Ever since Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was unveiled, tons of players have been skeptical due to how EA has been treating its player-base. Gamers have felt betrayed and even lied to before, as with the Battlefront II launch back in 2017. Even though Respawn Entertainment announced that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order would be a single-player game with no multiplayer, no microtransactions, and no Season Pass … gamers are still skeptical because, well, EA. However, recently EA Community Manager Jay Ingram confirmed that the upcoming PS4, Xbox One, and PC game was born from Respawn’s own direction, and not prescribed to them by the publisher.
“This was Respawn’s vision,” said Ingram when asked by a fan on Twitter how much presence EA has in the game’s development and whether it was their idea or not. “EA doesn’t prescribe games to developers, just greenlights them.”
I know we heard this before with past experience, but we also heard EA has their own expectations for games (live-service elements, etc.) but none of that stuff seems to be present with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Is EA changing its ways? Or is Fallen Order just an exception this time? Who knows … As the old cliche goes, “only time will tell.”
Personally, as a player, I have felt burned by EA over the past few years (from Battlefront II to Battlefield V, and even Anthem). Yes, there have been games that EA has released that don’t have these features, but they are few and far between. While these games are published by EA and made by the studios they own, EA has the final say on what each studio is allowed to make. One of the major problems I think EA has mistakenly caused for themselves is having their studios all work under one game engine, and that’s Dice’s Frostbite Engine — an engine made for first-person shooters … not third-person shooters or RPGs. It has caused a lot of problems for developers when creating games that are not first-person shooters (too many to count) and given that crunch time is serious for a lot of these studios, maybe it’s for the best to let them each make a engine for what is needed.
Another major problem is that the player-base believes that the company caters more to its investors than their players (aka putting the cart before the horse). While it’s important to please your investors, without the players feeling happy or excited or even invested in buying any game, you can’t please the investors in the long-run. Happy players mean happy investors! Hopefully EA has taken a look at how the player-base has reacted to Respawn’s announcement. They can do this, with any of IPS they have under their belt … even ones that EA has silently put away that players would love to play again (for example, Skate 4 or a brand new Burnout game instead of a remastered one). I just hope it has happened, and hopefully, it won’t be the last time.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is set to release on November 15th via the PS4, Xbox One, and PC at a price of $59.99 USD. At the moment of publishing, no additional ports or platforms have been announced. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Ingram has confirmed there are currently no plans to bring the game to Nintendo Switch.
