Star Wars: Jedi Survivor delivered on its promise to iterate and improve on the first title on almost every front, but there are some who lament the shift to go wide instead of tall, with fewer total planets Cal Kestus can explore, opting for a greater attention to detail and scale in the ones present. The sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will have Respawn faced with a choice in design priorities, deciding whether it should go further down the current route, or go back to the more linear but varied planets of the original.
Optimization issues aside, Respawn's Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is being heralded as a resounding success, outpacing the first game in sales and finding its way into the early rumblings for game of the year. Hammering out the kinks and fine-tuning what worked as far as combat, exploration, and map interconnectivity all shine relative to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Respawn's writing team also hit on the compelling bonds between the characters cultivated from the previous entry, crafting a powerful narrative that will stay with players as they eagerly await the series' next chapter. As for the game's locations, Respawn has delivered an interesting new formula, though it may or may not be the best direction forward.
Fewer Planets Means More Exploration in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
One critique of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order that Respawn corrected for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was the scope and linearity of its planets. In place of the constant, abbreviated planet-hopping are more sumptuous playable spaces stuffed to the seams with puzzles, side-quests, collectibles, and sights to see. These renovated planets, especially Koboh, allowed Respawn to flex its level design chops with countless unlockable shortcuts and intuitive layouts that made exploration rarely devolve to backtracking, which was another criticism of the first game. The heightened sense of discovery from larger, more populated spaces was a large part of what made Star Wars Jedi: Survivor feel like such a step up from its predecessor.
There is technically only one fewer destination in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, with 6 to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order's 7, however the Shattered Moon and Nova Garon are closer to the first game in terms of size. The decision to make a home planet in Koboh for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was a smart touch that imbued a sense of progression in the world as the storyline progressed. Reception to Koboh and the other large planet Jedah has mostly been positive, with fans able to better acquaint themselves with a locale before having to say goodbye to it, but the change does carry its downsides.
The Next Star Wars Jedi Game Should Focus on More Eclectic Environments
Though Respawn did an adequate job at making each planet in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor contains multitudes, they all largely stay within each one's respective biomes, and that can easily slip into mundanity. No planet ever truly felt like it outstayed its welcome, but the feeling did creep in toward the end of the second act, where Jedah and Koboh are featured over-prominently. Of course, as the game reaches its crescendo and new zones are unlocked, that feeling dissipates, but it does seem to tread dangerously close to stale territory.
Going off the pattern of improvement between games, the saga of Cal Kestus will keep getting better with Respawn at the helm. While there are concerns about the lack of distinct biomes as the studio made the shift to larger but fewer playable areas, that seems a trifle in comparison to all the facets of exploration that have been dramatically improved.
The most elegant solution for the next Star Wars Jedi game would be a compromise, with a better pacing of one-off zones made specifically for story beats and set pieces between the less linear open-world planets. The design of Koboh with Rambler's Reach Outpost constantly evolving over the course of the game is a fantastic idea that Respawn should expand on, but contrasting the sense of feeling at-home should be more frequent space-faring to distant worlds to increase the scope of Cal's incredible journey.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.