Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Part I is ILMxLAB’s latest Star Wars VR game for the Oculus Quest, which trades in lightsabers, Force powers, and Mustafar of the Vader Immortal series with blasters, smugglers, and Batuu wilds. Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Part 1 is a far more game-like experience, with various objectives, side-quests, and mini-games, which has its own benefits and drawbacks in the opening episode of the latest series.
Playing as a nameless/faceless droid repair technician working for Mubo (Matthew Wood), the owner of Black Spire’s Droid Depot (a location you can visit at Galaxy’s Edge, of course), their ship is attacked by a cell of the Guavian Death Gang led by Quarren Tara Rashin (Debra Wilson), and they have to dump the cargo in the wilds of Batuu before abandoning the ship. Landing on Batuu and using Seezelslak’s Cantina as a base of operations, Mubo recruits them to recover the dropped goods before Rashin and her gang do. Much of Part I is spent out in the Wilds, battling various creatures and the Guavian Death Gang, as players recover the lost goods, find C-3PO (Anthony Daniels, of course!), and join the droid on an adventure to find R2-D2, which brings into Rashin’s sights. Back at the Cantina, Seezelslak, played by Bobby Moynihan (Star Wars Resistance), requests items in the wilds to make exotic drinks, leading him to tell stories players get to jump into, with Part I’s tale featuring Jedi in The High Republic era, while the Droid Depot is where players turn in collectables and repair parts to buy supplies for the next mission. Between the main tale and the side-story, Tales Part 1 is not a terribly long experience, 3-4 hours tops if you really want to collect everything and finish all the side-objectives or like to explore the rather empty Batuu Wilds, but at times it feels too long despite its brevity, a strange dichotomy due to its sometimes clumsy gunplay and basic AI. By Part I’s end, despite some of my misgivings, I was curious about playing more and seeing what else they could do with this era/story.
Playing via the Oculus Quest 2 (thanks again to my wife for the gift!), which is a standalone VR headset, means I’m not tethered to a computer and free to roam (within a space the system has you carve out of your playing area beforehand), which helped add to the illusion of being in a galaxy far, far away. The two controllers act as the technician’s hands, with the UI (user interface) represented by the technician’s waist/chest, so reaching for guns with the controllers, the game’s handy All-Kit tool, and the storage pouch are all right in front of players. I found this to be both intuitive but clumsy in execution/playing, as I’d often find myself picking up the wrong item on my waist, while having to pull out the pouch and grab health kits in the middle of a fire-fight led to several deaths or me grabbing the wrong item, or when picking up items on the ground the game would pick stuff from my waist instead or vice versa. I was playing Half-Life: Alyx via my laptop and the Quest hooked up to it at the same time as this game and the controls and UI of the characters’ hands in Alyx was a far more effective, less cumbersome approach, so this didn’t help my feelings with the gameplay. Once the guns are in your hands, it’s fun, unless you dual-wield, as ‘reloading’ often needs two hands, but aiming down the sights or popping around cover to take out Guavian Death Gang members was often a blast and moving around to get a better hiding spot or angle on an entrenched Guavian felt rewarding. Unfortunately, the AI for the enemies is either a swarm or hide mentality, but it’s often predictable and easy to wait for them to pop out their heads and shoot them or throw a grenade over to them; a few different enemies types, like a Trandoshan, keep you on your toes, but deaths happen more with struggles grabbing the right weapon/take out a bacta spray or movement errors than the bad guys. I chose to use the comfortable, standard VR movement scheme, where you throw a marker out to where you’d like to move to next, as I tried using the control sticks to move freely and I got queasy; otherwise, the game never made me feel queasy. Play with what makes you most comfortable, as they have several options and sliders to adjust.
Compared to Vader Immortal, Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge is a far more traditional game-like experience, with the various side objectives, minigames, collectibles, and its slightly more open levels. Minigames with VR in mind range from picking up trash in Seezelslak’s cantina, playing space darts (which was oddly addicting), or using the All-Kit to open storage chests full of supplies out in the wild, which were fun here and there and then got rote by 15th one you open with the blowtorch. The Wilds, where you track down the shipments you jettisoned in the opening, have some varied terrain and verticality (you have a jetpack that lets you hover above the ground for a few seconds), with maps generally being big enough to make you want to explore, but the fact they are empty besides the enemies makes areas often feel too large, especially since you have to “walk” through them yourself instead of a digital avatar. Finding collectibles (and turning them in) is neat, little R2 or BB units hiding around the world, and makes you want to look around a map, as does scanning items and enemies to add to your databank, but all the dead-ends sort of dampens the experience. I did enjoy trying to get to places not necessarily traveled to or meant for players to be, giving me an advantage in a fight or two, but your mileage may vary on how much time you want to spend messing around a map. I’m hoping the upcoming expansions add a little more for players to experience and play around with, as once the main and side story are over, it feels like there’s nothing left to do.
