Have you guys played that hot new game, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor? I have, and it’s pretty swell if I do say so myself. Yes, I know it came out several months ago and has since been eclipsed by bigger games like Tears of the Kingdom and Street Fighter 6, but with my hands being so full back then I’ve only just jumped back into the shoes of Cal Kestis. Now he’s got a mullet, anger issues, and a blaster stance I definitely won’t spend the whole game with.
Part of me had hoped that jumping into the game a couple of months after launch would help smooth out some of its rougher edges. I’m playing on PS5, but we all know how riddled with issues the PC version was, and it seems the console versions aren’t all that far behind.
Respawn Entertainment admitted that Fallen Order needed more time in development back in 2019, and was pushing up against a release date it had to meet but obviously knew would see it compromising on quality. The result was console versions that pushed the hardware past limits. Unless you were sitting pretty with an overpowered PC, Fallen Order didn’t play beautifully until a current-gen update arrived years after launch. Critics and consumers pointed out an awkwardly unfinished vibe to proceedings and how EA, Lucasarts, or whoever was asking a bit much from Respawn.
But we learn from our mistakes, so obviously a sequel that leverages the same technology and characters would naturally supersede technical issues through iteration alone, right? We thought we had nothing to worry about as Survivor proved to be a better game in every conceivable way. Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite what happened. It is a better game than Fallen Order in most cases, although its technical shortcomings are almost identical or perhaps even more unforgiving in some respects. Cutscenes will often bug out, platforming is finicky in that low-budget licensed platformer kinda way, and there’s a bizarre inconsistent quality to the world which is a far cry from Respawn’s usual output. The peerless level of performance we’ve come to expect from Apex Legends and Titanfall 2 isn’t here, much of it replaced with a rickety baseline that either blows me away or leaves me underwhelmed and nothing in between.
The weeks after launch were filled with the same glitches as its predecessor. Cutscenes or hilarious encounters devolved into buggy skirmishes as Cal glitched into scenery or the AI suddenly blew a circuit and did unimaginable things. Even now I’m stumbling across foibles like this which make the seams holding this experience together painfully obvious. It’s made worse when Fallen Order and Survivor are Soulsborne games in a lot of ways, which are all synonymous with quality and precision that sadly isn’t found here. The majority of locations are held together by duct tape and prayers, with Cal Kestis moving about the place with the grace of a Ken Doll. I sound harsh, but it's difficult to ignore when I otherwise am so desperate to have Survivor suck me in. Because, as I said, it’s a damn good game under all of this. Worse yet, I fear without change there isn’t a guaranteed way to fix these problems.
Fallen Order sold millions of copies, surpassing expectations in the process. Survivor was a sizable part of EA’s bottom line that couldn’t afford the single delay it was given, let alone multiple ones which would have allowed the game to ship in a far more palatable state. What we got was likely a consequence of a studio crunching down to the wire and doing whatever it could to eliminate bugs and deliver a game that not only looked incredible, but surpassed its predecessor. It managed that, and I’m still trying to understand the cost of such an ordeal. I’m potentially spoiled by the Star Wars brand and thus expect one of its few blockbuster games not to fall apart at the slightest prodding, but surely we’re capable of better than this?