Jedi: Fallen Order Has Just Saved EA's Star Wars

4. Respawn's Unique Creative Freedom

But you might be thinking: why? Why is Respawn allowed this freedom when Visceral wasn’t?

Well, the reason the developer has managed to be able to avoid so many trends that have plagued all of EA’s other games - a focus on live-services, microtransactions, Frostbite 3 - could be because the game was in production before Respawn were actually bought by EA.

That purchase went down in 2017, when Fallen Order was already in production, so the studio didn’t have as many in-house mandates to live (or die) by.

This is both a blessing and a curse though; it means that Fallen Order can operate slightly outside of the EA system, but it could also mean that it’s a one-off, and afterwards they’ll be forced to adopt the regular tools.

Hopefully, though, if Fallen Order does well under these conditions - and considering just how much bad press the likes of Frostbite and live-service mandates have gotten EA over the past few months, it might inspire them to consider changing their stance across the board.

This wouldn’t only help their Star Wars universe, but hopefully free up creativity and productivity across EA’s first-party slate in general.