Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the highly anticipated sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order. As such, we expect to see everything we loved from the previous game and then some. We don’t know which direction EA has decided to take the series, but we know what we want to see in Jedi: Survivor.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order played the role of stabilizer for the video game series after the shaky response to both EA Battlefront games. That role came with positives and negatives for Jedi: Fallen Order’s final offering. On the positive side, EA had to stick to a more standard approach and keep the shenanigans to a minimum. As a result, we received a focused, solid single-player experience. On the more negative side, it undeniably leaves us with a feeling it could have been so much more.
Related: Is the deluxe edition of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor worth it?
Now we are looking at Fallen Order’s successor, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, to become everything its predecessor wasn’t. Jedi: Survivor is ready for preload and is officially launching on April 28. It’s clear that whatever we will get on launch day has been decided on a while ago, but this won’t stop us from using the force of wishful thinking and listing everything we want and hope to see in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Nine changes we want to see in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
We want to see more freedom in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
We don’t necessarily mean an entirely open world here. Just a general freedom of movement and exploration would suffice. We don’t have anything against linear games, but having one single way to progress at all times felt weirdly out of place for a AAA release in 2019, let alone for a 2023 game.
One of the few specific promises EA has made in the promotion of Jedi: Survivor is that players will have a lot more of that freedom we’ve been lauding here, which is why we chose to start our list with it. We wanted to take off on a positive note. Not that it’s all doom and gloom from here, but freedom is easily the most certain change from Fallen Order to Survivor that’s made our wishlist.
We want more planets to explore in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
What is freedom if you’ve got nowhere to go? Jedi: Fallen Order took us to four different planets during its campaign. That’s nothing to scoff at, but we know for a fact that more can be done on that front. The engoodening of No Man’s Sky is the shiniest example that creating several interesting to explore planets is doable.
Not every planet must be tied to the main quest or have extremely deep content. We simply want to see more of the Star Wars galaxy in Jedi: Survivor represented in a competent manner. Surely that’s not too much to ask for?
We want fast travel in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
The meditation points in Jedi: Fallen Order laid the groundwork for a balanced fast travel system that was never implemented. While the lack of fast travel in that game wasn’t detrimental to the experience due to the closed-linear nature of the world, the supposed openness of Jedi: Survivor makes a warping mechanic pretty much mandatory.
Meditation points are tailor-made for such a mechanic. They already ooze of Dark Souls’ bonfires, so do what that series did and make every meditation spot a fast travel location. Running by enemies you have already defeated and an area you have already explored to get to where you actually want to go is no one’s favorite activity.
We want more and better bosses in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Speaking of things Star Wars Jedi: Survivor could learn from the Souls series, we’d be truly happy if FromSoftware’s pristine boss design infects Respawn’s developers. Bosses were among the few clear-cut letdowns in Jedi: Fallen Order, both in quantity and quality. We fear this might push Respawn to shy away from traditional health bar boss encounters altogether.
Here’s hoping they do the opposite and give us more than two moves per boss, more creative arenas instead of the closed circle setup that riddled Fallen Order, and yeah, more bosses. Though if they don’t home with the desired quality improvement, we’d be better off without an abundant quantity too. Fallen Order’s bosses were mostly a non-event, but at least they didn’t torture us with dozens of them.
We want more force powers in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
We want more interesting movesets from Jedi: Survivor’s bosses, but we’re not masochists, we want the same for ourselves too. There were justified complaints that the force was kind of mid in Fallen Order. You had three force powers all in all, two of which you acquire later on in your playthrough. We, and every other Star Wars fan, want to see that number bumped up this time around.
Here’s the good part, there’s good reason to believe Jedi: Survivor will answer the call. We’re continuing Cal’s story, so it’s basically guaranteed we’ll start the game with all three Fallen Order force powers at our disposal and obtain new moves as we progress. In short, we expect the same force powers system, but we anticipate it will feel much better as it is essentially an extension of Fallen Order’s system.
We want to drive an X-wing fighter in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Greez told Cal there’s nothing quite like driving a ship out in space, and you know what, we agree. We never got to put that statement to the test in Jedi: Fallen Order and it’s absolutely something Jedi: Survivor needs to fix.
Because we never sat behind the wheel of a spaceship in the first game, we’re setting our demands higher. We don’t want to drive any old ship, we want to sit in the driver’s chair of an X-wing starfighter. The rebellion is rising in strength, so it’s not unfeasible that we see our first spaceship battle in Survivor, strategically situated towards the end, because what could top driving a bloody X wing into the mouth of the Galactic Empire!
We want meaningful choices in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
We’ll follow the hype of a potential space battle with the whimper that were Fallen Order’s dialogue choices. You were randomly given a two-way choice between exposition dialogue No. 1 and exposition dialogue No. 2, with zero consequence over which option you select. Would we be going out on a limb by saying this is an inherently unsatisfying system?
This should have been at the center of Respawn’s “what we should fix” list since day one of the development process. We don’t expect Mass Effect levels of dialogue options, but we don’t want to see more bare-bones either. We say make dialogue choices matter more or get rid of them altogether.
We want to fight Darth Vader in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Okay, we were way too weak at the end of Jedi: Fallen Order to defeat Darth muthatruckin’ Vader. We get that. It would have honestly been a way bigger disappointment if we could stand up to the most powerful Sith lord with our feeble push-and-pull force powers. That doesn’t mean that not fighting Darth Vader at all was not a disappointment in itself.
We are looking forward to the rematch and we expect to get it in Jedi: Survivor. Darth Vader didn’t show up at the end of Fallen Order for nothing. That was an obvious setup for Vader to act as the main villain of Survivor and we hope this means we will face him at least once in a proper fight in Jedi: Survivor. Would be even better if there are multiple encounters similar to how the Second Sister came at us during Fallen Order as we grew in power. That may be too much to ask, but some Darh Vader is definitely in order here, pun very much intended.
We want more personality from Cal in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
We have to be honest, Cal Kestis wasn’t the most thrilling protagonist we’ve played as in a video game. Very little of what happened in Jedi: Fallen Order was driven by Cal. Even his escape from Bracca was instigated by Prauf’s sacrifice. His case wasn’t helped by the seamless acceptance of Cere’s cause and the minimal emotional investment throughout his journey.
We can give Cal the benefit of being in a fish-out-of-water situation throughout Jedi: Fallen Order, but since that’s no longer the case, we want to see a lot more agency and personality coming out of Cal to match his growing power.
We will find out if our wishlist matches that of Respawn and EA soon enough. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is coming out on April 28. Realistically, we expect at least a few of our entries to be implemented. A couple have more or less been confirmed during Jedi: Survivor’s promotion, now we just need the developers to have silently nailed some others, and this could end up being a terrific sequel.
