Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is out now, and word on the street says the game is doing well: its early sales on PC have surpassed the launch numbers of both Star Wars Battlefront games that EA has released, which can only be a good sign.
There’s been no official announcement of a sequel, but the team from Respawn Entertainment have said that they’d like to “keep telling” the story of Cal Kestis. But what will a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel actually entail? For now, nobody knows, but when has that ever stopped us from speculating?
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With that in mind, we’ve tried to pick apart the ending of Jedi: Fallen Order and do some guesswork about what could be coming next. Here’s what could happen in a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order…
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The Mantis Crew on the Run from Vader
The showstopping ending to Jedi: Fallen Order sees the player coming face to face with Darth Vader, who brutally murders the Second Sister (who was such an interesting character!) and tries to kill the Mantis crew, as well. Cal, Cere, Greez, and Merrin all survive, though, and it seems pretty obvious that the gang will be sticking together for further adventures.
However, the Mantis crew’s anonymity has gone out the window now, and it seems plausible that Vader will soon be hunting them down. It’s quite telling that the game doesn’t let you jump back into the galaxy after your encounter with Vader, with players only being able to revisit planets after the credits by loading up the game to an earlier point in the narrative. Unless a DLC is coming, it seems safe to assume that we’ll only get to see what happens post-Vader-battle if a full sequel does end up getting made. Here’s hoping for some more scary encounters with the Dark Lord of the Sith.
Cal Taking on a Padawan of His Own
Although Cal decided to destroy the Holocron containing details about Force-sensitive kids, it would still make gameplay-related sense for Cal to take on a Padawan and provide Jedi: Fallen Order‘s sequel with a less skilled protagonist. After all, now that Cal has all the skills of a Jedi Knight under his belt, he’s arguably a bit too powerful to be the sole player character in a sequel. We’d love to play as Cal again, but it would also be cool to see him teaching a young ward the ways of the Force. And this would give new players a way to learn the ropes.
Certainly, one way to mix up the feel of a Jedi: Fallen Order sequel would be having a different (or more than one) playable character. Swapping between Cal and his Padawan, and maybe even mixing in some segments where you play as Merrin and Cere, could give the sequel a grander sense of scale and a broader range of useable abilities. Is there a reason that Jedi: Fallen Order‘s final cutscenes make a point of showing us a Force-sensitive child from the same race as Greedo? That young Rodian could be an interesting character if we get to meet them properly.
A New McGuffin
Now that Cal has followed Endo Cordova’s clues and tracked down the aforementioned Holocron, the Jedi: Fallen Order franchise needs a new goal for players to work towards. It needs to be something that will send the Mantis crew to another series of planets, because, presumably, a sequel would retain the core gameplay experience of exploring areas and solving puzzles as well as taking part in battles against local creatures and the Empire’s goons.
Introducing another Holocron or Jedi relic for Cal to track down may seem a bit on the nose, so here’s hoping that Jedi: Fallen Order can find something slightly different to drive the narrative next time around. Could Saw Gerrera’s Partisans or the fledgeling Rebel Alliance have a more militaristic mission in mind, perhaps? Might there be an Imperial McGuffin for players to seek out? Only time will tell what a sequel revolves around, of course, but a new motivation for our heroes is a key nut for the team at Respawn to crack.
Time to Die
There’s something of an elephant in the room for the potential Jedi: Fallen Order series: although the characters in the game aren’t aware of future events, fans of the wider Star Wars franchise know that Cal and his crew are nowhere to be seen during the Original Trilogy. They are destined not to take part in the big battles to come, which fans have already seen in the movies, and this raises some questions: is the Mantis crew doomed to be wiped out by Vader? Could they go out in a blaze of Empire-defying glory like the core cast of heroes from Rogue One?
Of course, there’s no hard and fast rule that says the Mantis crew has to die. There are some characters from Star Wars Rebels, for instance, who survived into the era of the original movies – they just never showed up during the key events depicted in those films. Either way, though, it feels like the Jedi: Fallen Order characters should reach a conclusion to their journey at some point. There’s only so much these heroes can do when they live in the shadows of the movies. For instance, it was always obvious during the game that Cal and Cere could not succeed in rebuilding the Jedi Order because we’ve all seen the absence of such an order in A New Hope.
It’s interesting, then, to wonder just how many games the Jedi: Fallen Order franchise could sustain. We’d love to see a sequel that puts Cal and his chums on a collision course with Vader, and it would be cool to explore some new areas (a trip to Jedha might be nice), but it does feel like this particular strand of Star Wars storytelling will have to deliver a definitive ending at some point. In fact, it could serve up something really special if it did.
After all, Rogue One proved that the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope are ripe for telling powerful stories that have dramatic conclusions. It would be great to see Jedi: Fallen Order 2 – or whatever it ends up being called – following in those footsteps and being bold enough to wrap up Cal’s story in a meaningful and emotional way, rather than just setting up yet another sequel.
If a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel is officially announced, we’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, please feel free to leave your own guesswork and wishes in the comments below…
