Listen, I think we all want to see Star Wars The Fallen Order do extremely well. We're also really paranoid about EA totally botching this title. What is going to be near criminal about the release of this title, though, is if we get a Star Wars game, with amazing lightsaber combat, made by Respawn, that *doesn't include multiplayer*. No, I'm not talking about junky garbo microtransactiony Star Wars: Battlefront nonsense. I'm talking about the quality Quake Arena-esque Death Match / CTF game play that made Dark Forces 2, Academy, and Outcast beacons of good gameplay well after we lost interest in the single player game. The kind of Mutliplayer that gets pro Unreal designers roll out of bed and crank out gorgeous add-on levels that you just can't help but stare at. This is the secret, the true beauty of Star Wars games and it needs to be revisited.
Maybe the game doesn't need to launch with multiplayer. Maybe you can just add hooks for it and have it developed and added on to later. That's fine. You will be doing yourself and the consumer a colossal disservice if you wall yourself off from this possibility permanently, however. I encourage all fans of this genre of gameplay to stand up and speak up about this matter. Many of us can share with you stories about how the Multiplayer in the aforementioned titles made a lasting impression. Personally, I never would have began learning how to code if I hadn't have fallen in love with Star Wars: Dark Forces 2. I have hours of good memories and several friends I keep in contact with to this day from playing on the MSN Gaming Zone. I can still tell you which maps are the absolute best for these titles for Multiplayer and I have re-purchased all of them on Steam so that I don't have to chase down my old scratched up CDs when I feel like loading it up. When I do, there are total-conversion patches, which bring a game some 20 old years out of date up to HD textures and allows it to run on well on modern systems. I can assure you the fans that develop these mods were not strictly in love with the single player aspect. They too develop these patches so that they can needle their friends into playing an extremely old, extremely good Star Wars Mutiplayer experience. We are all patiently waiting for the next modern iteration.
In closing, please take a moment to consider what replay value is. Consider that Respawn has made two games in which their Multiplayer experience has been touted and reviewed extremely well. Consider that even though Titanfall 2 itself included an entire single player campaign, yet it is not the single player platform it is best known for, but for the hours of thrilling FPS action it provides. When a game has the potential to provide an experience that allows it to rise to and surpass the titles it clearly draws inspiration from and is backed by a studio that is 100% capable of delivering that experience, and fails to do so, it is a loss for the gaming community and to the studios that produce it. I strongly encourage you to reconsider this decision.
