Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Wow, that came out of nowhere! A few days ago, Respawn Entertainment surprised us by releasing a next-generation patch for its impressive Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, bringing with it specific upgrades for More of the power provided by the trio of new consoles. It’s not a full-fledged next-generation patch as such – similar to Cyberpunk 2077, it’s simply tweaking the next-generation code to get higher frame rates on new machines, taking advantage of the CPU in particular to give us a much closer lock to 60 frames per second.

The patch is also interesting because Respawn Entertainment has released patch notes that tell us almost everything we need to know about technical improvements. Frame rates are increased across the board, the quality of post-processing is improved and resolutions are increased. The actual range of updates varies from machine to machine for reasons that are not very clear, but that would be expected to have something to do with the SDK features between generations of Sony and Microsoft, as opposed to the features of the machines themselves.

The Xbox Series X appears to be getting a more complete range of updates. Of the three consoles, it is the only one to maintain the quality and performance modes of the latest generation versions – and both have been improved. The quality mode targets 30fps with a dynamic resolution window from 1512p to 2160p, offering the cleanest image quality and the highest consistency of any console version – albeit with a lower frame rate limit. Its performance mode aims at 60fps, reaching it mostly with a dynamic resolution range from 1080p to 1440p.

In contrast, PlayStation 5 gets a unique mode, targeting 60fps and doing it at 1200p blocked with 1440p of post-processing buffers. It is a more limited update keeping in mind that the standard back-compat in the existing next-generation code delivers 1080p, but the extra pixel count and post-processing accuracy are certainly welcome. Finally, there’s the Xbox Series S – it’s a big update on the One S version, again targeting 60fps. No resolution metrics are provided in the patch notes, but we are seeing a dynamic resolution window in the range from 720p to 900p, tilted towards the Unreal Engine 4’s temporal upscaling to give the perception of a higher, more effective pixel count in more static scenes.

These are the basic specifications of the patch, but how do they work? Well, Fallen Order has always had some problems in terms of asset flow, causing problems and crashes. This is something that happened in all versions of the game, even in the PC version, and it is interesting to see that in 60fps modes there are still some problems here on all systems. To be clear, the overall performance in the game is relatively consistent at 60fps, but the hitch is more noticeable at crossing and occasionally in scenes. The PlayStation 5 appears to be perhaps a little smoother overall, but all versions show the problem. In turn, the X Series is capable of providing the highest resolution visuals and if stuttering is an issue for you, the 30fps quality mode cleans up most. As for the Xbox Series S, it is the least stable version of the game – in addition to the streaming challenges, there are areas where it seems to be limited by the GPU as well. It is still a marked improvement over the unlocked frame-rate of the performance modes found on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but it is the least impressive update of all.

Overall, though, this is an interesting update worth checking out, especially since the game comes bundled with EA Play and, by extension, must be available to play on the Xbox Game Pass. Although divisive, we really like the game, which combines some great production values ​​with quality gameplay and Metroid tones in which access to the various levels opens up gradually. The new patch does not solve all technical problems the way we would like to see it, but it is definitely the best way to experience Fallen Order on consoles and we recommend checking it out.