A former employee of Respawn Entertainment revealed yesterday (10) that the development team of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order had other plans for the main character of the adventure.
The information was revealed by Nora Shramek, a lighting artist who worked on the project. In a series of publications on Twitter, she commented on how her team wanted to have a black or female protagonist. The idea, however, was met with resistance.
“When I worked on SW:JFO a LOT of devs wanted and advocated that the protagonist should be black and/or a woman“, said Shwamek on the social network. According to her, the “reasons” for this not happening would have been the fact that the game already had two black characters and the most recent film trilogy was already starring Rey, a woman.
When I worked on SW:JFO a LOT of devs wanted & advocated 4 the main character 2b black &/or a woman. ‘Reasons’ 4 NO: We already have 2 black people in the game. Rey is a woman & we can’t do that to’ guess what the demographic of the people making those decisions looked like?
— NoraNevaBoreYa ?????? (@NoraShramek) May 10, 2022
Shramek doesn’t give precise information about who would be the parties involved in making the decision about the character, so we don’t know who was for and who was against the idea of having a character. Cal Kestis of another gender or ethnicity. Ultimately, however, the role ended up being played by actor Cameron Monaghan.
The artist also cited an episode in which another unidentified employee would have said that the black characters in the game “need to have the most lustrous skin because black people have the oiliest skin”. On that occasion, when asked about the topic, she would have asked her colleague “what is your problem?”
The worst thing I heard was when someone (not gonna give any info here) said ‘I think all the black people need to have more glossy skin because black people have more oily skin than other people’ dead shock on everyone’s face. Looks at me. ‘Right Nora?’ Me ‘WTF is wrong w/u?’
— NoraNevaBoreYa ?????? (@NoraShramek) May 10, 2022
Later, in another string of tweets, Shramek said that most of the Jedi: Fallen Order development team were amazing and clarified that decisions about the protagonist were not made by “evil EA or overly controlling Lucasfilm/Disney”. The entire process, according to the artist, would have taken place internally between the devs themselves.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was released in 2019 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC and a sequel to the game could be on the way.
