Games

Star Wars Jedi Has One Last Chance to Break an Ironclad Tradition

Published

1 month ago

October 24, 2024

As the Star Wars Jedi series transparently comes to a close with its upcoming third installment, it’s interesting to look back on its two current titles, what they achieved, and what may yet come to pass. The storytelling structure Respawn has dedicated itself to has been fairly loose when it comes to overarching plots, perhaps due to its present impermanence or irrelevance within Star Wars as a whole, and has thankfully allowed for more intimate and character-driven moments to thrive.

It’s no small feat that the Stinger Mantis crew is beloved in the franchise and, as they only finally came together by the end of the original game, it was mildly disappointing to see that Cal Kestis and his companions had abruptly disbanded in the five years between Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The franchise has forgone any additional narrative content in the past, but there’s a case to be made for the third game to have substantial, story-related DLC, especially if the sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is truly the last opportunity for Respawn to flesh characters out and offer them closure.

Star Wars Jedi’s ‘Final Chapter’ Shouldn’t Be the End of Star Wars Soulslikes

Cal Kestis’ story may be ending in the Jedi franchise’s final chapter, but that doesn’t mean Star Wars Soulslikes should be finished indefinitely.

Star Wars Jedi’s Send-Off Could Continue the Story with Post-Launch Content

The Stinger Mantis crew looks a bit different than it did back in Fallen Order by the end of Survivor, replacing Cere with Bode Akuna’s daughter Kata. But, with most of these companions back in Cal’s company again, it would be a mistake not to have Survivor’s sequel actually depict their journeys and interactions as a whole for once.

Cere is dead and Cal has taken Kata—who seems completely content and understanding of the situation regarding her father—under his wing, which could inevitably lead to Cal and Merrin raising Kata as their own child. Even so, a galaxy-wide, planet-hopping adventure is seemingly on the menu if Respawn is going to stick with its Star Wars Jedi formula, and it’d be phenomenal to finally see a full game’s worth of witty banter and fun interactions between Cal and his loved ones. If that can’t be achieved within the base game, though, Respawn considering story-related DLC would be a huge boon as it could extend the adventure if only a little bit.

Respawn doesn’t owe players additional content post-launch, and yet it has fostered a narrative and characters who would benefit immeasurably from expansions or elaborate story-related DLC chapters taking place before or after the base game’s events.

So far, the intended direction of Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi franchise has been impossible to predict, for better or for worse. Fallen Order demonstrates that profoundly with how open-ended and subversively it concludes, while Survivor leaves its protagonist and his close ones in a similarly ambiguous position. Unlike Fallen Order, though, there is a lot of catching up for Star Wars Jedi to do still regarding one enticing facet of the series that Survivor egregiously denied players.

Star Wars Jedi Has No Real Reason to Abandon Its Tried and True Formula

The ending of Fallen Order strongly implies that the Stinger Mantis crew would include Cal, BD-1, Cere Junda, Greez Dritus, Merrin, and—depending on whether players pursued and approached it on Bogano—a shy bogling all partaking in exciting adventures throughout the galaxy together. Moreover, the last line of dialogue in Fallen Order encapsulates precisely what needed to be explored thereafter as Cal openly asks, “So where to now?”

Rather, while the Stinger Mantis crew gives Star Wars Jedi a conceivable wealth of creative adventures, trivial or otherwise, on planets new or old for possible DLC chapters to follow, it would be odd if Respawn suddenly decided its third game would have story-related DLCs when its previous two Jedi games didn’t. For better or for worse, the Star Wars Jedi franchise will probably be neatly packaged in a trilogy without any extraneous content aside from possible future novels serving to pave over deep gaps.