Star Wars Star Wars: Squadrons - space dogfight sim set after Return of the Jedi

[Spectacle]

Why isn't this thread in the Space Games forum?

 

[J_C]

Developer Motive Studios has created a fantastic multiplayer experience that has the visual detail and edge-of-your-seat thrills of Star Wars’ epic space battles, but only fires direct hits in the online space, struggling to captivate with both its single-player content.

Just as I thought, single-player is a second (or third) thought. Hard pass.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Developer Motive Studios has created a fantastic multiplayer experience that has the visual detail and edge-of-your-seat thrills of Star Wars’ epic space battles, but only fires direct hits in the online space, struggling to captivate with both its single-player content.

Just as I thought, singlaplayer is a second (or third) thought. Hard pass.

Singleplayer should be pretty good... according to IGN.

 

[J_C]

Developer Motive Studios has created a fantastic multiplayer experience that has the visual detail and edge-of-your-seat thrills of Star Wars’ epic space battles, but only fires direct hits in the online space, struggling to captivate with both its single-player content.

Just as I thought, singlaplayer is a second (or third) thought. Hard pass.

Singleplayer should be pretty good... according to IGN.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Singleplayer should be pretty good... according to IGN.

6-7 hours only though

 

[DalekFlay]

Singleplayer seems worth a go on some level, but not for full price at launch. Like Battlefield I'll get it in some $5-10 sale someday.

 

[Draxylon]

Lookimg forward your impressions...

 

[gerey]

EA can go fuck itself.

 

[Spectacle]

Singleplayer seems worth a go on some level, but not for full price at launch. Like Battlefield I'll get it in some $5-10 sale someday.

In games like this singleplayer is basically just an extended tutorial for the multiplayer.

 

[DalekFlay]

In games like this singleplayer is basically just an extended tutorial for the multiplayer.

I don't know if I'd say that, they actually put a ton of money into Call of Duty and Battlefield campaign spectacle and voice casts and whatnot for example. That doesn't mean they're good mind you, they're extremely simple and linear experiences, but I think effort to make them a unique singleplayer experience is definitely expended. If this is the case here then I'm a big enough Star Wars fan for a 5 hour dumbed-down version of this to be at least somewhat enjoyable for $10 or whatever. It depends though, there are some multiplayer games that basically only have bot matches for offline, and in that case then obviously it's not worth it. I'll watch a couple gameplay videos when the time comes.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/star-wars-squadrons-review-in-progress/

Star Wars: Squadrons review in progress
A great flight model makes the campaign worth playing, but we haven't tested multiplayer enough to give a final score.

Hot damn, do I love an A-Wing. Until Star Wars: Squadrons, the speed demon of the Rebellion was never my favorite ship. Years of my life spent playing Rogue Squadron made me an X-Wing diehard, and even when I first played Squadrons on a controller, I didn't appreciate the joy of piloting what's basically an aluminum foil cockpit attached to an oversized engine. But when I hooked up the HOTAS, the A-Wing made me forget how much Rise of Skywalker had drained my enthusiasm for all things Star Wars.

Star Wars: Squadrons succeeds where it's most important. It's a thrill to pilot these ships a hair's breadth above the surface of a Star Destroyer and through stunning nebulae and war wreckage more vivid than I could've possibly imagined playing TIE Fighter in the late 1990s. The campaign, which took me about 10 hours to complete on the default difficulty, never really surprises, but it does manage to accomplish something noteworthy: This feels like being in Star Wars in a way no game has in a long, long time.

The flying in Star Wars: Squadrons is exactly what I hoped for. It's a flight model far simpler than an Elite Dangerous or Microsoft Flight Simulator, but there's enough nuance to let skilled pilots excel. The driving mechanic for both factions' four ships is power management, and over the course of the campaign I started to get a feel for exactly when to cut the throttle to make a tight turn, when to flick all my power to weapons to lay on the damage, and how to survive by focusing my shields to the rear to take a few more hits from an enemy on my tail.

The campaign teaches you most of these advanced moves slowly as a primer for multiplayer, which EA hopes you'll keep coming back for. Because multiplayer was only available to reviewers for a total of four hours before launch on Wednesday, I'm going to focus on the campaign for now, and play more multiplayer before putting a score on Star Wars: Squadrons. I'm also going to play in VR, which I haven't tested yet. But the campaign deserves the attention, because it's more fun, and more interesting, than just being a tutorial for multiplayer.

