Cameron Monaghan Reveals Cal Kestis Will Be Pushed to Breaking Point in ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’
Cameron Monaghan has talked at length about some of the emotional challenges that Cal Kestis will face in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
In a recent interview with Game Informer, the actor spoke about where Cal is at the beginning of the story, the themes of both Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and the difficulties of creating a story that can stand on its own in an ongoing saga.
The Star Wars galaxy is, at this time, at an extremely dark point and the situation for a Jedi has never been worse than what it is for Cal, so he’s looking for any way to affect change to survive, to protect anything that he cares about and that’s becoming increasingly difficult, and I think Cal is at this point when he’s even questioning how he’s supposed to proceed, and what his next move should be.
And so, when an opportunity seemingly presents itself for him, he’s going to throw himself at it full force…that’s kind of what launches us into our story.
Cameron talked about the theme of the sequel in comparison to the original; it seems that while the first game was about finding a new family, Survivor looks at the challenges of keeping that family together when things change. It’s something he already touched on in a previous interview, but he goes into a bit more detail here:
Yeah, I think that a lot of the story of the first game was what happens when you lose your family, and how can you find a new one for yourself. With this story, we say “okay, you have a family, but what happens around you when the circumstances change? What happens when you have different opinions on how to deal with…those circumstances? What happens when you put strain on a family and on your relationships, what does this look like for these characters and interactions?” And of course, over the course of our story we find new characters, new interactions and we really continue to open up Cal’s relationships as well.
It seems that while Cal’s choices were fairly black and white in Fallen Order, the right path is going to be a lot less clear in Survivor.
There’s a bunch of new characters that I really like what they do to shift the…dynamic in the story, and in our first story, we had someone who was kind of a boy becoming a man. He doesn’t have a safety net, is what I guess I can say. A part of adulthood is, kind of, you have to live with the decisions that you make, and it’s challenging, and you can be affected by them, and they can haunt you.
We have a really interesting story with Cal where he’s faced with challenges that are, um, difficult and there’s…not necessarily any right answers, and it’s something I always really wanted to explore with the character. It’s a conversation we had immediately after the first game was, “how do we put this character in situations that are, um, challenging, and what are the ones that are gonna push him to the point where he might break? How do we get to that point, and what do we do from there, and…what is the story that’s gonna be most exciting, and where we can still find adventure but also find something that is deeper and darker and more intricate and complex?”
So yeah, I think we have a bunch of really big questions that we’re asking with this one.
Monaghan also spoke about the importance that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor be able to exist as a standalone story while also feeling satisfying to fans who know the wider lore. It seems Lucasfilm were particularly useful when it came to the latter.
It’s funny because it’s this dual-sided thing. In established lore, character, canon, all that stuff, and you’re so excited about it, and you love it, but also at the end of the day, [the new story] needs to be satisfying and be interesting regardless of [what came before]. And you wanna have them interact with each other, and you know, have an interplay, but also… It’s always been important with me, with our stories, that the drama, the stakes, the characters should be clear regardless of whether you have any understanding of anything outside of it.
And I want anybody who’s never watched a Star Wars movie, read a Star Wars story, anything like that, to be able to jump into this and play it and still be able to understand it. And then, if you do have more experience understanding, then you’re only gonna have a deeper appreciation for a lot of what’s going on here, and Lucasfilm were really generous and always adding input, explaining, and helping us kinda find our footing and where the story should be and where it should live.
But yeah, it’s always been really important to me to make sure that our story is satisfying on its own and, um, stands on its own two feet.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will release on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC on March 17, 2023.
Josh is a huge Star Wars fan, who has spent far too much time wondering if any Star Wars character could defeat Thanos with all the Infinity Stones.
