Star Wars: Squadrons has been a surprising move from EA so far. Coming in for a more moderate price and without any microtransactions, it feels uncharacteristic for the publisher. However, the game isn’t without some issues. The biggest ones are obviously in fixing various bugs that have popped up since launch. The first two patches have been dedicated to this, including the one released yesterday. Thankfully, issues like players abandoning matches also seem to be on their radar, so that’s good. Yet, if Squadrons is going to move forward and have a happy and healthy community, it needs some other additions. 

Ranked Dogfighting

The fact that the game mode Dogfighting exists without a ranked mode seems like the strangest launch decision. It’s the multiplayer mode you have to play initially before you can even unlock the only ranked mode, Fleet Battles. As strange as that is alone, dogfighting conceptually is the core of the entire game. Giving that mode the attention it needs would spawn more competitive gameplay than anything in Fleet Battles. While player vs. player dogfighting is important in Fleet Battles, the prominence of AI always puts a damper on that. I’d love to see the numerous squadron compositions and strategies worked out in a 5v5 CSGO-style faceoff at various ranks.

Balance

Balance is one of the most important components of a good multiplayer game, but I put it second for a reason. Without a good way to evenly compare ships and strategies directly to each other, it’s hard to say where they really stand. Right now the support ships have a mediocre-at-best role for Fleet Battles, but their heals, shields and other tools may prove much more powerful in competitive Dogfighting. I wouldn’t want to see them become overpowered in Dogfighting just to give them more recognition in Fleet Battles.

Singleplayer DLC

I know EA has gained a lot of praise for stating there wouldn’t be DLC for this game. I can agree with that sentiment. However, many games thrive on post-launch DLC, and I found the story and experience of the singleplayer fun enough that I’d like to see more. It would be fascinating to explore stories potentially with new squadrons and pilots. There is so much Star Wars lore out there and I love getting into the Galactic War from this perspective. They could even bring in some battles on planets to expand the game. I believe that would warrant some kind of “expansion,” or what we call DLC these days.

Multiplayer Modes

Star Wars: Squadrons is leaning hard on Fleet Battles right now. While it does have a decent flow mechanic and some strategies that can be explored, it is only one mode. After the addition of ranked Dogfighting, more AI-bolstered action could be enjoyable. Perhaps an event like Battlefield Rush-type event where one team attacks with limited respawns and the other defends. There could be objectives that spawn in AI corvettes or something along those lines. Maybe another mode would be an AI onslaught that goes X number of rounds with a ship or station to protect. There are more ideas than I have reason to type, but they would all build out this game with its solid mechanics to work with.

If EA and Motive want Star Wars: Squadrons to be more than just that neat little VR game that justified their poorly-used exclusive license to the franchise, these are good steps. Having a dedicated starfighter game with a strong online component is something I am happy to finally see in the mainstream. I can only hope that over the next few months it grows with its community and becomes the game it has the potential to be.

Early reactions to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker are…troubling,  so we thought that you might need a chaser to help remind you just why it is that you love Star Wars so much in the first place.

If that’s the case, then be sure to check out these five Star Wars video game stories that may be better than some of the movies and are certainly better than the rest of them.

5. Star Wars: TIE Fighter

TIE Fighter might not boast the deepest story on this list, but it’s definitely one of the most interesting.

This flight title puts you in the boots of an imperial pilot serving under Admiral Thrawn. Yes, you play as the bad guy, but this game presents the entire conflict from the Empire’s point of view and argues that they’re really just galactic peacekeepers trying to restore order during hectic times.

In a series that often features comically evil villains, it’s refreshing to see a Star Wars story argue that there are actually reasons why otherwise normal people might side with the empire. Granted, there’s an implication that everyone has been indoctrinated, but it’s still a compelling attempt at something different.

Star Wars: Tie Fighter doesn’t feature the most engaging moment to moment plot, but it’s ideas are absolutely fascinating.

4. Star Wars: Republic Commando

Sometimes, Star Wars stories are best when they move away from grand scale conflicts and focus on something more intimate. This is certainly one of those times.

Republic Commando tells the story of an elite group of clone troopers who participate in a series of high-risk missions during the Clone Wars. Its ties to the prequel trilogy and the grander plot points of the Star Wars saga are relatively thin, but that just means that it gets to focus on a pretty engaging Tom Clancy-esque military thriller plot bolstered by the strong relationship between these soldiers.

We rarely get to see war from a “boots on the ground” perspective in the Star Wars universe, but Republic Commando argues that it should focus on that side of the conflict more often.

3. Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast

Many fan expectations of what the Star Wars sequels should be were set by the excellent sequel stories in the expanded universe. Jedi Outcast happens to feature one of the absolute best of those sequel stories.

