Cameron Monaghan on Cal’s “Morally Complex” Journey in ‘Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’
Despite a whole trailer with a ton of memorable moments, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor remains as mysterious as ever. Cameron Monaghan recently spoke with ComingSoon about the upcoming video game and what we can expect from Cal Kestis this time around.
2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order introduced us to the former Padawan who saw Order 66 take his master, Jaro Tapal. The bulk of the game saw Cal wrestle with what happened, dealing with the guilt he still harbored over his inability to save his master. Through many trials and tribulations, Cal is able to overcome his inner turmoil and defeat the Inquisitors that pursue him, surviving an encounter with Darth Vader along the way.
According to Monaghan, Cal’s journey as a character is far from over. Without giving anything away, he spoke about what the game’s subtitle “Survivor” means in regards to Cal:
“He is someone who lived through a genocide, a purging of people from his kind, and has been living in hiding for most of his life… To me, a survivor is someone who is able to persist in the face of extraordinary odds, and I think that that’s a lot of what our story is about. We see Cal challenged in ways that we haven’t seen him challenged before, and it brings him to moments that are more difficult than anything that his character has faced. Without giving anything away, I think that it leads to some very interesting questions for Cal, as well as just for this universe in general.”
The main macguffin of the original game, which took place five years after Revenge of the Sith, found Cal searching for a holocron containing information on a new generation of Jedi. Now, about another five years have passed when the story picks back up. Monaghan gave a bit more insight into the changes we will see in Cal:
“Over the course of this story, we see Cal really change in a lot of very interesting ways. That was a joy to be able to explore with this character. He is a really unique person in this world, and I think that that is something that gets communicated in the story in a way that I think is going to be really interesting and morally complex as well.”
The game has no official release date yet, but reports indicate an early 2023 release is quite possible. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will be available to play on PC and next-gen consoles. This means if you haven’t gotten lucky enough to purchase Playstation 5 or a Xbox Series X/S yet, time to get hunting ahead of the holidays.
Nate uses his love for Star Wars and movies in general as a way to cope with the pain of being a Minnesota sports fan. When he's not at the theater, you can usually find Nate reading a comic, listening to an audiobook, or playing a Mario video game for the 1,000th time.
