Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts, released November 15, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with native PS5/Series versions following in 2021. It holds Metacritic scores of 79 (PC/PS4) and 81 (Xbox One), sold 8 million copies within two and a half months and over 10 million within a year, and grew past 20 million players — numbers that quietly rewrote EA’s own strategy. This was the single-player, no-microtransactions Star Wars game arriving straight after the Battlefront II loot-box scandal, from a publisher that had recently declared linear single-player a dying business. It proved the opposite emphatically enough to spawn a trilogy.

It’s also a genre hybrid built with unusual confidence: Souls-lite combat and bonfire-style meditation points, Metroidvania planet layouts, and Uncharted-scale set pieces, wrapped around a canon story slotted between Episodes III and IV.

Technical Specifications

Cal Kestis, Padawan in Hiding

Cal Kestis (a motion-captured Cameron Monaghan) survived Order 66 as a child and has spent five years hiding as a scrapper on the junk planet Bracca, suppressing his Force connection — until saving a friend exposes him to the Empire’s Jedi-hunting Inquisitors. Rescued by former Jedi Cere Junda and pilot Greez, and joined by the instantly beloved backpack droid BD-1, Cal chases a Jedi holocron containing the names of Force-sensitive children, racing the Second Sister across the galaxy. The supporting arcs — Cere’s guilt, the Second Sister’s identity, the Nightsister Merrin — earned the story a reputation as EA-era Star Wars’ best writing, and the finale’s uninvited guest remains one of the decade’s most-clipped gaming scenes.

Souls Bones, Star Wars Skin

Director Stig Asmussen — previously God of War III’s director — built combat openly on Souls grammar: stamina-flavored posture, parry timing, meditation circles that restore healing stims and respawn enemies, and XP dropped on death, recoverable by striking your killer. The difficulty slider softened the formula for a mass audience, while planets (Zeffo, Kashyyyk, Dathomir and more) unfold as Metroidvania maps regated by Force powers and BD-1 upgrades. The one legendary quirk: unlockable lightsaber colors and ponchos as the cosmetic economy — a meme the sequel answered with real customization.

Reception

Critics landed just shy of the 80s — praising the combat blend, the cast, and the sheer relief of a great single-player Star Wars game, while flagging launch-window technical roughness, occasional camera and platforming jank, and load-heavy world design on base consoles. The commercial verdict was louder than the critical one: EA’s own messaging shifted within months, publicly re-embracing story games, and the “Respawn proved EA wrong” framing became the game’s permanent legacy line.

Where to Play It Today

Fallen Order is on Steam, the EA app, PlayStation, and Xbox — with the native current-gen upgrade free — and appears in EA Play and Game Pass catalogs; on Steam it now routinely drops to around $4. The story continues directly in Jedi: Survivor, with a trilogy-closing third game announced as in development at Respawn.