Jedi Fallen Order - Review/Retro @ TheOzzyJedi

TheOzzyJedi reviews Jedi Fallen Order in 2021. Warning: contains spoilers towards the end.

Jedi Fallen Order: Two Years Later - The Story of EA's Best Star Wars Game

Two years ago Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was released, it was met with mass amounts of praise and was the most important Star Wars Game yet. We take a look back at the game when it was just a thought, to where it is now in 2021. We also touch on it's sequel which is surely, soon to be announced.

Are you looking forward to Jedi Fallen Order 2? Let me know!

Do you think Fallen Order or Battlefront 2 is EA's Best Star Wars Game?

Timecodes

• 0:00 - Intro
• 1:34 - The Journey to Fallen Order's Release
• 3:11 - Characters
• 6:08 - Gameplay
• 7:21 - Cut Scenes, Tone, Atmosphere
• 10:24 - Planets and Locations
• 12:40 - Outro

More information.

Despite all the praise I'm still waiting for an actual Star Wars RPG to get developed. My dream was to play an isometric version but it wouldn't sell enough for Disney/EA/Lucas.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Despite all the praise I'm still waiting for an actual Star Wars RPG to get developed. My dream was to play an isometric version but it wouldn't sell enough for Disney/EA/Lucas.

Would a Starfinder be an acceptable replacement?

They've still not announced what their next game would be…

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Despite all the praise I'm still waiting for an actual Star Wars RPG to get developed. My dream was to play an isometric version but it wouldn't sell enough for Disney/EA/Lucas.

Proper StarWars cRPG would be really nice. But I agree that Disney will not go with SW trademark anywhere else but for mainstream, due to sales. And proper cRPG is not mainstream. So not gonna happen

Jedi: Fallen Order was a very good game imo, but agree with Couch and Andrew23… would love to see a true, deep single player RPG but like with LotR, I'm skeptical we'll ever see something like that for some of these big IPs.

Originally Posted by Andrew23
Proper StarWars cRPG would be really nice. But I agree that Disney will not go with SW trademark anywhere else but for mainstream, due to sales. And proper cRPG is not mainstream. So not gonna happen

Yeah, but I don't understand why they're so reluctant to license games. I mean nobody is stopping them from licensing both a mainstream game and a not so mainstream game.

I can't imagine that having a non-mainstream game would somehow dilute the SW brand.
And I also can't imagine that the developers insist on exclusive licences.

AFAIK, there is no more exclusivity on this franchise, even if the situation isn't entirely clear as to when this takes effect. So we may still see an RPG one day, but I doubt it'll be an indie, the licence must be very costly.

That being said, I don't expect anything better from Ubisoft, who announced a SW game together with Massive Entertainment and LucasFilm Games.

EDIT: There was a similar issue until a few years ago with Porsche, and EA was the one with an exclusivity once again. During years we couldn't have any good racing game with Porsche cars because of that. Thankfully it ended and now you can have Porsche cars in good games like rFactor 2, Assetto Corsa and R3E. But that's Porsche, not LucasFilm.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
That being said, I don't expect anything better from Ubisoft, who announced a SW game together with Massive Entertainment and LucasFilm Games.

Ah, never heard of it, thanks.
And well, one at least can hope.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
Ah, never heard of it, thanks.
And well, one at least can hope.

I only saw your post after submitting mine (I'm a slow guy), your question is still valid: "why they're so reluctant to license games". Not with exclusivity rights, but with high licence fee - or at least that's what I understood. For example EA apparently cancelled a game last month because of the licence cost (Battlefront 3).

So there may not be many companies which could afford that, which makes a very few RPG developers. Since Bethesda has enough with their own franchises I suppose, what does that leave us? EA, and … who else? JRPG makers? Or perhaps Larian, but that's not anytime soon.

So maybe they're not reticent, just too expensive for that genre.

Fyi, there are some major spoliers in that video towards the end, so don't watch it if you haven't played Fallen Order yet and are planning to.

It's weird that he would mention Battlefront II here as it's not even remotely comparable.

Also, Fallen Order is still on sale right now for $15 on Steam. It's an absolute steal at that price. If you're on the fence, get it.

I'm assuming one would need Origin to play this, so I've not even checked it out to date. I avoid Electronic Arts like the plague, yet if I'm in error regarding this particular game, let me know!

The store page says EA on-line activation and Origin client software is required, so you're right @Carnifex.

Unless you're very good at finding your number keys on your keyboard, you'll likely need a controller to play the game, too.

Game is great without a controller.