While it’s a continuation of the story that began in the Dark Forces series, Jedi Outcast stands tall on its own as the story of a former force user named Kyle Katarn who has abandoned the path of the Jedi and Sith in order to live a slightly quieter life as a mercenary. However, a series of circumstances force him to pick up his lightsaber once more and embrace a path he abandoned long ago.

Jedi Outcast essentially shows us what might happen if Han Solo were a Jedi. More importantly, it uses some famous Star Wars characters and locations in ways that maximize our nostalgia and feeling towards them without depending on your built-in love.

Jedi Outcast is a glimpse at what the sequels could have been.

2. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Expectations were relatively high for Knights of the Old Republic upon its release in the summer of 2003, but nobody could have guessed what was coming.

Set thousands of years before the events of the first Star Wars movie, Knights of the Old Republic sees the Jedi and Sith engaging in full-on warfare. You play a soldier who wakes up on a ship without any idea about who he is, how he got there, or why so many people are looking for him. Your search for answers will soon see you form a party of mostly misfits as you tour some fascinating corners of the galaxy.

While KOTOR is infamous for its late-in-the-game twist, this title’s plot is much more than a one-trick pony. It’s a sprawling epic that takes the time to develop its characters in intelligent ways while offering an array of side stories that remind you that there are many adventures in this galaxy besides your own.

This is one of the most complete Star Wars stories told via any medium. There’s just one title that does it better…

1. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 – The Sith Lords

The original KOTOR may have been everything we’ve ever wanted from a Star Wars story, but its sequel delivers something most fans could have never envisioned.

KOTOR II forgoes the usual good and evil moral lines of the Star Wars stories in favor of a complicated plot where doing the “right” thing can have negative repercussions while a display of power may quell an even greater evil. It all serves a complicated story that goes so far as to suggest that the power of the force is an abomination that isn’t safe in the hands of anyone regardless of their intentions.

This is a deep and mature story that flips the Star Wars mythos on its head while celebrating many of the things that make it special. Despite an incomplete ending, it’s one of the best Star Wars stories ever told.

Today EA finally confirmed its return to Steam by allowing preorders for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order on the platform. EA was one of the first companies to move on from Steam to its proprietary platform, Origin, back in 2011. The controversial choice to remove Crysis 2 from Steam and release future EA titles on Origin lead to a somewhat muted backlash as the new platform presented an adequate resource for playing these games. Little did we know, this was only the first of many similar moves large publishers would undertake for the sake of profit.

The issue, as they saw it, was that Valve takes 30% of the sale for each game sold on the platform. By creating Origin, EA was able to take the full profit from the sale of their digital games. On paper, that seems to be an easy way to justify building and supporting the Origin client. For years now, we’ve seen PC versions of EA games exclusively on Origin while Steam continued to thrive with games from other publishers as well as indie titles.

Recently, Epic Games created the Epic Games Store and made an effort to put not only games they develop and publish but also other games on their platform exclusively. This exclusivity issue has caused quite the backlash and has put pressure on Valve. The question that some people have raised is whether this move with EA is Steam’s effort to get a taste of those exclusivity contracts. While it may not be possible for us to know to what extent this may be the case, I think there could be another reason for EA’s change of heart.

EA has had extremely limited success lately in releasing games like Anthem and Battlefield V. These games rely on the concept of “live services” to try to maintain a revenue stream that builds with time. Both games saw major drop-offs after launch and EA’s stock prices have remained stagnant since after taking a significant dive last year. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s advertising has promoted having no microtransactions or post-launch DLC, which is the polar opposite of what those tent pole “live service” games attempted in the past. This means that the initial sales of the game are the primary way that EA is going to make money from the launch of the game.

The establishment of microtransactions in modern gaming is now the most popular way that publishers can turn games from just “profitable” into “cash cows.” It lets ongoing development fuel the sale of cosmetics and small pieces of content to players months or even years after a game has gone live. Its use in Fortnite is one of the primary reasons Epic has been able to leverage millions of dollars in exclusivity agreements. Without this, EA is going to have to make Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order one of the bestselling new games of the year to see similarly good profits. Perhaps with Steam on their side promoting to their millions of active users, they’ll be able to appeal to the numbers they need to make this happen. 

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is due to release this year. After being announced amidst quite a bit of speculation, the gameplay was recently revealed at E3 to somewhat mixed reactions. My issue was less with the gameplay of this new title and more with the idea of taking on the role of yet another Jedi in yet another game about Jedi in Star Wars. Why can’t we explore the rest of this vast lightsaber-free universe?

