You know, I sort of hate character customisation? Not indiscriminately – it’s fine in an RPG where you’re making some random person who’s not meant to be anyone – but it really annoys me in the context of, like, here’s this one specific guy, and you can make him look however you want. This is such an undigested thought – we’re going to be a little less formal today, okay? I’m playing Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (2023), the sequel to the 2019 game Jedi: Fallen Order. These are classic Star Wars lightsaber games, in the vein of the Kyle Katarn Jedi Knight series from the late 90s and early 2000s, updated with contemporary gameplay influences – imagine if Jedi Knight knew about Dark Souls. In these games, you control Cal Kestis, a Jedi refugee on the run in the early days of the Empire. You explore a bunch of planets that slowly unlock additional areas, Metroidvania style, and discover new lightsaber styles, and at the end of the first game Darth Vader has a cameo.

Because it’s a Metroidvania, there are obviously a bunch of secrets and hidden collectibles – things like plants that you can grow in your ship, or on top of the local cantina, and there’s a Scottish lobster in the second game who collects fish and tells these long-winded sailor stories – collectibles, whatever. You can also unlock a bunch of different components for your lightsaber, changing the appearance and colour in quite granular detail (which you absolutely will not notice once you start swinging), and you can change Cal’s outfit. In the first game, I think you could change his poncho – he had a poncho for wet weather and you could collect it in different colours. The second game lets you change everything. There are different styles for his hair, his beard, his pants, shirt and jacket (both different styles and a range of colours within each style) – and I hate it. I don’t want to pick what he looks like. I want the developers to tell me what he looks like. I want to play a game with a strong artistic vision, and I want that vision to extend to the appearance of their main character.

Obviously there are broader contexts where character customisation is not a big deal – like I said, if you’re playing Skyrim or Dark Souls or something where the main character is, essentially, some nobody, it’s fine. Those games allow you to take on and play the role of a character that you develop. You decide if you want to be good or evil. You decide if you want a really weird nose. That’s the role-play element of the RPG: you create and play out a character who behaves in a way that you find interesting. It’s appropriate for you to have a level of control over that character’s design. But Cal Kestis, the Jedi who hid as a scrapper on Bracca – you’re telling me that guy doesn’t have any opinions about how he’d like to dress? Stupid. Hate it. Yeah, he’s running from the Empire, but in a box halfway up a mountain there’s a new hairstyle, and he’ll definitely pause to try that out.

There’s just a level of tension here between Star Wars Jedi: Survivor as thoughtful narrative experience and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor as purveyor of Fortnite skins. I honestly think the hair has sort of tipped the balance. I don’t want the option to play a Jedi with a mullet and a skeezy moustache – or rather, if I’m playing that game, that character design needs to be incorporated into the the narrative. I want it to be intentional. Luke Skywalker smokes a durry. Tell me that story.

What we end up with instead is a game where the man-bun, the mullet, and the buzz cut are all treated as interchangeable aesthetic choices. They’re design choices that all say the same – that say nothing – about the underlying character. It feels like the developers have given up a key creative tool. I’d prefer one deliberate artistic choice over a suite of ~funky options~. Also – can I just say – all the hairstyles make him look like the same guy who’s just glued on a fake beard? I hate it? If I was really going to get up on a soapbox, I’d say it’s part of a trend of hollowing out the artistic intent of a game or story in favour of cheap, jingly customisation. It feels stupid. I don’t want to customise his hair. I want an art team that picks up their tools and uses the principles of character design to say something about who this guy is and what he’s thinking. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game full of options where none of them mean anything. It’s stupid and I hate it.