News surrounding the future of Star Wars video games has been coming thick and fast over the last few days. It was recently announced that Lucasfilm Games would become the “ official identity ” for all gaming titles from Lucasfilm , with any future releases from the Star Wars gaming franchise falling under this banner.
Along with this, a number of Star Wars Battlefront 2 actors have recently revealed that they are once again recording both motion-capture and voice recordings , in preparation for a future project.
Whilst publisher EA has come under fire in recent years for its handling of the franchise, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order became a hit among the community, giving fans a classic, story-based single-player game to sink their teeth into. Released back in 2019, the games graphical capabilities were some of the best we had seen for the time, and a recent posting from EA has revealed what the game will bring to the next-generation consoles.
NEWS
In a recent post on EA's website , the publisher has confirmed a number of improvements to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order , which improves the capabilities of the game on the recently released next-generation consoles, Xbox Series X and Series S, as well as PlayStation 5.
For all consoles, the framerate will be greatly improved, with 60 FPS available on every platform. “ Improved dynamic resolution ranges ” will also be added to the game, allowing for a higher resolution experience.
Interestingly, a “ Performance mode ” has been introduced for Xbox Series X, a feature which is absent on PlayStation 5. This mode allows the game to lock the framerate at a native 60FPS, dropping the resolution to between 1080p and 1440p. The game in “ Normal mode ” on Series X will have a resolution range of 1512p to 2160p.
For the PlayStation 5 however, framerate has been increased from 45FPS to 60FPS, with dynamic resolution now disabled and the game rendering at a native 1200p.
The update is available now on all consoles, and a full list of updated patch nows can be seen at ea.com .
WHAT THIS MEANS
While the updates will bring a breath of fresh air to the already successful games, it's interesting to see the limitations of what the update has utilized. An improvement on the graphical capabilities is present on all consoles, however, it’s disappointing to see that a locked 4K mode is absent. Both the Series X and PlayStation 5 are capable of reaching 4K resolution at ease, so seeing that a native 1200p is present on Sony's newest console brings questions into whether this update is truly 'next-gen'.
While the overall updates seem lackluster when put into comparison against some newly released games for the newer consoles, let's not forget that Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was already a visually stunning game, in which EA would have done well to improve upon. Given that this has been offered as a free 'upgrade', it's hard to find a way to complain, even if certain players may be disappointed the game was not pushed further.
For players upgrading from the older models of previous generation consoles, this may offer a completely different experience to playing the game, and give developers that replayability in a game that is desired by so many.
XBOX Writer