How Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 Should Learn From its Predecessor

The world of Star Wars games has begun to look brighter in recent years. With the recent re-branding of Lucasfilm Games and the success of recent titles, rumors have been running wild over what’s next for the future of Star Wars. This includes rumors over Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2, a possible sequel to the original 2019 title.

While EA’s track record with Star Wars titles isn’t that great - we’ve even reported on the poor reception to how they handled Star Wars Battlefront II - but they’ve managed to turn things around after that. The success of Fallen Order led to a positive outlook from EA, to the point where news outlets reported a possible Fallen Order 2 being “Basically Confirmed” by the company.

Not much is known about a potential Jedi: Fallen Order sequel, but one can assume it will build upon the various mechanics and designs introduced in the original game. As someone who played Fallen Order back when it was released, I find this could lead to either a fantastic game...or a disappointing one. Jedi: Fallen Order was not a perfect game, and its sequel will need to learn from those flaws to be truly great.

What More is Needed in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2

Jedi: Fallen Order had some great moments, aided by its excellent base gameplay. But the experience can feel a little hollow once you’ve completed the main story, and for good reason. Here are three things Fallen Order 2 needs for a more full, unique experience.

Optional Content

Image via Fallen Order's Official News Page

While there are rewards for exploring beyond the beaten path, there wasn’t much reason to focus on it when the game was first released. Sure, the cosmetics gave players some unique flair and the health upgrades were able to assist less experienced gamers, but that’s about it. All optional bosses are just improved enemies or reskinned minibosses, and there are no truly secret NPCs to give a bit of extra life to the game’s worlds. Many of the more substantial upgrades are done through gaining experience points, too; in that sense, the optional content is more akin to fighting the same normal enemies multiple times in a row.

Fallen Order did eventually get an update to rectify this - one that includes combat challenges and even an arena where you can make your own fights. This only showed up many months after the game’s release, however. It’s a welcome addition, but it’s a shame that it took later updates to improve upon one of Fallen Order’s biggest flaws - a trope that’s worryingly common with EA Star Wars titles. If Fallen Order 2 doesn’t include this content upon release, I just hope there’s more substantial rewards for exploring. Secret bosses and maybe even alternate endings would make for an incredibly interesting experience.

Enemy Variety

As mentioned before, many of Fallen Order’s optional bosses are just reskins of minibosses or stronger versions of normal enemies. While there’s a fair amount of unique enemies outside of those examples, it ends up being a lot less impressive when you realize around half of the entire enemy roster is crammed into one late-game area. And while many of the required bosses were fun in of themselves, there’s only four - yes, four bosses in the entire game - that are truly unique.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 would be an instant improvement over the original if it addressed this issue. Being forced to face off against new, unique enemies provides great challenge and a fun experience, especially when it comes to action-adventure games like this one. It might give less skilled players a couple more speed bumps as they play, but Fallen Order already includes difficulty options. If they want to focus on the story, there’s nothing stopping them from making the game a little easier for themselves.

Further Player Abilities

One thing I won’t knock Fallen Order for is its wide array of player abilities. Players improve their attacks and upgrade their force powers as they move through the game; later on, they can even use entirely new lightsaber moves. This is one of the greatest strengths of Fallen Order, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.

Should Fallen Order 2 decide to improve upon player abilities, it would be great to see further forms of attack. Personally, I was a fan of the older title Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, which focused more on mixing force powers in with regular melee slashes. You can see an example of those abilities in the video below; while they might be a bit flashier than what’s in Fallen Order, they provide a pretty good foundation for an expanded moveset in a future title.

What Fallen Order 2 Needs Less Of

While adding new things can help in making Jedi: Fallen Order’s rumored sequel an even better game, there’s some aspects of the original game it shouldn’t borrow too heavily from. Here are three things Fallen Order 2 should avoid:

Being Restricted to Canon

While Fallen Order was always meant to adhere to the Star Wars canon, this ended up restricting some of the more fun aspects of it. A good example of this is seen in choosing a lightsaber color - upon release, players were unable to use a red one. Many media outlets reported the reason for this being that it wouldn’t adhere to the current Star Wars canon. This ended up being pointless, too, as the previously-mentioned update added a costume that let players use a red lightsaber regardless.

Giving players alternate choices - whether cosmetic or more substantial story branches - doesn’t mean a game is harming its own canonicity. It’s not as though every game series with multiple endings has to account for every one of them, after all. Fallen Order 2 should account for this, rather than restricting the ability for players to use unique abilities or even appearances outside of the game’s main story.

Railroaded Story Sequences

One of my personal favorite moments of Fallen Order was a specific scripted event midway through the game. With that in mind, I think Fallen Order 2 should do its best to avoid sequences like that. It makes future playthroughs of those events predictable, and it turns certain exciting moments into complete disappointments. When fighting one of the later bosses in the game, I was excited to see its health bar fill back up for an even more intense battle than it already gave me. Up until that second health bar amounted to nothing more than an extended sequence of climbing up walls and pressing on-screen prompts.

While I prefer these sequences to simple cutscenes, they treat the game more like a story to be experienced rather than an actual game. I’d prefer it if Fallen Order 2 kept the scripted events to an absolute minimum, instead focusing on more engaging gameplay. I don’t even mind the on-screen prompts as a way of finishing off tougher fights. Just don’t fake out the player into believing it would be the second phase of a very fun boss battle.

Puzzles

Image via GamesRadar

While having puzzles in games isn’t bad, the ones in Fallen Order weren’t all that good. Most of them amounted to little more than pushing balls around with the force and exploring mazes through platforming. In a game with fun combat and an interesting story, these repetitive puzzles were an unavoidable blemish. If Fallen Order 2 can’t do anything more creative or engaging with these elements, I’d be perfectly fine with them being removed in exchange for a greater focus on combat or exploration.

Final Thoughts on a Potential Jedi: Fallen Order Sequel

Jedi: Fallen Order isn’t a bad game by any means. I enjoyed most of my time with it, but that time was relatively short and littered with unfortunate disappointments. There is much room for improvement when it comes to a potential sequel - and with the recent statements made by EA, that potential might turn into confirmation very soon. If there are ways for Jedi: Fallen Order 2 to become an even greater game than its predecessor, I certainly hope the developers do their best to make that happen.

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