April 12, 2019 Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is single-player only.
“No multiplayer, no microtransactions, it’s a story game.” That’s what Respawn chief Vince Zampella had to see in front of a crowd very excited about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, confirming what we’ve been hearing – and hoping – about the game ever since it was announced at E3 last year.
The game will be officially unveiled at a Star Wars Celebration panel tomorrow afternoon, but Zampella’s comments come as part of a broader livestream today (via ResetEra). We also got similar sentiment from Fallen Order producer Blair Brown, who tweeted “So happy to be working on a single player story focused game again, no multiplayer and no MTX.”
We first heard rumours about Fallen Order’s story focus in a podcast a few months after the game’s reveal, and more recently noted insider Jason Schreier has specifically called it out as a “single-player action-adventure game.” As we await a full reveal and the Fallen Order release date, a new interview with Chris Avellone earlier today let us know that the game’s narrative aspirations are so big it’s got a half-dozen narrative designers.
“Story was very important to Respawn,” Avellone tells VG247. “I think they do a good job of introducing various narrative layers into their games already, but they think story is an important part of what they perceive to be a Star Wars game. That’s one of the reasons I like Respawn, because when they tackle something like that, they understand what the important points are.”
Chris Avellone was confirmed as one of the Fallen Order’s writers last month, but the lead narrative designer is Aaron Contreras, who also worked on Mafia 3. The third Mafia was flawed game, to be sure, but it was no slouch when it came to story – especially in the more tightly scripted opening and ending segments.
We’ll see much more at the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order reveal panel tomorrow. Rich is convinced it’s basically going to be a new Jedi Knight game, and I certainly hope he’s right.
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It’s been so long since we’ve seen a Star Wars game focused on telling a new story in the galaxy far, far away that nothing could make me happier.
Update: an earlier version of this article said Contreras led “the creation of the story for Mafia 3”, when in fact he was a narrative designer. The story was created by lead writer Bill Harms with the help of writers Ed Fowler and Charles Webb. We apologise for the error.