Don’t get me wrong, I know the core premise of the entire franchise of movies and games is hyper-focused on these quasi-religious purveyors of the Force, but some of Star Wars’ greatest games left them out as much as possible. The original Star Wars: Battlefront had you taking control of one of a wide variety of nameless and faceless soldiers blasting away in different roles to try and win a battle. Jedi and other significant characters were only a small part of the game and it was wonderful. Even modern Battlefront games have them in limited numbers. However, other games in the franchise left these central characters out entirely.

Star Wars: Republic Commando had you take over a Clone commando squad using tactics and raw blaster power to help the Republic win the war against a host of different enemies. This lets us see firsthand the experiences of characters that were relatively insignificant in an already less significant part of the series. Republic Commando managed to be one of the more notable titles in the history of Star Wars games and stands on its own as an enjoyable first-person shooter even for those not a fan of the movies.

Before that, Star Wars Racer let us say to ourselves “Now this is podracing!”. Ripping through desert canyons in a modern interpretation of ancient chariot racing at ridiculous speeds gave us both a wildly fun and exceptionally challenging experience in the Star Wars universe. Again, without any Force powers or mind tricks. Just good old fashioned floating vehicle racing evocative of classics like Wipeout and F-Zero.

Even earlier was another FPS by the name of Star Wars: Dark Forces. While the main character, without really any foreshadowing whatsoever, becomes a Jedi in the sequel it’s safe to say the first game is free of Jedi involvement. It’s independently designed 3D engine may look like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, but in my opinion, it is actually more visually appealing and gets to draw on the excellent architecture and design of the Star Wars universe.

That is only a taste of games of the many Star Wars games without Jedi running around. There are more still that featured flying the many ships of the franchise like X-Wing and Rogue Squadron as well as some real-time strategies. These are just some I’ve played and enjoyed. Currently, Star Wars games are becoming much rarer. If you ignore the Lego games and The Old Republic’s continued existence, this entire decade has seen only a small number of dedicated Star Wars games at all. I think a lot of blame can be on the heads of EA and, of course, Disney for letting EA do things as poorly as they have, but when you consider the continued growth of the franchise it makes it all the more confusing as to why they aren’t developing more.

It’s hard to talk about Jedi-free games without mentioning the now canceled Star Wars 1313. From the trailer and the bits of information released about it, it was set to put the player in a much more gritty role set in the depths of Coruscant. The many gadgets and blaster weapons synonymous with the franchise would play a heavy role in this cover based action shooter game. It was going to be a game that didn’t just step away from the Force but took a step into the darker side of the entire Star Wars universe.

That’s really the whole point, though. The Star Wars universe is so vast and is filled with stories of people trying to survive and thrive on worlds that can be as harsh as they are unique. It feels like a waste to focus on a handful of characters that are all part of the same narrative thread. Sure, it’s cool to make use of unstoppable laser swords and superhuman powers, but even in the films, it’s only a part of the overall story. I think it’s even worth noting that climbing back in the pilot’s seat and blasting away at TIE fighters would fit perfectly in this era of space sim resurgence. There are so many ways to succeed in building a Star Wars game, I simply can’t understand why Disney hasn’t sought to explore them and finally satisfy their starving gaming fanbase.

But why is there still so much hate? And why is Battlefront II in the process of dying a slow death?

The Slow Fall Of Battlefront II

Initially, there were bugs upon launch. There always is. But for some reason, EA took forever to patch up their mistakes, creating a very negative vibe in the Star Wars Battlefront II community.

The bugs were minor things like Star Cards not working and a sound glitch which forced the player to restart the game in order to get the sound back. Simple, yet extremely frustrating when ignored.

There’s also the issue of multiplayer modes which require a minimum number of players. Normally if a game is healthy, there are always players to be found. But this hasn’t been the case with Battlefront II. Take Ewok Hunt for example. It’s a fun and brilliantly designed mini-game which never has enough players for gameplay. Log in and a player is likely to see “waiting on X number of players” for 15-30 minutes (if not longer).

5 Super Easy Tips For Sucess In MTG Arena

Lastly, new players joining the game late quickly realized how outmatched they were in multiplayer modes, also creating a negative environment. The grind towards leveling up is brutal, especially when a player’s characters are too weak to earn battle points.

Battlefront II is full of positive things like the beautifully created large-scale maps with an intense attention to detail in modes like Starfighter Assault (taking multiplayer spaceship battles to a whole new level). Recently, General Grievous and Obi-Wan Kenobi became two available heroes and according to EA’s rollout plan for Battlefront II, there’s more on the way — including a bunch of Clone Wars content to coincide with the return of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+ in 2019.

