The big thing with making a Metroidvania style game is that you have to gate progression with items and abilities. And, assuming you allow players to sequence break (as all great Metroidvania games should), you need to make sure that this violation of the intended order doesn’t end up stranding players in an unwinnable scenario.
Unfortunately, it looks like that’s exactly what happens in the otherwise excellent Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Without getting into spoilers too much, if you choose to go into Dathomir early on in the game, you find that much of the area is inaccessible to you, because you don’t have the powers you need to navigate most of it. Alright, fair enough. One of those inaccessible areas, however, appears to be a chasm—that cannot be traversed with a double jump.
That’s supposed to be your cue to give up and come back when you have something to get you past that point, but if you’re bullheaded and stubborn, you can actually manage to make it to the other side. And once you do, well… you’ve read the headline. You get stuck.
See, you find yourself in a new area, which requires even more Force powers to navigate. You cannot go back, because this follows a scripted sequence that firmly puts you in this new location. If by any chance you sat down at a Meditation Point after making that jump, you are officially screwed. You’re stuck. You cannot go anywhere, and you can’t even revert to an earlier save now.
The issue was identified and reported on by Kotaku, and thankfully, they’ve already gotten an assurance from EA that it’s something they’re working on fixing. Which is good. But until that happens, maybe stay away from Dathomir until you have the Force Powers needed to make your way through it, yeah?