Debra Wilson recently played Cere Junda in Jedi: Fallen Order with a stellar, reserved performance and I loved how she went in the opposite direction with Tara Rashin, over-the-top and snarling at the unnamed technician. However, it felt like her parts were too minimal and the final boss battle with her, on a modified AT-RT, was okay, but then again I was honestly spooked by the walker coming my way in VR, so I hid in a storage crate and shot at her, though it wasn’t very clear I was making much progress until Artoo gets involved and knocks her off the map, ending the encounter. I didn’t even really hear what Threepio and Artoo were talking about until I heard some explosions and she was gone and only through an error of mine did I die in that moment, so the second time through I was able to figure out what was going on. There were E-Web gun emplacements I could’ve jetpacked to, but I saw them after the battle was over. Maybe I’ll be more brave next time or maybe I’ll be better at moving around, as I often hit a stick to turn and instead moved to a new space, causing avoidable deaths. Otherwise, getting to hang out with Threepio makes up for some of the empty feeling of the game, as do infrequent messages from Mubo over your wrist-comm, and I enjoyed the main story because of those moments, but I often felt like the fight through all the Guavians went on too long, making me wish it was over sooner. Hopefully the expansions feel heftier with their story.
Seezelslak’s tale “Temple of Darkness” sees you play as Ady Sun’Zee (Ellie Araiza), a Jedi Padawan during the time of The High Republic as she reckons with a dangerous artifact within Batuu’s Temple (she even has her own Characters of the High Republic video already!). The High Republic, which we have a page dedicated to for our reviews, latest news, and upcoming release list, is set some 200 years before the prequels, and has been rather exceptional so far during its first Phase. With “Temple of Darkness,” players of Vaders Immortal will feel at home with the lightsaber and Force gameplay, but I wonder how players who haven’t experienced those will do with the controls as there isn’t much of a tutorial before you’re in the thick of a larger battle with creepy creatures and droid temple guards. “Darkness” focuses more on a psychological battle than physical, even though you often are swinging your sword around amidst Ady’s more conflicted moments, and the disconnect didn’t quite help the story land for me the first time through. A second time, knowing the game was more about her psychological journey helped my enjoyment of the tale, even though you’re at the game’s whims for how/when it ends. Yoda (Frank Oz) joins Ady for part of the tale, and while Threepio and Artoo were neat to see up close in VR (especially the first time with Artoo), being next to Yoda was probably my favorite character meet-and-greet in VR yet, as his diminutive stature is far more noticeable, so his ability to pull off impressive feats is even more legendary; now I understand even more why Luke would’ve dismissed him upon first meeting him on Dagobah. If the main story is short, this is bite-sized, and some length would also help “Darkness” let its main characters’ struggle envelope the player instead of feeling disconnected from everything that happens, but at least there’s a promise we’ll see Ady in upcoming The High Republic stories so maybe she’ll get more of her due there!
Here are some videos of me playing the game, starting with getting addicted to the space darts, which I later learned weren’t as hard if you didn’t “throw” the dart, but rather pointed and let go…they are self-propelled after all!
This one is very early in the game and it’s me getting used to the game/controls. At this point, I hadn’t figured out you didn’t need to bend down to pick items up, which led to some frustrations, but once I realized if you hover your hand over and the circle appears around it, you can “grab” it, almost like you have the Force. I was also messing around with free movement, mainly for the video’s sake. Yes, I’ll blame that on dying…
And lastly, here’s a look at the “Temple of Darkness” and the atmosphere it’s going for (and yes, it’s a blast to ignite the saber/throw it just for the fun it):
Here are a few other things:
- Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Part II, now named Last Call, launches sometime Fall 2021, adding two new tales and a meeting with Dok-Ondar, the proprietor of the Den of Antiquities you can see at the Galaxy’s Edge parks, whose mission for the player puts them on a collision course with two opposing treasure hunting factions; this seems to suggest Rashin is probably dead, but that’ll remain to be seen. They also promised “…systems are going to get better, feel is going to get better…” so hopefully some of the awkwardness I talked about earlier will be alleviated for the next part and maybe retroactively can be fixed for Part I. And unfortunately, it’s the final expansion for the game.
- I liked the various Marksman-series remotes you can have as allies, from the traditional one Luke and Rey trained with to shield and bomb variants, as they were very helpful for picking out enemies or taking them out instead of me traveling all over the map to find them.
- There’s a great series of interviews with the three different composers involved with Tales, with each interview containing a track from the composers’ score: Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, God of War {2018}) talks about working on the main adventure; Danny Piccione discusses the creation of unique and new cantina music; and Joseph Trapanese (Tron: Legacy, Straight Outta Compton) shares his excitement for creating a musical score for The High Republic era. I really liked Trapanese’s “Age of Jedi” piece, though overall the music in the game is great, with McCreary building a sense of exploration, while Piccione’s cantina music was almost dance-worthy (if I wanted my wife to film me and share it to the world, and no one is ready for that).
Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge – Part I plays more like a traditional game though in VR, with side-quests and collectibles, and while it’s shooting and VR controls are intuitive, they can be clumsy, but overall Part I makes for an enjoyable, yet clunky and short Star Wars experience.
+ Gamification and over all VR specific feel
+ Main tale and side tale offer variety
+ Intuitive controls…
– …that have a few hiccups
– It’s short but feels too long at times
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website @MynockManor.