Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Was Mainly Created With Devs Working From Home, And Faster Than Other Big Games

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor director Stig Asmussen has revealed how the team at Respawn was able to develop the upcoming sequel so soon after the first game was released.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Asmussen discussed the process of making the sequel to the 2019 game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in such a short amount of time when compared to the average time it takes to develop a AAA title. He explained that it was easier to plan out a schedule for the second game because they were not creating an entirely new type of game, saying, "If anything, it’s a testament to the team. And, to be fair, it was three-and-a-half years."

The director shared that the team was already planning Survivor when Fallen Order was released in November of 2019, but after the pandemic hit, they had to adapt to working from home. Asmussen added that he thinks they were "somewhat fortunate" because during that time they were "really early in production," adding "The lion’s share of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has been working remotely."

Asmussen went on to say that the team developed chemistry through their new way of working, using Zoom as a way to communicate and even holding weekly "Jedi conversation" discussions where they were allowed to ask questions and raise their concerns. He added that they were able to act quickly and cut certain features from the game when necessary as well, despite their situation.

"We want to be ambitious but we don’t want to get in a position where we’re kind of setting ourselves up to not hit all our marks," he said. "Our philosophy is: 'It’s OK to fail, but fail fast, fail early.'"

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor launches on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on April 28. In our Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review, Jordan Ramée said the game "improves upon its predecessor's gameplay and storytelling to deliver an engrossing story of a Jedi grappling with morality."