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Scared, You Will Be—‘Jedi: Fallen Order’ Is The Darkest Chapter In The ‘Star Wars’ Universe, Composers Say

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By the end of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, the Jedi were all but extinct after Emperor Palpatine executed Order 66. Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi were the last of a dying breed—living symbols of the galaxy’s hope—but they weren’t the only ones. Thanks to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order from EA, fans will get to meet another member of the Jedi Order who survived the Emperor’s deadly purge.

Set five years after the tragic events of Episode III, Fallen Order centers on Cal Kestis (portrayed by Gotham’s Cameron Monaghan), a young Padawan on the run from the Empire with his trusty droid buddy,  BD-1. That may sound like the set-up for a light-hearted road trippin’ comedy across the galaxy, but don’t be fooled because the game’s plot unfolds during one of the bleakest times in the franchise’s history.

“This is as dark as Star Wars gets,” Gordy Haab, one of the game’s composers, told me during a phone interview.

Haab is a veteran of both EA and the galaxy far, far away. Over the years, he has composed the scores for titles such as Star Wars: The Old Republic - Knights of the Fallen Empire, Battlefront I, and Battlefront II.

For Jedi: Fallen Order, Gordy was joined by Stephen Barton, a newcomer to Star Wars games, but an alum of the music departments for Titanfall and the 12 Monkeys TV show.

“It’s a point where it’s not really a battle against the Empire—they’re just the Empire. They’ve taken over and being a Jedi is an incredibly bad idea,” Barton said during the aforementioned call. “I think I was trying to see how we could push the envelope with [the score] in terms of expectation and how we could really kind of get over to that point that obviously this is a new tale—almost in a time where the optimism of the later trilogy, we’re not there yet. This is the deepest, darkest time of the galaxy.”

Under the fearless leadership of music supervisor Nick Laviers, Gordy and Stephen tapped into the rich sonic history of the Star Wars universe to come up with a sound that felt familiar, but also completely fresh.

“The John Williams element has to be there, at least for the audience to hold onto—to remind them that they're in the Star Wars canon and the Star Wars universe,” Haab explained. “If you divert too far from that, you’re gonna lose people. Our goal was to see how far we could stretch and stray from that sound while still staying within the Star Wars universe. By doing that, we ended up creating something that is relatively new ... Some of the music actually borders on gothic horror in some places and certainly dark, emotionally speaking. John Williams touched on it in some of the films, but I think this kind of lives there … The foundation of it is very much a dark score.”

According to Barton, the process began with an intense examination Williams’ influences rather than trying to simply emulate the legendary composer.

“[We were looking at] those things that were precursors to what John Williams was doing,” Stephen said. “Taking those and imagining, ‘Well, what if the first Star Wars trilogy had been incredibly dark story?’ But you want it to come from the same starting point, [and ask] ‘Where would you end up? What would John do?’ As opposed to ‘What would John write for another Star Wars project?’ And taking that philosophy to its end point. I think that was a lot of fun because it takes you to different places. It comes from the same starting point, but it [still] feels like it’s cut from the same cloth.”

Haab, who listened to a lot of established Star Wars music for the Battlefront series, purposefully avoided it for this project.

“I didn’t want it to influence me too much and by doing that, I think I was able to divert away from that. Having written in that style so much, that stuff fell into the music naturally, rather than being forced in. I think that was the recipe for getting something unique that still lived in that world,” he continued.

If you’re thinking that Fallen Order’s score won’t be able to match the sweeping nature of William’s own Star Wars compositions, think again. The music for the game was recorded using a 100+ person orchestra and a 120+ person choir. The result, Barton said, was “cohesive and cinematic.”

As expected, writing Cal’s theme proved to be the biggest challenge of the entire game because he has to go from zero to hero over the course of the story.

“When we meet him as a character, the Jedi are in hiding, so actually as a character, he’s trying to not be anything remarkable whatsoever,” Stephen said. “It’s one of those ones where the very first time you meet him in the game, was one of the trickiest parts and one was one of the sticking points where we tried lots of different things because fundamentally, you’re trying to hint at something to come, but in the story where you’re at, it’s like he’s nobody. If you have the music suddenly saying, ‘Hey, this guy is gonna be the hero of the story,’ it kind of plays against [you]. It’s ahead of the picture, it’s ahead of what’s going on.”

“It certainly wasn’t an easy process, even to come up with a theme for Cal because I’d say we each wrote maybe 5-10 different versions of a theme for Cal and then ultimately, between those, [we] settled on one,” added Gordy. “It needed to be heroic, but understated because you don’t want to come right out of the gate with a big fanfare. This character’s in hiding, so we’re trying to not be heroic, but subtly hint at the idea that this is the hero of the story, so it’s a unique challenge.”

While Fallen Order tells a wholly new story, it does connect to films in the franchise like Rogue One, thanks to the appearance of Forrest Whitaker’s rebel leader, Saw Gerrera. Even with that bit of connective tissue to the rest of the mythology, the game is unique from anything else that’s come before due to its re-contextualization of Star Wars mysticism.

“For me, it adds a very personal touch to what a Jedi is,” admitted Haab. “Growing up with these films and growing up with the stories, the idea of Jedi was this grander-than-life thing and now here we are watching this one individual that has this thing and in a way, it’s something he probably doesn’t want—at least not in this time period. You get to see this very intimate take on it and it kind of sheds a new light on what it really means to be a Jedi ... It sort of flips the whole thing upside down on its head.”

“It’s able to start from a dark place because we’ve earned it and therefore, it’s able to have a really meaningful redemption story and a really meaningful approach to saying, ‘Here’s a new character who’s got this curse of being a Jedi and how do we go from that to him fighting back?’ It’s got a fantastic sort of emotional drive to it. That, for me, brings it squarely back into what everyone loved the first two movies, especially,” concluded Barton.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order goes on sale this Friday, Nov. 15.

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