How Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Evolves the Metroidvania Roots of Jedi Fallen Order | IGN First

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One of the big departures in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor compared to Fallen Order is that you’re going to have this home away from home in the Planet Koboh. Sure, you’d revisit Bogano and Dathomir a couple of times, but it was always in service of progressing the story and following the mainline plot. In Jedi Survivor, Koboh will almost take on a kind of Metroidvania-like identity with tons of optional areas to explore locked by progression, and each return trip to the planet opening up many new pathways and discoveries. This came out of one of the lessons Respawn learned from feedback of Fallen Order: That players really enjoyed the optional content, like the Crashed Venator and the legendary beasts like Oggdo Bogdo.

“For Survivor, we knew that we wanted to add more optional areas for players to discover and explore. To do this, we knew that we needed to give better rewards for exploration,” said Design Director Jeff Magers.

And sure enough, one of my own big takeaways from my five hours with a preview build of Jedi Survivor was that rewards for taking a detour away from the mainline quest path was always sufficiently rewarding. I’d regularly find tough battles that rewarded skill points, hidden traversal paths that led to new customizable options for Cal, or a shortcut that made traversal through the area much faster.

“We put a lot of work and focus into our customization system for this game so that our cosmetics would be more exciting to find, while also adding more gameplay rewards for exploration. By exploring the worlds, players will both make Cal more their own through customization, and more powerful and equipped to take on the challenges ahead with Skills, Upgrades, and Perks found in optional areas,” said Magers.

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