The last few years have been interesting for Star Wars. The franchise has seen a recent surge in the TV and books space, but its gaming presence has been a bit messier. Battlefront II was plagued by bad press in relation to loot boxes and gambling addictions, and the LEGO Star Wars games simply existed. The mid-to-late 2010s left much to be desired if the 90's and early 2000s were home to some great games from the franchise.
No one expected Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to take off the way it did in 2019. It was originally thought to be a decent-ish character action game cribbing from the beloved Souls games and starring the average-looking Cal Kestis. The game was praised for being an old school, no frills single player game that was well put together, and for being a well-told exploration of a Jedi traumatized by Order 66. The success of Fallen Order allowed for a sequel in the form of Jedi Survivor to be guaranteed in the year 2023, allowing for another Star Wars game to be made.
It was how isolated it was that made its story work so well, even as it was picking up just a few years after Revenge of the Sith. There were familiar planets like Dathomir and Dagobah, along with big universe appearances like Saw Guerra and Darth Vader. It was Vader who made the most striking appearance, given that he had no trouble cutting down Jedi who survived the Purge, and how freely he killed those related to his old life.
The most ballsy move of the game was when Fallen Order ended on Cal destroying the Holocron containing information on Force-sensitive kids. He trusted that things would eventually work themselves out after seeing that trying to start a new Jedi order could doom those kids and himself. It gave him and his friends the chance to exist in this universe without a clear goal in mind. It gave Respawn a blank canvas with which to work with these characters during this specific time period where things happen. For a franchise that prided itself on addressing an inevitable future hanging over many of its characters, from the Ghost crew to Ahsoka Tano and Darth Maul, as of now.
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It will carry over for Jedi Survivor. The first trailer offers a glimpse of Cal fighting another Inquisitor, as well as the sight of Cal and his robot watching an unknown person in a bacta tank. It is a confirmation that Respawn wants to continue making good Star Wars games. If you watch the Ahsoka series or the Tales of the Jedi shorts, you'll see that they're going to be a Star Wars Rebels reunion. There is no shot of Cal meeting Ahsoka or a young Han Solo, not even a hypothetical tease of bringing in material from the Expanded Universe.
This is Star Wars, and that will reveal those things in time. If Respawn sticks to its guns and just focuses on single-player adventures where Cal and co get into trouble while occasionally brushing shoulders with legacy, would that be a bad thing? It's not a bad sub-franchise to build out in a distant universe.
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