The ending to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is left open-ended, and this seems intentional. It’s the perfect game design to tell a new short story, to show Cal on a short new adventure, or more. The fact that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s post launch support has been minimal is both promising and saddening, is both good and bad for future games, and is reflective of Electronic Arts’ past mistakes.
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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 Instead of DLC?
Jedi: Fallen Order 2 is rumored to be in development, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it were. Again, it received generally favorable reviews and left many fans hopeful for the future of single-player Star Wars games. This could possible explain the lack of story-based DLC, even if it is somewhat saddening. There’s no denying that exploring more of the universe as Cal in his current state will be interesting, as if he’s the main character once again, he’s a full-fledged Jedi Knight.
Of course, it’s possible that the sequel surprises fans and takes the Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order story in a whole new direction, somewhat explaining why the adventures of Cal were expanded on. That’s even if it wouldn’t have changed much. Regardless, it’s hard to be mad that the post-launch support was perhaps less than ideal when the main course was so satisfying.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 Will Likely Be a Whole Day One Package
It should be noted that this seems to be a set precedent, one that won’t be changing any time soon. If the original game received just a few touch-ups with its post-launch support, then a sequel would likely follow the same route. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 has a near-limitless path for a variety of stories to tell, and that itself is a bit of a double-edged sword. If more stories were told through story-based DLCs, fans would likely appreciate Cal even more. However, too much for too little or too little for too much would itself harm the game; simply put, sticking to this standard model, at least for this sub-franchise, minimizes risk and maximizes the input of the base game for fans.
That doesn’t mean Respawn won’t change this for Jedi Fallen Order 2, or perhaps shock fans with a SW J:FO DLC quite some time after the fact. But it does mean fans should temper expectations for the type of game and story that is being made.
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Jedi Fallen Order 2 Won’t Be Battlefront 2
Obviously, all of this begs the question as to why Electronic Arts, practically infamous for pushing monetization of all sorts, isn’t having single-player DLC put out for the game. This is one of those things where there’s so many options and possibilities that no one answer could be correct, but there is a simple answer, which is often the best: EA is once bitten, twice shy on Star Wars microtransactions.
Although the game is in a much healthier state than it was at launch, no one can forget the Star Wars Battlefront 2 microtransactions controversy. The microtransactions were so rampant that it sparked discussions and debates over loot boxes, gambling, and more. Now, arguably, Star Wars Battlefront 2 stands as a testament to how a game can recover from a rocky launch, but that doesn’t mean EA didn’t pay attention to what was happening.
For example, Star Wars: Squadrons was announced as a game without any form of microtransactions. It is ironically the perfect type of game to be expanded with solid content, not basic microtransactions, and it was an odd moment in time: people were mad at EA for not having more content for the game (this obviously relates to cosmetic microtransactions, pay-to-win microtransactions, and content expansion microtransactions, but the general irony is all the same).
EA did see this demand and is introducing some new DLC for Star Wars: Squadrons, but this is likely to be the safe one-off. It doesn’t seem likely that this will apply to Jedi Fallen Order 2, much less to the first game, and that’s not a bad thing. Ultimately, sure, it’s a bummer that there’s not more content in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order than there is, but at the same time, it’s a good design philosophy for all Star Wars games to take this on a case-by-case basis moving forward.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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