Star Wars Jedi: Survivor took a big leap forward in exploration over its predecessor by introducing larger, more open areas to explore. The potential for these explorable worlds was high. Star Wars is a universe that basically has limitless potential for exploration.
Unfortunately, the design of these open spaces not only left me wanting more, but they've actually been a huge negative in my overall experience of the game.
The best open world games give you rewards for exploring. These rewards can be anything from a group of enemies to beat up on, a chest with a new weapon, or even a bit of environmental storytelling to help the world feel more alive. One of the best series for exploring, Fallout, has a reputation for letting you pick a spot on the map and finding something interesting when you travel there.
Not only does Jedi: Survivor sometimes not offer rewards for exploring its open areas, it often allows you to reach many places you aren't supposed to be at yet. Having this happen once is an annoyance, but the number of times it's happened in my first 15-20 hours of play on two separate planets has turned into frustration.
Just like its predecessor, Jedi: Survivor has a map with color coded doors/areas. If a door is red, it is unopenable for you right now. If it's green, it's a shortcut to a previously explored area. If it's yellow, it leads to an area you haven't explored yet. It's extremely handy for someone like me who likes to explore every nook and cranny of a game's world.
The first couple of hours of Jedi: Survivor are linear, point A to point B, with a side path here and there. But soon enough players will find themselves outside the planet's hub town. They're provided with a sweeping cut scene view of the area, and it appears vast. From here, players are given a Main Quest and told exactly where to go, but there's also tons of optional areas to explore, designated by yellow lines on the map.
Surprisingly, exploring these optional paths ends up being a mistake. Some of these paths DO lead to rewards or fun experiences, but far too often traveling off the beaten paths lead to frustrating dead ends.
For example, I discovered an underground complex that appeared corrupted by some sort of black goop. I was super intrigued about what this place was and what calamity befell it. After walking through a large room that was obviously supposed to be a battle arena, I found a room with a massive spinning machine with a button to press. Pressing the button did nothing. No enemies appeared anywhere in this area. In fact, nothing at all happened in this station.
Another time, while just exploring, my companion said "See those flags? That's where we need to go." This was news to me, so I decided to follow the flags. Eventually I came to a cave with a door inside and an NPC guarding it. As I approached, the NPC said "[Spoiler] is waiting for you inside." Again, that was news to me because [Spoiler] was back at the hub base. When I approached the door, it didn't open. Neither the NPC or my Companion said anything else. Nothing happened in this cave.
These types of encounters at the end of explorable branches have happened 5 or 6 times in my first 15-20 hours. It's obvious these areas will be a part of some quest lines in the future. I want to emphasize, I never did anything extravagant to get to these places. I saw yellow marks on my map for unexplored areas and explored them.
Dead ends while exploring aren't necessarily bad things in video games if they at least contain something interesting or give you clues for what you need to do to advance past the dead end. The dead ends in Jedi: Survivor are obviously areas you're meant to explore later, though.
The frustration builds for each dead end for multiple reasons. For one, the map specifically highlights an area as explorable. A bright yellow color says "You haven't gone here yet! Check it out!" At the same time, the map uses red to signify doors you can't open yet. Having one of these dead end paths blocked by a red door would have been far better than being allowed to explore places too early.
Another reason for frustration is that the game pushes you to explore by showing the vastness of the area in a cut scene and then providing you with a mount to explore the area. This implication that the world is open to explore, but then penalizing you after actually exploring sucks. Having an optional path end with a boring result is annoying, having it end with an area you're not supposed to be at is disappointing.
One final cause of frustration for these dead ends is that the rest of the game is so damn fun! I'm interested in the story hook, I love seeing friends from the last game again, the combat and animations are exquisite. When you're following the main path, it all gels together so well. But when you go off the beaten path and get smacked in the face with a dead end, it just feels like a big waste of time.
It's weird because games have had open worlds and rewards figured out for years. How these dead ends ended up in the game is completely befuddling to me.
The easy solution for this problem is to stick to the main story line and just go where the game points you to, and that's what I plan on doing from here on out, but then why include the explorable areas at all!? If the game is best experienced by following the main storyline, then why not just have that BE the game? It worked just fine for Jedi: Fallen Order.
The vast areas just feel completely unnecessary to the experience the game is going for and I'm surprised more reviewers didn't mention it. Who knows. Maybe they were smarter than me and just stuck to the main path.
