Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Dev Claims Requests for a Black and/or Female Lead Were Rejected

ign.com:

A former Respawn Entertainment developer has claimed that requests from team members to make the protagonist of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order female and/or Black were shut down. The response allegedly centered around the fact that the Star Wars franchise had a female lead after the movies' Rey, and the game already had 2 prominent Black characters.

Nora Shramek, a lighting artist at Respawn who worked on Fallen Order, tweeted (below) that multiple employees pushed for a Black and/or female protagonist during development, before the game launched in 2019, but were rejected because the game and wider franchise already represented those communities.

"When I worked on [Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order], a lot of devs wanted and advocated for the main character to be Black and/or a woman," Shramek said in a tweet spotted by GamesRadar. The reasons apparently given for not going in that direction were because "we already have two Black people in the game" and "Rey is a woman and we can't do that too."

When I worked on SW:JFO a LOT of devs wanted & advocated 4 the main character 2b black &/or a woman. 'Reasons' 4 NO: We already have 2 black people in the game. Rey is a woman & we can't do that to' guess what the demographic of the people making those decisions looked like?

Fallen Order was eventiually released with a white, male lead, Cal Kestis – who has since become an established part of the Star Wars business and canon.

Following up on her previous tweets, Shramek added that these decisions were made at the Respawn level and were not the result of an "evil EA" or "overly controlling Lucasfilm/Disney."

"It was our team's game and yes, a few of the people with decision making power made choices," she said. The issue isn't with Cal or