Optimism or Pessimism for Star Wars: Squadrons
By: J. King
Tags: Ea, Squadrons, Star Wars, Disney, Gaming

Someone awake Wedge Antilles from hypersleep if it isn’t a long-awaited Star Wars starfighter game! As one of the honorary captains of the OG Wedge Antilles fan club, allow me to indulge you as to why Star Wars: Squadrons has my undivided attention.

As a young lad, I grew up gaming on the GameCube. One of my favorite games that I sank countless hours into was Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike.

The gameplay experience of Rogue Squadron was mystifying as a child. Rebel Strike’s most glaring issues were compensated by the pure wonderment of being able to fly a wide variety of Star Wars ships through numerous missions.

Rogue Squadron was a game that was designed to take structural chances and introduce Star Wars fans to new planets, new ships, and new characters. The idea of piloting an X-Wing in the trenches of the Death Star and flying a snow speeder around AT-AT’s in Hoth is magical.

Squadrons derives some Rogue Squadron influence but with more emphasis on a wholly original story and an online multiplayer focus. Online modes typically get the majority of attention so my expectations for the story mode wouldn’t be as high as what the features will be in multiplayer.

My main source of pessimism for Squadrons is how mediocre the newer Battlefront releases have been. I picked up a free copy of Battlefront 2 on the Playstation store and didn’t play much longer than a week or two before the repetitive nature of the game got tiring.

The make or break aspect of Squadrons will come down to how fun and challenging it will be to pilot X-Wings and Tie Fighters. From the sample of trailer footage that has been released, the physics engine looks good, but until there’s a controller in hand it’s hard to tell if it’ll translate.

The keyword is responsiveness. I talk about this a lot in racing games like NASCAR Heat and F1. The same principle goes for piloting a ship in a video game. The more responsive your ship is to your joystick movements, the more likely you are to feel in control and have fun. In Battlefront 2, which was developed by DICE who make the Battlefield games, the flying mechanics in their games feel stiff.

The developer for Squadrons is Motive studios who collaborated with DICE on Battlefront 2 (yikes). Squadrons will also be using the same Frostbite gameplay engine (another yikes). I’d only be slightly concerned though as it’d be absolute malpractice to base a whole new game off of the flying mechanics in Battlefront. Squadrons will also be in first-person while Battlefront viewed ship combat in third-person.

Squadrons being a first-person starfighter game is a sign of optimism for me. It’s much harder to hide gameplay flaws when piloting a ship from a cockpit view. There’s a greater emphasis on precise movement and timing because your field of view is limited.

The gameplay will likely carry the story mode as I would expect the actual narrative to be substandard. Modern-day Star Wars video games aren’t going to take narrative chances, especially under a Disney and EA license. If the ship combat is fun and the missions have variety and are well structured, the single-player campaign will have value. The possible advantage the single-player campaign may have is if multiplayer is restricted to only 5 v 5 battles. The single-player mode should allow for much larger and climactic combat with dozens of enemy ships whirring around. Hopefully.

The peak experience at least from how the game is being sold is in the 5 v 5 fleet battles.

This is where my pessimism bell starts blaring. The appeal of space battles in the Star Wars universe is the grandiose scale of several dozens of fighter jets zooming around in hot pursuit of their targets. The space these fleet battles could occupy may end up feeling very empty if there’s only a handful of opposing ships to battle you.

The 5 on 5 hearkens more of a Call of Duty style arcade FPS shooter than the massively open map space featured in Battlefield and Battlefront. How Motive Studios will maneuver around creating a map suitable for 5 v 5 battles in space will be crucial to the pace of the action.

The (absurdly high) possibility of a grind for upgrades and the microtransactions that could be tied to the grind is a juicy opportunity for EA and bad news for gamers. Just because the Battlefront series got panned for its loot boxes only slowed EA’s incessant use of microtransactions in that series. Look no further than Madden and FIFA for their Ultimate Team consumer money laundering pits. I’d expect EA to subtly include microtransaction options in Squadrons.

The optimistic view for online play is that with smaller squadron teams that the server connections won’t be under a lot of stress so the flying and the combat will be responsive if you have decent internet. The fleet battles could also be fun for those who enjoy tactical combat though my pushback would be most gamers are not tactical in approach to gameplay.

There’s esports written all over this fleet battle or dogfight format if Squadrons is well received and demand for esports is competition is there. Esports may be a positive for the hardcore games but could make the game less appealing to casual gamers as far as online is concerned.

If online dogfighting is fun and competitive, Squadrons may be worth a purchase but I’d use caution and hesitation. I’d let the general game population that preorders the game feel out the mechanics and see if there’s any strong or immediate backlash. If the game is simply average but you’re a Star Wars fan, Squadrons might be the sort of purchase you wait a few months for a good discount. If the game’s mechanics and physics are bad outright, it’s an easy stay away because that’s not something that can be patched.

FINAL VERDICT

Below I’ll list my optimism and pessimism scale as if Yoda was my therapist.

Physics: Optimistic I am. Ships look maneuverable. Cockpit field of view could make the game speed look fast and nimble.

Story: Pessimistic I am. Sounds stiff and lacking in flair. Likely to lack originality.

Fleet Battles: Pessimistic I am. If there aren’t AI fighters zooming around, the maps will feel empty in 5 on 5’s. Teamwork and online gamers don’t mix unless you specifically have 4 Star Wars loving friends that give a damn. That’s rare.

Dogfight Mode: Optimistic I am. If the gameplay and engine make flying fun, the online dogfights should be entertaining.

Microtransactions: Pessimistic I am. I’d like to think EA learned its lesson from the Battlefront backlash but that would require EA’s executives to care about anything besides profit margins.

Lack of Wedge Antilles: Disappointed I am. Unless he does show up in which case give the game a 10/10 game of the year.