Respawn Considered Delaying Jedi: Fallen Order to Smooth out Its Rampant Bugs

[Deleted member 59955]

Respawn Considered Delaying Jedi: Fallen Order to Smooth out Its Rampant Bugs

It's been a bonkers year for the team at Respawn Entertainment. In February 2019, the team surprise-launched Apex Legen…

www.usgamer.net

"Yeah, it was a conversation that we had and we decided that we wanted the game out there, we wanted to get it, you know, being out for the holiday," says Zampella. "It's a game that really fits that timeframe."

"I think we're in a situation [where] we're trying to build a game for several different systems and we wanted to hit a date, obviously," says Asmussen. "[W]e all look at it, and earnestly we feel like we could, if we had a little bit more time, it would've been better. But at the same time, we could play through it. It was good and we felt like fans were going to like it."

"That was always the natural direction, considering you're wielding this deadly weapon," says Jason de Heras, lead combat designer on Jedi: Fallen Order. "So we wanted to make it about doing a less amount of attacks, and how can we build a whole enemy cast around that. Because that means if I'm not swinging a lot, then I'm thinking about other things to do. So parrying, rolling, force slow, force powers, and then we just build all the enemies to make you do different things. So it's not about just pressing square."

"What's next is a celebration of this win."

 

[Deleted member 21709]

They probably should have. But I'm sure that would have cost them a lot of sales.. are they going to continue supporting it?

 

[Cliff Steele]

Well. At least he is honest.

But fuck that anyway. Game was a bugfest.

 

[dancingphlower]

They really should have delayed it. My time with the game was riddled with bugs, performance issues, and an overall janky feel to the combat. Still fun but needed more polish.

 

[Meg Cherry]

They probably should have.

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Especially considering how slow the start of this year has been. Jedi hitting in February would've been a real sweet spot.

But hey, it sold like gangbusters so they probably did the right thing.

 

[DrDeckard]

Game was brilliant but could have been exceptional.

 

[Aurc]

So it's as people predicted: they rushed it out the door for Star Wars season so that they could have The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Fallen Order out all at once.

Pretty disgraceful.

 

[MistahS]

Defo could've used the time. My playthrough had a bunch of graphical and loading issues. Sometimes entire areas wouldn't load.

 

[Bloodsent]

Especially considering how slow the start of this year has been. Jedi hitting in February would've been a real sweet spot.

But hey, it sold like gangbusters so they probably did the right thing.

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Yeah but that is all hindsight. It launched before all of the delays were announced out of Q1.

 

[VaporSnake]

Game was pretty unplayable on the hardest difficulty because of these kinds of bugs (at least at launch, haven't revisited)

 

[Deleted member 54292]

bless my luck on PC. game was awesome. sorry to all who had buggy experiences.

 

[Deleted member 13250]

Well it seems they made a good decision seeing how well it sold.

 

[catswaller]

I beat this on the hardest difficulty on xbox a week or so after it came out. The bugs were silly, but hardly a real problem. Glad they hit their target without (presumably) breaking the dev teams' backs.

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

Has any of this been improved in patches? I still haven't played it yet.

 

[mindsale]

I hate how companies let retail releases and mass markets be QA. There's very little incentive to buy games at launch beyond that new game smell.

 

[Ralemont]

It was the right decision for the business with honestly minimal negative impact on the consumer base at large. They made a ton more money not only from holiday proximity but Rise proximity, and the game was critically and popularly a hit.

 

[Deleted member 8196]

So it's as people predicted: they rushed it out the door for Star Wars season so that they could have The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Fallen Order out all at once.

Pretty disgraceful.

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They (Respawn) rushed it?

More like Disney and EA wanted the game to be out by the Holiday season.

 

[PinkCrayon]

I sequence broke the game about 3 minutes into the first planet

 

[liquidtmd]

Game was brilliant but could have been exceptional.

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I'm here. I'm aware of people's thoughts on the bugs and whilst they didn't hinder me having a good time, I was aware of some polish required

For the best will in the world though, I appreciate the need to hit the window they were under

 

[Kthulhu]

It was the right decision for the business with honestly minimal negative impact on the consumer base at large. They made a ton more money not only from holiday proximity but Rise proximity, and the game was critically and popularly a hit.

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You say that but this stuff can result in bad PR over time. Respawn usually puts out good stuff so it probably won't hit them too hard but there are plenty of companies who have hurt future sales by releasing buggy titles.

 

[Deleted member 17207]

And they should have.

Take notes from Nintendo (and others), folks. Look at the Animal Crossing hype - everyone has completely forgotten that it was delayed because it looks so damn good.

That could've been this game. This game played like an alpha demo in MANY places throughout my playthrough. Did I still enjoy it? Hell yeah. Could I have enjoyed it WAY more? Most definitely.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

I think delaying it would've been the right call. But perhaps delaying it until after TROS could've hurt its sales in the long run because people may have burned out on Star Wars after that mess of a movie and no longer wanted to spend a bunch of money on the IP for a while.

 

[Aurc]

They (Respawn) rushed it?

More like Disney and EA wanted the game to be out by the Holiday season.

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The "they" I refer to is, of course, Disney and EA. Thought that was implied through the mention of the other media. Really wish Respawn could've had more time to polish the game.

