back the flood, Cal and Cere escape with help from Merrin. And finally, back aboard the Mantis with the Jedi Holocron secure in their possession, Cal makes the executive decision to destroy it, and the knowledge of the whereabouts of the galaxy’s Force-sensitive children.
Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars
That’s not all, because a tie-in novel, Battle Scars, takes place between Fallen Order and Survivor. The book largely chronicles the misadventures of the Mantis crew in their attempts to secure a cloaking device known as the Shroud as well as its creator from Imperial control. It’s a fun little read that explains some of the visual details that will be seen in Survivor–notably Cal’s facial scar and the backstory as to why Greez now has a robotic arm.
