It’s been four years since Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order came out, and while the gaming landscape remains largely the same, some key things are different. Notably, we here at Hard Drive have bullshitted a few people into taking us seriously enough to preview games before they come out now! There’s no way it lasts, but for right now it’s pretty awesome, a real dream come true for lifelong gamers like us.
Having toiled for years on the fringes of the gaming industry, making the occasional rift with a satirical article mistaken for truth or a sophomoric piece about a Nintendo character’s genitals (often complete with pictures), you can imagine our delight when we were invited to preview the new Star Wars game.
This is where the problems began. I’ve never done one of these things before, and while I knew I only had four hours to spend playing the game, I didn’t really know much else about how this went. They’d have the system set up for me, right? What if they had something all set up for me, and I showed up with a PlayStation in my backpack like a weirdo? I didn’t want to jeopardize our newfound status as esteemed members of the gaming press, so I went to the thing with nothing but a pencil over my ear and a vape pen that made me cough profusely every time I used it in my pocket.
So I get into the room, and my worst fear is realized; there’s nothing in there to play the game on. Just a chair, a monitor, and a Jar-Jar Binks poster on the wall. I quickly mentioned that I must have forgotten my computer and quickly made my way to the Best Buy I’d noticed across the street upon my arrival and loudly announced my predicament once I’d entered the store.
Being the lone customer and stating my needs clearly meant I was soon swarmed by a half-dozen employees, outfitting me with a PC, accessories, and warranties like a finely tuned pit crew that’s been waiting for the car to come in all morning. It was a whirlwind, and I was soon back inside the Star Wars building ready to check the game out.
They said I had from noon to 4:00 with it, and it was still only 12:30, so I thought I’d be in pretty good shape. I installed Windows and Steam and entered the key given to me, when I made the awful realization that I hadn’t purchased a computer with enough memory to download the game. Damn it! I was just going to bring this thing back for a refund after this anyways, why didn’t I just get the most expensive one they had?
Thinking quickly, I made an excuse about needing to grab a vape pen refill out of my car and ran back to the Best Buy as fast as I could. I also stopped by my car to grab a refill for my vape pen.
When I arrived back at the Best Buy, winded and disoriented, the employees looked worried, like they’d done something wrong.
“No, it’s okay everybody,” I announced. “I just need to buy a Hard Drive. Like that website haha.”
Their confusion deepened. Part of the gaming world my ass. I could tell we still had a ways to go as a publication, but the Star Wars clock was ticking. This was to be a fight for another day, and I made a mental note to come back sometime and show these guys the article I wrote about getting a Megatron toy stuck in my ass.
I got back to my assigned room with three hours left. “I might still have a shot at this thing,” I said to the Jar-Jar Binks poster I realize now I was mistaking for a person in the corner of my eye. “I might just pull this off.”
Then I saw the download time. Two and a half hours. Fuuuuuuuuck!
I went back to the Best Buy to show them that article, about me getting the toy stuck up my ass, but this time I walked in behind a customer that needed to buy a new refrigerator. You should have seen the workers light up. As quickly as that, I’d become old news. On one hand, it was really nice, because I really felt like I’d gotten to know the boys over the course my repeated visits that afternoon. It was nice to see them hooting and hollering and high fiving like that. On the other hand, however, it felt like maybe this whole ‘being taken seriously’ thing just wasn’t going to happen anywhere. I couldn’t even get the boys to look in my direction anymore.
I figured all I could do was start to carve out a new path, one where we could be respected and taken seriously while still maintaining our artistic integrity that got us this far in the first place. We could be a comedic gaming website with opinions and writers worth taking seriously. And it all stars here, with the first few hours of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor!
Then I was so fucking high I walked the wrong way down the street for like a mile.
When I got back to the Star Wars building I barely had any time left. I ran around as the guy for a while. It seemed really fun and hard. Oh, I never played Fallen Order, but I think you’re that same guy. I really only got to play it for like, a minute. It comes out later this year, probably. I don’t know.
Also, they wouldn’t let me return the shit to Best Buy ‘cause it got all rained on.