 

[Einchy]

So it's as people predicted: they rushed it out the door for Star Wars season so that they could have The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Fallen Order out all at once.

Pretty disgraceful.

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Little dramatic there, don't you think?

 

[Monkey D.]

Well... Did they use the time after release to fix what they are talking about here to make the game better?

I plan to buy it soon.

 

[Fisty]

It's too bad EA didnt

 

[DSP]

I had no game bugs on PC, performance though is very variable and a stutter city at times.

 

[Aurc]

Little dramatic there, don't you think?

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No, because my experience with Fallen Order was pretty rough, as were other people's. It bordered on broken at times, and to my knowledge, these issues still haven't been ironed out post-launch.

 

[UglySofaGaming]

...well the very least they could have done is fixed it in post.

I played the game after Christmas and the bugs and lack of polish really start to show in the second half - maybe I just sucked but it really felt like the game wasn't responsive enough for me to excel at the harder combat scenarios (on base PS4)

 

[Deleted member 6263]

Have these bugs been mostly addressed now?

 

[Ralemont]

You say that but this stuff can result in bad PR over time. Respawn usually puts out good stuff so it probably won't hit them too hard but there are plenty of companies who have hurt future sales by releasing buggy titles.

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Which companies would those be? Bethesda is the most well-known for buggy games since forever, and Fallout 4 sold 15 million copies.

 

[SunBroDave]

Had very few issues on PC. Hopefully next time Respawn will have the pull with EA to be able to get the extra time needed to polish the game to a higher standard

 

[DriftingSpirit]

Which will make my wait to play it on PS5 all the better.

 

[Pryme]

Delaying this game would have been a silly thing to do, given the holiday window, the Star Wars Movie and the Mandalorian.

They really should still do bug fixing updates to smooth it out as best as possible.

Had very few issues on PC. Hopefully next time Respawn will have the pull with EA to be able to get the extra time needed to polish the game to a higher standard

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I'm not sure why you assume Respawn themselves aren't interested in sales. Lol, why does everything have to devolve to EA?

 

[GSR]

I've been playing this this month on an Xbox One X and haven't had any real issues besides inconsistent performance. The game can feel a little janky in the sense that exploring around leads to a lot of invisible walls, but that's regrettably par for the course for this kind of free-movement detailed 3D environment that isn't an actual open world.

 

[Kthulhu]

Which companies would those be? Bethesda is the most well-known for buggy games since forever, and Fallout 4 sold 15 million copies.

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And then you have Fallout 76 which bombed critically and has people uncertain about their other games.

Watch Dogs had a bunch of bugs at launch and it's sequel sold worse than the original.

 

[Lulu]

Have most of these bugs yet?

 

[Jamrock User]

Playing it now and man is it rough.

Stuttering and just weird ass animations. I will say it's quite good at though.

 

[Chivalry]

Shoul have. Its tecnical state is quite embarassing.

 

[Holundrian]

And reviewers gave it a free pass for it, worthless media.

 

[SunBroDave]

I'm not sure why you assume Respawn themselves aren't interested in sales. Lol, why does everything have to devolve to EA?

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No one said they're not. But EA is the one paying for the game. When EA says the game has be out by this date, Respawn has to release the game by this date. That said, I don't disagree with you. Considering how well the game sold and how good of a game it was even at launch, I would have made the same decision.

 

[DaveLong]

The hyperbole in this thread will be breathtaking.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Bugs really aren't that big of a deal to most people judging by the success of Bethesda games. I think they made the right call coming out before the movie.

 

[Villein]

whole game felt 3-4 months to early at the least

 

[ShutterMunster]

Water is wet. Every studio working on AAA releases can say this,. Every game ships with known bugs.

FALLEN ORDER wasn't some unplayable mess, so this is a non-story to me. But I'm expecting pitch forks anyway if yesterday's Twitter discourse is any real indication.

Dumb.

whole game felt 3-4 months to early at the least

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Yeah... no.

 

[Deleted member 8468]

It really should have been held back. As is it was a frustrating mess one or two times too often.

Great game otherwise, has it been patched? I haven't played since close to release.

 

[Jobbs]

My playthrough didn't have many *major* bugs, (though there were a few) the game in general is sloppy feeling, and I think the game gets too much of a pass for its terrible level design/"puzzle" design. Combat was okay but not great.

The play areas feel exceedingly artificial.. Like it's not a place that could really exist, it's a series of purposefully placed video game objects and obstacles, and it doesn't try to hide it. One of the most annoying places for me was a temple where passages were frequently blocked by dried up twisty roots.. If only I had some kind of cutting device that could easily cut through roots.... HMMMMM

As it turns out, the *only* thing in the entire galaxy that can clear dried roots is... Little metal balls with magic flame inside of them. And, fortunately, we're in the one place in the galaxy where those metal balls exist! Feel immersed in the game world yet?

I despise this kind of game design.

 

[Deleted member 4260]

My experience with this game was ruined by how unpolished it was.

 

[Papercuts]

I'm not surprised since the game felt like it could have used that time to iron a lot out, but I'm sure that hitting holiday/lining up around the next movie release would have been really bad to miss. I doubt this is a particularly unique thing to consider for any big game, even games that already have been already been delayed though.

 

[Nimby]

And reviewers gave it a free pass for it, worthless media.

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No they didn't?

I saw a lot of reviews commenting on the buggy state of the game.