The Andor official trailer dropped on August 1, and the angle that Andor has taken in its story-telling is one that developers of new Star Wars games should pay attention to. Fans have been waiting for narrative-focused Star Wars games in development to be completed since Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order came out in 2019, and the past three years have been interminable – the next slated for release is Jedi: Survivor, at some point in 2023.
There are a slew of Star Wars games (some as yet untitled) in development. Star Wars: Hunters will feature arena combat. An untitled FPS and a strategy game from Respawn Entertainment is in the works, along with Jedi: Survivor. A High-Republic Era game called Star Wars: Eclipse will likely take place on entirely new planets (and has been set back in development over five years). There’s also a KOTOR remake (which is delayed), and an open-world game from Ubisoft with an ensemble of characters. Then Skydance New Media is working on an action-adventure game that focuses on narrative, and is possibly set during the Rebel Alliance.
With so many new Star Wars games in development coinciding with the release of Andor, it is not inconceivable that these upcoming games will borrow, if not follow, the show’s narrative premises. Traditionally Star Wars games have focused on stories centered on Force-users – mosly the Jedi and the Sith – or have been related to space combat. In fact, some of the few Star Wars titles to offer non-lightsaber combat is the Battlefront series, FPS games in which the galaxy’s footsoldiers are playable characters. A few of the upcoming Star Wars games in development could take a page out of Andor’s playbook and present a non-Force-sensitive protagonist dealing with the broad, rippling geopolitical events caused by the high-and-mighty in their alabaster towers (or dark, austere dungeons).
Upcoming Star Wars Games Need To Follow The Narrative Example Of Andor
Since most Star Wars games focus either on lightsaber-inspired melee combat, or fast-paced space dogfights and missions, there is a rather obvious hole in available gaming content. Not all players prefer hack-and-slash, sorcery-type combat, or star-fighters. Instead, Star Wars games should branch out. First-person shooters, for one, have proved to be adaptable to a Star Wars story, so long as narrative isn’t sacrificed. A game that weaves political intrigue into a plot and presents a non-Force-sensitive protagonist who must adapt and respond to events and powers that are beyond them would accurately fit into the Star Wars universe as it’s used in games – and would be an amazing story, to boot.
There is so much more to the Star Wars story than Jedi and Sith; while those forces may steer galactic events, Star Wars games have largely neglected to cover the effects of those events on the population at large, such as Andor will seemingly showcase. There is a wealth of unexplored narrative in Star Wars, and games in development can (hopefully) begin to include those for Star Wars–starved players of all stripes.
