Key Takeaways
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor released a patch to address performance issues like framerate hitching, improving the gameplay experience.
- Transitioning from gameplay to cutscenes in Survivor bad been jarring prior to this, with noticeable performance issues at launch. Asset loading challenges and slow door animations impacted gameplay around Pyloon’s Saloon in Survivor.
- With the next Jedi game, Respawn has to make sure that there are less technical issues, as thus far they have held the series back.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is finally in a much different state than it was at launch. The sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has never been free of debilitating bugs, but its rampant performance hiccups have persisted as a baked-in characteristic of it being infamously unoptimized. This was obvious when seeing that Survivor had to load shaders each time it booted up and Koboh in particular has remained a sore spot for stuttering and drastic frame drops. Settings can be tweaked to have it be marginally less inconsistent and yet it has been an unfortunate blemish nonetheless.
This is an issue Respawn needs to prioritize in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s sequel lest it endures the same criticisms for three Star Wars Jedi games in a row. However, Survivor introduced a new problem as a stylistic choice that a third game must also address. Indeed, Fallen Order managed to be fully cinematic as is, whereas Survivor chose to adopt a widened aspect ratio with letterboxing in its cutscenes, perhaps as a way to emulate Star Wars’ cinematic aspect like Star Wars Outlaws recently has. In doing so, Survivor’s cuts, transitions, and loading screens are more noticeable and disarming than ever.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Unreliable Performance Takes Away from Its Cutscenes
Almost all transitions from gameplay to cutscenes in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor are a jarring hard-cut with an unmistakable leap to a pre-rendered cinematic. They’re noticeable both naturally and because Cal Kestis is commonly dragged toward the trigger before the cutscene’s letterboxing flattens the screen’s aspect ratio and control of the camera is locked into the cutscene’s scripted cinematography.
This could be a worrying omen for a third Star Wars Jedi game if the same approach to cutscenes is taken with no effort on Respawn’s part to make them more fluid so as to not disrupt immersion. If optimizing a threequel is possible, it would be great to see cutscenes implemented in a way where transitions don’t stretch visuals too much while pulling the camera into a distinct shot, let alone cutting away to something else suddenly with a new aspect ratio—not to mention a 30fps cap, which is more disconcerting the higher a player’s frame rate is normally in-game.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Slams Pyloon’s Saloon’s Doors in Cal Kestis’ Face
Asset loading is also a challenge for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, at least while players are painstakingly attempting to enter or exit Pyloon’s Saloon and are met with multiple loading screens disguised as slow door animations. This wouldn’t be egregious to have to sit through countless times as players revisit Pyloon’s if not for all the other performance issues they’re grappling with at the same time, compounding all of them in and around Rambler’s Reach’s cantina as well as the Stinger Mantis’ landing pad. Loading screens are inescapable and justifiable, but how dogged they are can hopefully be mitigated in a sequel that will likely launch on next-gen platforms.
Overall, Survivor is a phenomenal Star Wars game that is bogged down by performance and optimization grievances and it’d be a shame if its follow-up shares the same fate. A third game may not be excusable with the same issues present and Respawn has been fortunate that Fallen Order and Survivor are both well-received, though performance has never been a strong suit of the Star Wars Jedi franchise and it’d be refreshing to see that tradition upended.