Good news, gang: We're finally gonna put an end to these Star Wars. Specifically, an end to the tales of the most tastefully mulleted Jedi to ever grace the galaxy, Cal Kestis. EA's announced that the conclusion to its Star Wars Jedi trilogy is in the works, and that "Respawn is working hard to bring the final chapter of this thrilling story to players."
That's per EA entertainment and tech president Laura Miele speaking at the corporation's investor day yesterday, dropping lots of boasts and big numbers to wow the moneybags. One of those boasts? "Over 40 million Star Wars fans have connected with Cal Kestis and his arc of becoming a powerful Jedi."
I'm assuming that's just a slightly roundabout way of saying 40 million people have played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor, and not how many people have found Cal on LinkedIn. It's made a killing for EA, too. The corp has "delivered some of the highest-quality and bestselling Star Wars of all time," brags Miele, "with over $5 billion in net bookings."
Again, investor-day speak. You can read "net bookings" as the amount of money EA's made off of games set in a galaxy far, far away minus all the fees and what-have-you that eat into that number. No wonder EA's keen to put out another one.
Miele didn't drop any hints about when we can expect to see the next Jedi game, but I'm sensing through the Force that it might be a while. We only got Jedi: Survivor last year, and Respawn is still dropping patches for it, so I'd be surprised if we heard a peep about the next game before it's had a few years in the oven. Plus, of course, the series lost Stig Asmussen—director of the first two games—when he wandered off to found a new studio called Giant Skull, which probably didn't speed up development.
Anyway, I hope Survivor is still in the oven, too, come to think of it: It's still an aggravating hitchy mess on my 4080-equipped machine, despite nine patches promising all manner of framerate improvements. I hope it eventually becomes playable, since I was very pleasantly surprised by Fallen Order. I originally wrote it off as a generic Star Wars tale starring a forgettable Blando Calrissian, but I came away genuinely liking the game's mechanics, cast of thoroughly traumatised weirdos, and rich collection of ponchos. Will they all find a happy ending in the third game? I've got a bad feeling about that.