Sadly, however, these positive notes often get drowned out in the negativity surrounding Battlefront II.

Between the Star Wars boycotter groups on social media and gamers who refused to wait for EA to get their “bleep” together, the pool of worldwide players has become drastically small.

Can Battlefront II Be Saved?

Anything is possible, but considering EA’s standard approach to resolving issues is to ignore gamers and do as they please, the likely answer is no. And yet, there are a few of us left who are holding on to an unseen last hope — those of us who enjoy playing modes other than Galactic Assault.

The patches and upgrades EA’s applying to Battlefront II are nice (skins and new heroes), but they aren’t necessarily what the game needs. Maybe if EA adjusted the player count for the smaller modes and figured out a way to reduce camping in Starfighter Assault, gamers might return. An adjustment of the Star Cards would be nice too, giving new players a decent chance of being able to compete, instead of always being taken out with one-shot while delivering 10-headshots (only slightly exaggerated) to take out their opponent.

If EA was serious about saving Star Wars Battlefront II, the rollout plan would have the real issues singled out, along with promises of satisfactory resolution. Instead, there’s just lots of talk about skins, new characters, and a Geonosis map.

Smh — and EA wonders why other studios are surpassing them in sales and content.

The other titles in the bundle include Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Star Wars Republic Commando, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and Star Wars Battlefront II.

The $12 amount also unlocks Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, Star Wars The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition, and Star Wars Empire at War: Gold Pack.

In the Humble Bundle deal you can pay what you want ($25 is the suggested amount), choose how your payment amount is divided between the developers and charities, and pay $1 or more to access the titles on Steam.

Head over to Humble Bundle to get this deal while it lasts through February 17th, 2015.

What I kept hearing about KotOR2 was that the game wasn’t as morally black and white as other Star Wars games. After playing the game, I can say that this is true… from a certain point of view. Despite its reputation and efforts, there’s never really any sense of moral ambiguity. There is only one notable instance of moral ambiguity: a beggar on the crime ridden moon Nar Shadda. If you give him credits, your mentor character shows him being beaten up and killed for them. The scene is so ham-fisted in its attempt at being morally ambiguous it’s almost funny.

Perhaps the best example of the failed promise of moral ambiguity comes early in the game, on a planet being terraformed. The Ithorians currently tasked with making the planet habitable claim to be sabotaged by the Czerka Corporation, who want the contract for themselves. Czerka are clearly amoral, interested in only money. The Ithorians claim that Czerka suck at terraforming; everywhere Czerka has taken control of the process has resulted in the ecosphere falling apart. In most games, the Ithorians would be unambiguously good.

But there’s a twist; Czerka claims that the Ithorians are the incompetent ones. The Ithorians have imported alien species at great expense from distant worlds, instead of using local species, a far more efficient approach. If the Ithorians are in control, the terraforming process will take forever and the expenses will cripple the already wounded Republic. There’s more at stake than just one world; if this works, the Republic can use it as a template for the recovery of all the many other worlds devastated by war with the Sith. If it fails, those worlds will continue to wither and die. Not so clear who you should support now, is it?

Alas, it’s not as interesting as that. In the end it turns out that the Ithorians are right. Helping them results in the planet being healed on schedule, and helping Czerka results in dark-side style failure. Not exactly the moral ambiguity I was hoping for.

The whole problem is further compounded with the dialog options the player is presented with. Throughout the game and its predecessor, we meet characters who are neither Jedi nor Sith. A lot of the ideas in the game hinge upon both the Jedi and Sith philosophies being wrong. Yet as a player you can’t argue for this path. In fact, you’re actively punished for taking it. This could be a way of pointing out how difficult the middle path is, but I doubt it. I would buy it if there was even one point in the game where I could point out that both the Jedi and the Sith were jerks. There isn’t. You can only enthusiastically support one or the other. You can’t even take the path of “not being an asshole” without going on about how the Jedi are the greatest guys ever. This gets very annoying.

The villains are very effective and compelling. In the beginning. In the late game, when you actually start interacting with them, they are much less so. This seems to be a symptom of the game’s rushed development (more on that later). The first villain we’re introduced to is Darth Sion, a (literally) shattered and broken man who is basically undead. He shows up with his invisible buddies on a filthy, poorly lit Republic ship full of bloodstains and corpses. They faked a distress call to sneak aboard the Republic ship while invisible (Sion pretends to be a corpse). It’s somewhat confusing as to why this works; stealth field generators were dirt cheap and plentiful in the last war, and were used en masse in the war before that. Why such a significant technological ability would be forgotten after several hundred years of constant use is unclear. When you finally fight and kill Scion, he reveals that he;s the kind of idiot who’s never thought anything through in his entire life.

