Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is bringing back one of the coolest alien races in the old canon - one whose full glory we haven't seen since the original Clone Wars cartoon.
That race is the Gen'dai, and the character in question is Rayvis. Rayvis originally appeared in the first gameplay trailer for Jedi: Survivor, getting into a standoff with Cal. Fans pretty quickly surmised that he was a Gen'dai - a long-lived race of beings who are essentially made up of a giant mass of tentacles that can regenerate and heal themselves at will. The devs at Respawn have now confirmed Rayvis's origins and provided a few details on his background.
Gen'dai like Rayvis "have a code they adhere to," cinematic director Dori Arazi tells IGN. "It binds them to a certain code of honor for their conduct. It also binds them to their history and what's left of their people. So Rayvis is not just this ‘gruff grunt #7’ who can take an army down. He’s got a long past. He’s seen a lot of history. He could be a thousand years old. He’s seen empires rise and fall, he’s seen the Jedi rise and fall, he’s seen the rise of the actual Empire itself. So he’s got a lot of tragic history and a lot of depth that we try to explore."
Based on their encounter in the trailer, it certainly seems that Rayvis and Cal will be fighting each other, though Respawn's quick to shy away from calling Rayvis a villain. Still, the boss fight possibilities are intriguing. Arazi notes that "Gen’dai are just fun because… what do you do to them, right? ‘Oh, I’m a powerful Jedi, I have a lightsaber, I’m going to slash you…’ It does nothing."
We've actually seen this exact scenario in the 2003 Clone Wars series led by Genndy Tartakovsky. In that show, a Gen'dai bounty hunter named Durge faces off with Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the final encounter, Durge's armor gets blasted off and the tentacly mass of his body starts expanding and wrecking house. Eventually, he absorbs Obi-Wan - and is exploded by an expanding bubble of Force energy.
The sequence bears more than a little resemblance to the end of the anime classic Akira, and something similar could make one heck of a video game boss fight. (Look I watched this cartoon when I was 12 and proceeded to never grow up, okay?)
The Gen'dai sadly didn't appear after the big cull of Star Wars canon that happened when Disney bought the franchise - at least, not until very recently. Durge returned to canon as part of the War of the Bounty Hunters comic crossover in 2021, and now Rayvis will be the second Gen'dai to be part of the modern Star Wars lore.
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