Following the official reveal at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year, the first gameplay trailer for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – the next Star Wars adventure from EA and Respawn Entertainment – aired during The Game Awards, starring Jedi Cal Kestis in the main role .
The trailer showed off some of the older Cal’s new abilities, including a grappling hook for improved movement and a new fighting stance with dual lightsabers for an extra edge. Multiple friends and foes also appear in the two-minute trailer, including the returning Cere Junda and a new friend in Bode Acuna.
To find out more about Cal Kestis’ return, we had the opportunity to speak with the game’s protagonist, Cameron Monaghan. of the last game have shaped Cal’s personality.
We also talked about the differences between motion capture and performance capture, specifically the focus of each method, and the opportunity for Cal to jump from the game world to a different type of Star Wars project.
This interview has been transcribed from a video interview and edited for clarity.
GameSpot: When you were the first Cal five years ago, did you take any influence from characters you played on shows like Shameless or Gotham and apply it to Cal, even if the two characters weren’t a perfect fit?
Cameron Monaghan: I don’t think I necessarily took parts from previous characters and put them in Cal, but I’d rather say it’s the other way around. When you try to find a character, you take the whole of your character and the whole of yourself, and try to find the intersection of the Venn diagram. You try to maximize the parts of yourself that are in the character and start minimizing the parts of yourself that you think are outside the behavior of what you think that character should be.
All characters should be able to be formed from an internal point of view, right? I think if you work from the inside that character will always seem sincere and will always come from a grounded place. It’s only when you start trying to work from an outside perspective and go inward that you start to lose your base and things can get pretty strange pretty quickly.
What I’d say is there are parts of myself that I’ve found in Cal – parts that I may have explored in other characters as well – but how those manifest will be different from every performance of every other character you do.
Likewise, this game is now five years ahead in the timeline, so Cal is older, more experienced, and a little wiser. Is there a difference in your approach to playing him now compared to the original game, or do you approach the character from the same angle?
First of all, many of us get older, but we don’t necessarily get wiser (laughs), so you assume he’s getting wiser. But I do think Cal has matured as a character in many ways. His decision-making has mainly changed because of his situation. It’s a darker time in the universe than ever for Cal, and so he must make decisions that are harder than anything he’s had to do so far. Therefore, we see someone whose perspective and worldview has shifted because of the world around them.
I think you’d be pretty wary and wary of certain situations you find yourself in if you were him. I don’t think Cal is a fool, rather I think he’s lost a lot of his naivete over the years. We see a character who doesn’t always take the best of everyone, and it’s not because he’s cynical, but he’s trying to protect the things he really cares about. That doesn’t necessarily change how I approach the performance, but it does indicate how the performance will unfold from one moment to the next.
You should always have a mindset of “what did your character immediately deal with”, “what current situation are they in”, and “what do they want?” When you live truthfully within those means, there are usually only a few choices that feel “right” overnight. So the most important thing you can do as an artist – I don’t see why this becomes a masterclass, sorry (laughs) – is to be there. If you are aware of what your other artists are giving you, and what the rules are trying to tell you, you can discover something new literally every time within these circumstances.
I was lucky enough to work with a talented group of artists and writers, and we were able to create something that hopefully people will enjoy. You’re always trying to find that lightning in a bottle feeling where one shot is like “oh, that’s him,” and I think we’ve had it quite a few times here. I can’t wait for people to see it, there are some pretty incredible moments in this one and hopefully people will agree.
When it comes to performing for video games, the medium has grown from just voice acting to full motion capture with its actors. Do you feel that the motion capture part of the performance allows you to be more authentic to the character you want to play, rather than just providing your voice?
Absolute! It is interesting; I didn’t know much about this, and I suspect people still don’t, but today a lot of what we refer to in movies like Avatar is considered performance capture. The difference between motion capture and performance capture is that the main primary focus is on capturing the idiosyncrasies of a face, body language, these little micro moments in a performance. Motion capture is often things that you capture with a stuntman, a guy who comes in and does a really cool somersault out of something like that, where you don’t necessarily care about the very small movements or emotions of the act.
With performance capture, the technology has gotten so good that it is capable of capturing the tiniest little changes in motion. One component that has come a long way in leaps and bounds, even since the last game, is eye tracking. Eyes are, of course, the window to the soul, and the vast majority of what you do as an actor is played with your eyes.
The fact that we can get a 1:1 performance, where you can give something subtle that doesn’t need to be amplified, and put that into the story means that the audience, who are smart and can sense when something is natural and not pushed or increased, because that savvy audience is going to see those kinds of performances come out.
A good recent example of that is Christopher Judge in the God of War games, where so much is said by a simple look or change in body language, and I’m really excited as technology continues to evolve. Games have always had a foothold in storytelling, but I think we’re in a golden era now, where games are coming into their own in the storytelling realm. Being a part of that is a great opportunity that we are all very grateful for.
Final question, and we have to ask: who should we talk to to get Cal Kestis in a live-action Star Wars project? Show, movie, whatever it is, how do we make this happen?
I honestly don’t know. All I can say is, while that would be really cool, our focus right now is to make sure we’re telling a satisfying story within the video game arc. We want to make sure that while we do have extensive media like the book, and we’ve done some crossover media around the first game, the most important thing for me at least is to just be able to tell a satisfying story within whatever . medium that we currently use.
I think games are a great space to tell stories while also having a direct connection with the audience. When you play a game, you can be injected into the story in a way you can’t do any other way. You literally get to interact with it, and I think that’s really cool.
Yes, it would be great to explore Cal in many ways, but our number one priority right now is to make sure we’re doing something great here. From there, who knows, but hopefully people actually enjoy Jedi: Survivor.
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