Darth Nihlus is next. Nihlus is this creepy… thing in a humanoid costume that makes a horrible,

empty, scratching sound when it speaks. We learn little about it, but what little we learn is enough to take the horror away. When you fight it, the existential abomination symbolizing hideous nothingness leaves a normal human corpse. You can take his mask if you want; one of your companions wants to see what his face looks like. You can take a look too. You don’t actually see it, but the mere fact that Nihlus has a face takes away a lot of the mystery. He goes from an unstoppable elemental force masquerading as human to some nihilist jerk with weird powers. He is also pretty stupid; he forgets that ships (like the one he’s on) can be destroyed with anti-ship weapons.

The last Sith lord you meet (who is also the first person you meet and the last thing in the game you fight) is Darth Traya, who betrays you. The betrayal is somewhat mitigated by the fact the game spends the entire game communicating that Traya will betray you. The fact that Traya is not to be trusted is obvious from the moment you meet her, unless you happen to trust the kind of person who would break into your house, hold you hostage at gunpoint and claim ignorance as to what is happening. Traya has a strange, poorly communicated and confusing philosophy. The core beliefs appear to be: adversity is necessary for strength/growth, the force is bad and a third one that clearly exists that I can’t figure out. The first belief is reasonable, but Traya takes it way to far. Her take on it is closer to “If I don’t kill you, you won’t learn anything”. Given that being killed is generally not a thing one can personally learn from, why she has this view is a little confusing. Hell, the one person who could potentially learn from this method (Darth Sion), doesn’t. After taking the same lesson several times. Sion is an idiot.

One of the complaints about KotOR1 was that the Jedi classes eventually outstripped the others in combat effectiveness so much you never used anything but Jedi. I was lead to believe that KotOR2 solved this by making the non-Jedi classes valuable in some way. It doesn’t. Not really. The way the game solves the issue of Jedi martial superiority is by making it possible for nearly every non-droid character to become a Jedi. I suppose that is a solution to the problem. It’s not the one I was told they took though. I was told they made every party member valuable by having situations where Jedi simply couldn’t have the skills necessary to succeed. Sections where you use non-Jedi party members, to highlight the awesome things they bring to the table.

And, well, they do have those. And they are easily the worst parts of the game. These sections involve being given control of a single party member who is wholly unsuited to solo combat and being forced to kill dozens of foes in succession. The point at which I gave up on the actual gameplay of the game was when I was introduced to an entirely new character, a ranged support type, and forced to fight nothing but melee characters. First a Wookiee, than a half a dozen dog things, then a complex full of trained melee soldiers. Combat became so boring and unfair I started editing my save file to give her godlike stats. Once I did that, I realized how much I hated the combat in general, so I hacked nearly everyone’s stats to get combat over with as soon as possible.

That’s not the only instance of this, of course. There’s also the time when you are tasked with using a low-HP ranged support character to fight off a pair of high-DPS assassin/mercenary type who spawn within melee range. Perhaps the biggest disappointment was HK-47’s mission, where you infiltrate a factory full of HK-50s. Fighting trios of enemies who are individually more powerful than you is not fun. Especially when you realize it is mathematically impossible to win.

On the subject of combat, it uses the same system as KotOR1. This means it has all the same issues as that game. Some of the annoyances have been fixed, but these mostly fall into things around the combat system rather than the combat system itself. If you liked the combat in KotOR1, you’ll love it here, but if you didn’t like it there, you’ll find KotOR2 no more enjoyable.

The ending is where the game begins to completely fall apart. In the final mission sequence it becomes painfully obvious the developers ran out of time. You crash on a planet that everyone has ties to; the plot, at least, remains intact. You then proceed to kill a large number of identical monsters before fighting a bigger version of the monsters. Then you fight dozens and dozens of Sith in blank,

featureless corridors. There is a boss fight. And another boss fight. Then the final boss tells you how the game ends: what the consequences of your actions were, the fates of various NPCs and so on. And finally there is a horribly tonally inappropriate, vaguely comedic scene. And then the planet blows up.

Bloody hell these guys needed more time to make this game.

Despite the fact that I just spent this entire article complaining, I have to recommend the game. It has its flaws (oh my god does it have its flaws), but the game is gripping and significantly more intelligent than the vast majority of other works in the Star Wars universe. The fact that I spent so much time arguing with the philosophies of various characters is arguably a good thing; it prompted a response. The fact that I had no real way of communicating my response back to the game was a problem, but as a work of art it succeeds.

Information on tweaking KotOR2 for modern systems can be found on PCGamingWiki.

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