The upcoming EA title Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order will allow players to explore many different planets in the order of their choice. However, developer Respawn Entertainment and parent company EA have confirmed that players won’t have access to a fast travel feature.
Citing a desire for players to, “explore and traverse the different planets,” the developer noted that this common open-world feature will not be available when the game releases next month.
“While we don’t have fast travel in the game, we do want players to explore and traverse (and re-traverse) the different planets, which players can do from The Mantis,” a representative from EA said. “We also wanted each planet’s explorable areas to feel interconnected through discoverable shortcuts back to key areas. No matter how deep you got into a planet, you can traverse back to where you want to go with ease or through a little planning on your map.”
Fast travel is a common feature in most open-world games, allowing players to transport themselves instantly between checkpoints, often with little to no explanation. Sometimes these fast travel options are woven into the narrative, like in 2018’s God of War. Fast travel was accessible through several magical doorways that lead to the Realm Between Realms, where players could travel great distances with ease.
The mention of shortcuts raises an interesting question. Will these be literal shortcuts on the map that the player will be able to unlock? Something like moving a large stone at the end of a previously blocked off tunnel could shave some time off of backtracking. Or, will Jedi Fallen Order have some kind of portal system or ship pick up?
A lot has been said about the breathtakingly enormous areas to explore throughout Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. From the sound of it, there seems to be a lot of ways for players to travel off of the beaten path.
Exploration is something we haven’t seen in a Star Wars game in quite a while. Soldier campaign games like Battlefront and Battlefront II have been the only Star Wars titles we’ve seen in the last few years. Even previously released one player action games for the franchise, like Star Wars The Force Unleashed, were very linear and did not offer much in the way of exploration.
If you want to find an example of large-scale exploration in a Star Wars title, you’d have to look back on BioWare’s Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic RPG series and their MMO, Star Wars The Old Republic.
Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order releases everywhere on November 15, 2019, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
