The unlikeliest project to emerge from Electronic Arts's decade-long oversight of the Star Wars video game franchise, Squadrons is a spiritual successor to the much-loved X-Wing series of space combat simulators. Squadrons offers a decent facsimile of X-Wing's granular space battles, from its carefully crafted missions to its hallmark power-shunting mechanic, which lets you divert your ship's power to different systems for a tactical advantage. What earns Squadrons a place on this list, however, is its VR functionality. Plugging a VR headset into this game transforms it from a glossy throwback into an essential experience, bringing Star Wars' space dogfighting to life like nothing else. If you want to know just how massive a Star Destroyer is when you see it up close with your own eyes, this is the game to play.

My background came from God of War … I've never worked on a shooter, and you need a different team to do that. You might as well be asking me to make a racing game. And eventually over time, we built that trust to the point where we ended up calling [the franchise] Jedi." The much contested Jedi eventually became Cal Kestis, first introduced in Jedi: Fallen Order. His original reveal saw a slew of criticism for being, well, a little bland, but four years on, it's hard to deny that Cal has won over both gamers and Star Wars fans alike. Case in point: in a recent Disney poll, asking fans to vote on which lightsaber from the Star Wars universe they'd like produced for retail, Cal beat out legendary characters such as Anakin Skywalker and Qui-Gon Jinn. Of course, making the main character a Jedi isn't just a play to Star Wars fans – it's also a clever game design move, given that the well-documented journey of a Jedi developing their skills perfectly mirrors that of a player progressing through a video game, something Asmussen describes as "one-to-one storytelling". "I was hoping that we could come up with a character that the player could go along on the ride with," he expands. "So, he starts off kind of raw.

The two embrace after five years apart, one of Greez's four arms now replaced by a robotic prosthetic. It's a moment that encapsulates how I felt playing the upcoming game at a recent preview event Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment held in Los Angeles. Playing Jedi: Survivor feels like reuniting with a friend you haven't seen in a few years. Right from the start, Jedi: Survivor feels like a more refined Jedi: Fallen Order. The preview began on Koboh, one of the first planets players will visit when they get their hands on the game later this month.

It's been just under nine years since Titanfall landed on the PC and Xbox, and just under nine years since publisher Electronic Arts has been underutilizing one of its most interesting and promising franchises. With the rumor that EA has canned a third Titanfall game after years of development, I think it's time we look back on what this game was, what it could have been, and lamentably, what it never will be. What is Titanfall right now? Part of the first wave of Xbox One titles and one of the console's very few exclusives, the original Titanfall was the first game developed by Respawn Entertainment, which was founded by former executives of Call of Duty creator Infinity Ward. It made a splash from its introduction at E3 2013, wowing gamers with a mix of fresh, parkour-infused multiplayer shooting and the titular Titan mechs as a fresh addition to the genre.

In the top 10 list of my favourite-ever video game moments – a list that changes radically every year or so – there are two absolute immovables. And they both involve Star Wars. The first time I sat in the beautifully elaborate arcade cabinet of Atari's 1983 Star Wars game and experienced its thrilling depiction of the Death Star assault was a life-changing moment in an otherwise unremarkable holiday in Blackpool. To a boy who watched the film practically every week on video it was a dream come true. Much later, in 1996, I was a young writer for Edge magazine visiting Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, for a feature on their Direct X graphics technology. After the interviews they took me to a new multiplayer gaming centre in the city; it was a roomful of pods, each housing a state of the art PC and flight controls.

There's been a turbulence in the Star Wars franchise recently – and that's a good thing. First, there was the arrival of "The Mandalorian" on the Disney streaming service, which became operational earlier this week. All this action comes ahead of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" (in theaters Dec. 20), the ninth and last film in that saga. But these two recent entries focus on the past. "The Mandalorian" takes place after about five years after Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and the rebels overthrew the Empire in 1983's "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi."

Star Wars video game fans have waited impatiently – for almost a decade – for a romp through their favourite galaxy in the best traditions of the action-adventure game. Out of mercy (for I, too, am a fanatic), I'll cut to the chase: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order does indeed deliver on that. Hitting all the right notes – and not just with the fluttering woodwind and heavy brass of the John Williams-styled orchestra – Fallen Order is right on brand. It has the ancient ruins of mystical past civilisations seamlessly blended with the crashed hulks of light-speeding starships; the militaristic, sterile, black and red halls of the Empire, with rapidly sliding doors that open on to lush landscapes. Each planet – but especially the freezing, windswept stone villages of Zeffo that are overrun by stormtroopers – could be a Star Wars movie set.

It's almost 10 years since the release of the last single-player Star Wars game, Force Unleashed II, which feels a long time ago and a galaxy far, far away from EA's controversial Battlefront series. While those games offered some exhilarating moments of first-person blasting action, Star Wars fans have been longing for another epic adventure, something with the role-playing complexity of Knights of the Old Republic or the Force powers of Unleashed. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order promises to meet at least some of these criteria. Developed by Respawn Entertainment – the team behind sci-fi shooter series Titanfall and battle royale hit Apex Legends – Fallen Order introduces Cal Kestis, a Jedi padawan and one of the last of his kind. The game follows on from Revenge of the Sith, with the Jedi Order in ruin after being destroyed from within by Darth Vader.

In 1983, millions of unsold cartridges of the Atari game ET The Extra Terrestrial were secretly buried in a concrete-covered landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Thanks to extremely rushed development and alleged interference from Universal Pictures, the movie tie-in was one of the worst video games ever made, and a mass grave was the only option for the poor, unwanted cartridges. Unfortunately, like movies adapted from games, games adapted from movies are often bad. Historically, this has not been the result of too much interference from the movie studios that own the licences, but too little. Promising pop-culture properties such as Transformers, Robocop and Harry Potter have often been farmed out to contracted development studios that are then given far too little time to make anything half decent. The forthcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, however, has better prospects than most.

Respawn Entertainment CEO Vince Zampella and game developer Stig Asmussen give the latest details about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Cal Kestis is the main character in the upcoming video game "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order," due out November 15 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC (you can pre-order now). He's a young Padawan – a Jedi in training – when then-Chancellor Palpatine issues Order 66, a purge to kill all Jedi, an event that takes place in the 2005 film "Episode III – Revenge of the Sith." In'Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order,' the Jedi Padawan Cal Kestis is forced into action against the Empire. In hiding at the game's beginning, Cal (who is played by "Gotham" star Cameron Monaghan) is forced to use his Jedi skills and now is among the hunted.