Being mostly m+k player, this was one of games I enjoyed more with controller. But I think this is very individual. I, for example, play 3rd person action games on controller, IF gameplay is not based on aiming (ie. Dark Souls). When aiming is central point of gameplay (ie. Horizon Zero Dawn), Im avoiding controller, if possible.

I thought I would like this game but I struggle to get beyond the second planet. The game is like a water-slide in an amusement park. You jump into the tunnel and follow it. You can influence the pace and steer a little bit, but that's it. There is not much more you can do to influence the outcome. The gameplay is either battle which requires good reflexes and familiarity with the controller at any higher difficulties than the story mode, or parkour jumping, climbing, and sliding various elements. Also the parkour requires good reflexes, timing and familiarity playing with a controller. Something like the Super Mario games in the early 90s, but a lot fancier.

It is probably a good game for the controller generation but I feel too old, slow, and jaded to enjoy the game a lot. It is entertaining when played an hour or two once a week but I can't bare any longer sessions of this game. Also the Star Wars clichés begin to show a wear. The robot peeps, "I have a bad feeling about this", etc. were cool, but when repeated in every Star Wars story over three decades, one has heard and seen them.

Perhaps there are other old, slow and jaded people here…Writing this in case it helps someone to save their money for another game they might like more than this.

I think it's easily the best SW game over the past 10+ years.

The combat does require twitch reflexes, but it's not soulslike hard or anything like that. You can even change the difficulty mid-game if you want. I finished the game on the second-hardest difficulty, and I'm no wizard when it comes to third-person melee combat. The platforming isn't difficult at all once you get the moves down. I'd say it's probably on par with something like Tomb Raider.

I liked the metroidvania type level design that requires you to return to previous areas once you have the right upgrade so you can explore further. There's a decent amount of puzzle-solving and exploration involved, although the exploration does usually require more platforming. It's similar to Tomb Raider in that way as well.

Well I know one IP that isn't afraid to pardon the term whoring itself out. Just look at Warhammer as any developer can lease it and release a mediocre game at best.

I'm glad EA lost exclusivity as they just sat on the IP till Disney pressured them.

As for the Ubisoft SW game with Massive Entertainment it's supposed to be similar to The Division. Basically an online live-service game. So my hopes are not that high.

Originally Posted by JDR13
I think it's easily the best SW game over the past 10+ years.

The combat does require twitch reflexes, but it's not soulslike hard or anything like that. You can even change the difficulty mid-game if you want. I finished the game on the second-hardest difficulty, and I'm no wizard when it comes to third-person melee combat. The platforming isn't difficult at all once you get the moves down. I'd say it's probably on par with something like Tomb Raider.

I liked the metroidvania type level design that requires you to return to previous areas once you have the right upgrade so you can explore further. There's a decent amount of puzzle-solving and exploration involved, although the exploration does usually require more platforming. It's similar to Tomb Raider in that way as well.

I mostly agree, also regarding the difficulty, with exception of final boss fight. That was … hard.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
So there may not be many companies which could afford that, which makes a very few RPG developers. Since Bethesda has enough with their own franchises I suppose, what does that leave us? EA, and … who else? JRPG makers? Or perhaps Larian, but that's not anytime soon.

So maybe they're not reticent, just too expensive for that genre.

Yeah, that may well be.
Perhaps I don't see the bigger picture, but when you have a product (especially an immaterial one) that no-one can afford you need to lower the price. It doesn't make sense to sit on it instead of using it to earn money, eben if it's less money than you want to get from it.

On a second thought the high price could be some kind of quality assurance. If the dev can pay a high price he most likely has enough funding for a project with a high production value.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
Yeah, that may well be.
Perhaps I don't see the bigger picture, but when you have a product (especially an immaterial one) that no-one can afford you need to lower the price. It doesn't make sense to sit on it instead of using it to earn money, eben if it's less money than you want to get from it.

On a second thought the high price could be some kind of quality assurance. If the dev can pay a high price he most likely has enough funding for a project with a high production value.

That's a strange logic at first glance, isn't it? It's just what I saw but I'm not in that business, perhaps it was another problem, perhaps they are lowering the licence fees if they are opening it to more developers.

I don't even know if that's a fee per unit or an NRE fee (or a combination of both). If there's a per-unit fee, the visibility is always easier with a few large companies making the same benefit as many smaller companies selling fewer units - at least that's the case in the chip IP industry. Analyzing account logs is never fun.

And it's not just that, they need to keep an eye on each project to make sure the developer respects the setting, so there must be an NRE component to covers those costs, it may once again be artificially high to limit the amount of work and favour fewer but more profitable projects. I'm only speculating, I don't know for sure.

Or it's an aura thing: never look cheap. Who knows.