It’s not too radical of me to state that I don’t like EA and their practices. They are an industry bogeyman, being voted "Worst Company in America” by Consumerist more than once with good reason, for their rampant use of lootboxes with weak justification and their predatory habit of acquisition of smaller companies with the intent to kill the competition. I myself have even ranted about their holding hostage of basic assets and mechanics from The Sims franchise in the form of pay-to-unlock DLC packs. While the monstrous hydra that is EA may harm us deeply, they do know how to keep us beholden to their torment. Aggressive asset management has given them many beneficial tools, including talented designers and insanely high-level franchise rights. This brings us to Star Wars, as things often do in our society. EA has held exclusive publishing rights for Star Wars games for quite some time, and more often than not for the worse. However, in an assumed attempt to maintain a grip on the aforementioned rights, EA has put a competent team on a competent title, the Respawn Entertainment developed Jedi: Fallen Order.
While I do believe that Fallen Order is competently made, its predecessors have helped it to shine more than I think it would have a decade ago. It is the first single-player action-adventure title we’ve gotten since 2010’s The Force Unleashed II. While they did finally give us a decently fun story in the campaign of Battlefront II, it isn’t the same as a fleshed-out from the ground up single-player tale. It’s the type of title that has always been popular alongside the beloved RPGs and flight combat Star Wars games of yesteryear, but all of these types of games do not seemingly make EA the money they can get from the microtransactions of multiplayer deathmatch titles. However, their need to maintain status with the franchise led them to realize that maybe listening to the audience can be beneficial from time to time.
This leads to the very core of Fallen Order’s personality. Every moment makes it feel like a heavily focus tested and "throw it at the wall and see what sticks” type of title, for better and worse. Respawn is the team known best for Apex Legends and the Titanfall series, as well as being headed by co-founders of the original Call of Duty team at Infinity Ward. They are a team that primarily work on first-person shooter titles, which seems like an odd choice for a third person melee combat focused adventure game like Fallen Order unless you consider their apparent good faith with gamers for their previously successful titles along with their name recognition. Admittedly the freerunning style movement from Titanfall is another factor on a less conspiratorial level. Besides the reputation friendly team, the game design itself is also a varied mix ‘n’ match of various other titles.
Being a single-player adventure title, map traversal is a big factor, so inspiration was drawn from Tomb Raider and Uncharted, with lots of wall climbing, vine-swinging, and bonkers cinematic set-pieces. Since gaining Force Powers are also in the mix, the level design is built in the Metroidvania fashion, tasking you with gaining new abilities in order to open up routes around the map. Combat is very familiar at this point with alternating light and strong lightsaber attacks for combos; using blocks, parries, and dodges to wear down enemies while balancing a stamina meter; and of course, throwing in the aforementioned Force Powers for fancier additions to combos or just launching hapless Storm Troopers off of cliff sides. The combat difficultly tries to mimic Dark Souls-like titles with a heavy focus on proper timing of parries and dodges as well as having enemies respawn when your character rests. It truly is a mishmash of so many familiar game tropes all rolled together, and while I do think it works more often than not, for every neat instance of those tropes also comes downfalls.
When it comes to traversal, I do hope you like the climbing and such, but I really hope you like the parts of those adventure titles where you slide down a long ramp. Because boy there are ramps. They’re varied, curvy ones, straight ones, long and short ones, but they always keep you from going back the way you came (understandable), but they’re also a crutch the design team leaned on an obscene amount of times (not as understandable). Combat is very fun and looks great when it is really going, but the timing isn’t quite as tight as FromSoftware titles like Sekiro, so you may find parries a bit more sluggish, though serviceable. The ability to ramp up the difficulty to punishment levels is cool for some, but the load times that return you to the area after death can be detrimentally long. This can make trial and error on say, a specific secret giant frog boss, a frustrating start-and-stop that can kill gameplay momentum. Respawning enemies are a good idea for allowing players to grind combat for experience or to keep the level of challenge constant, but it is also jarring in a ludonarrative sense. The feeling of progress and success can be diminished when the same enemies you just defeated pop right back into place the moment you decide to take a rest. You could imagine that extra troops were deployed or that wildlife congregates in the same areas, but in a title that mainly does focus on its narrative, it can feel a bit odd that this detail is handwaved.
However, at the end of the day, it really is all about the narrative of Fallen Order, and in my opinion, this is where the game shines. You take on the role of Cal Kestis, a young man who was a Jedi Padawan at the time of Order 66, who has since gone into hiding as a scrapper. Until one day, an elite team of Jedi remnant hunters shows up and Cal must reveal himself. You’re then tasked to planet hop in search of some information beneficial to your survival and the Jedi as a whole. Its a very well done story with solid acting from Cameron Monaghan (Shameless, Gotham) that I highly recommend for Star Wars fans. There is a wonderful blending of the tech and history that is fading from the Clone Wars Era, and the growing strength of the fully risen Empire, with tons of easter eggs for eagle-eyed fans of both major time periods. If you aren’t as deeply versed in the lore, I think that it would still be quite enjoyable, as it is more of a small scale personal journey for Cal in the setting of the larger universe. Cal’s PTSD from the destruction of Order 66 haunts him deeply, and gameplay-wise this translates into the need to regain his shattered memories in order to finally master the powers of the Force he was disconnected from, giving a decent justification for the Metroidvania style and the slow acquisition of powers. As well as being a take on a Star Wars character type we don’t often see.
Even as a junky for the Star Wars setting, I will say that not everything is perfectly executed. The 3D map system, while accurately capturing the aesthetic style of the franchise also was a bit of a mess to read, being harsh-if-transparent digital blues and oranges that would be easily muddled by the background of the environments you were viewing it in. This coupled with the fact that the maps seem purposefully obtuse to stretch playtime a bit made for occasionally frustrating return journeys to my ship. There are tons of hidden chests in each area, but they only contain aesthetic variations. While this was really neat with respect to customizable lightsaber parts for a truly personal civilized weapon, it was less exciting when hunting high and low for a difficult to find final chest that only contained a new color for your ship or a poncho you didn’t particularly like. I would have appreciated something like pre-production art or other more interesting incentives for exploration.
When Fallen Order was first released, it did have a number of weird bugs and lacked completely in any replayability besides finding that last poncho or simply starting over. However, since its release, the team has done a solid job of updating, including lots of fixes and adding a challenging arena-type mode for combatting waves of baddies. They even included the preorder bonuses of an orange lightsaber blade as well as skins for your ship and the game’s best boy droid, BD-1. The New Game+ they added certainly brought me back, allowing me to Jedi it up with my fully decked out ‘saber from the start, and I had a blast messing around with the new photo mode.
At the end of the day, Jedi: Fallen Order is a decently solid title. I had a lot of fun playing it, really enjoyed the story, and it gives me a bit of hope for the future of Star Wars games, at least amongst this particular banner. It may be a flawed title that can’t live up to the nostalgia we may have for classic Star Wars games, but it is a good example of what types of games we can have when EA isn’t acting completely ghoulish. Right now it is absolutely worth it for Xbox One and PC owners with the price of $29.99 for the base game on the Microsoft Store and Steam. If you want some extra in-game items, the Deluxe Edition is currently on sale as well on PS4 and Steam for $38.49 and $34.99 respectively. It is also included for PC owners with an Origins Access Premium account.