Star Wars Celebration Chicago has brought us several updates on upcoming projects, like The Mandalorian, and revealed the first trailers for Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (above). The game comes from Respawn Entertainment and EA Star Wars. It’s set after Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith and follows one of the last surviving Padawans after Order 66 led to the murder of most Jedi. Cal Kestis — voiced and mo-capped by Cameron Monaghan (Shameless, Gotham) — is hiding from Purge Troopers on the planet Bracca until his decision to save a friend exposes his force sensitivity.
It’s a single-player Star Wars game that, admittedly, looks like fun. We saw a lot of positive reactions to the game, but people on Twitter went negative about one aspect of the marketing: EA’s involvement. Specifically, they joked about this tweet from the multiple Golden Poo Award-winning company:
No microtransactions. No loot boxes. And no, we won't be adding them. A single-player Star Wars story for those of you who are ready to become a Jedi. https://t.co/kTheWVBjJc
— EA Star Wars (@EAStarWars) April 13, 2019
EA has had to apologize for microtransactions and loot boxes in the past, and they even temporarily removed microtransactions from another Star Wars game, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, after criticism. And since gamers seem to hate microtransactions as much as they love goofing on EA, the pushback to EA’s tweet was strong:
https://twitter.com/Andrew_Reiner/status/1116835410360008705
I love that EA's marketing for this game is basically "It's nothing like an EA game!" https://t.co/n2c5rnGEE7
— David Milner (@DaveMilbo) April 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/Username2622/status/1116999390856712192
— BeersBurd (@BeersBurd) April 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/PrequelMemesBot/status/1117356156177928192
*crosses fingers behind back* pic.twitter.com/DMWv7IQdOO
— ApacheSmash❗️DDG+ (@ApacheSmash) April 13, 2019
— PhoenixRyan (@PhoenixRyanTV) April 13, 2019
https://twitter.com/Its_the_Joshua/status/1117141476817952770
Even other game devs were cracking wise:
No microtransactions. No loot boxes. And no, we won't be adding them. A single-player Pikuniku story for those of you who are ready to become a hero. pic.twitter.com/OUeEjFzZmK
— Devolver Digital (@devolverdigital) April 14, 2019
But — if you’ll forgive a bit of a non sequitor — this definitely wasn’t the best Star Wars-related joke we saw this weekend. That honor goes to this timely mashup:
Holy crap did you guys catch this moment in the @StarWars Episode IX trailer??? pic.twitter.com/gmQMFdW5Be
— Devin Delliquanti (@DevDell) April 14, 2019
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is coming — without microtransactions or loot boxes — to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC this November 15th.