One mission early in the campaign had me attacking a Star Destroyer as Vanguard Squadron—but instead of destroying it as I would in multiplayer, I was trying to capture it instead. I had to take down its defenses, puncture a hole in the hull near the bridge, and then defend it from other Imperial ships while a commando squad took control of the ship. In another, I escorted some weaker ships as bait to lure the Empire into a trap. Keeping your capital ships alive is forgiving on the standard difficulty, so escort missions are, miraculously, actually fun.

It helps tremendously that this game is so scenic and takes full advantage of scale to make you feel tiny in your cockpit. I kept trying to grab screenshots of enormous planetary backdrops, the dockyards and space stations and debris fields that anchor each map and keep you from getting lost in the void of space. Squadrons also runs flawlessly on my PC: at over 144 fps on ultra settings on an i7-7700K and a GTX 1080 (okay, occasionally it dipped into the 130s. I can live with that).

Even when the campaign missions aren't especially complex, the setting makes up for it. The moments that felt the most thrillingly Star Wars weren't scripted into the story, but of my own making—when I chose to fly through the husk of an old cruiser to shake a missile, then came back out behind an enemy TIE and shot it to pieces.

These missions don't have many scripted "setpiece" moments, and I'm glad that Squadrons uses them sparingly and refrains from taking control away from you too often. It recognizes that the fun mostly lies in being at the controls, successfully tossing power to engines and making a corkscrew turn to get behind the ship that was just on your tail. But it does end up feeling all a bit routine, by the end. Objectives don't really change mid-mission. You set out to X, you do X, and that's a wrap. There are a few rare secondary objectives, but they don't add different ways to accomplish a mission, or secrets to uncover.

Star Wars: Squadrons is a game with memorable moments rather than memorable missions. The story never guided me through something as thrilling and unforgettable as Titanfall 2's Effect and Cause, for example, but I'll remember piloting an X-Wing upside-down along a Star Destroyer's hull more vividly than I do any individual shootout in that game.

The story, too, is missing the depth needed to be truly memorable. It alternates between the New Republic and Imperial perspectives, putting you in the boots of the new fifth pilot in the Republic's Vanguard Squadron and the Empire's Titan Squadron. Vanguard's commander is an Imperial defector who once led Titan, before the destruction of Alderaan made him realize they were the baddies. The setup makes this story more personal than political, as Titan's new leader, Terisa Kerrill, feels betrayed by her former mentor and wants to make him suffer. It turns out fascists really hold a grudge.

Star Wars: Squadrons never does much with its characters, though, and that's a real shame, because I wanted to be friends with each alien on sight. Their designs are imaginative and detailed, putting Star Wars races we rarely see front and center. But Squadrons seems more concerned with adding your commanders and fellow pilots to the Star Wars canon than giving them any growth or resolution. And it has nothing new to say about the Empire vs. New Republic dichotomy, with every monologue about a pilot's allegiance boiling down to "Freedom and hope!" or "Power is good, Rebels are scum!"

Between each mission, I'd spend five or 10 minutes talking to members of my squad—or rather, listen to them monologue, literally (and stiffly) delivering their backstory directly to the camera.

There's so much potential here. Take Gunny, squad leader of Vanguard, who's been a pilot so long she fought in the Clone Wars. She tells the story of being shot down and having to take off her own arm to escape the wreckage and capture. Or Shen, a very one-note, but very entertaining, TIE pilot who's been wounded in so many battles he never takes off his helmet to unveil the horrible scarred face beneath. I enjoyed getting to know these characters at first, but grew bored of the conversations between missions when it was clear none of them would really change throughout the campaign.

There are zero dialogue options, decisions, or ways to express or shape your own pilot's role in this story. Squadrons made me realize how meaningful even simple dialogue options are for bonding with your crew in games like Mass Effect. This is just a shallow reflection of that experience, and feels like a disappointing limitation of Squadron's lower budget. If EA had devoted more money and time to this game, I think its campaign could've been truly great, giving you a character of your own to mould and real interactivity with your squadron.

At one point smuggler-turned-Rebel-pilot Frisk, a lizardy Trandoshan, mentions playing sabacc, the Star Wars version of poker. I spent the rest of the game imagining an alternate universe where Squadrons had a sabacc minigame and let me play cards like in Star Trek: TNG. If Squadrons is a success, I hope a sequel gets the budget and scope to do more between missions than listen to monologues.

In the cockpit, though, this is probably the best a Star Wars flight game has ever felt, and multiplayer demands far more skill than the campaign—which is especially exciting to me when I think about strategizing with a full 5-player squad instead of AI teammates. Multiplayer also offers a deep pool of ship parts to unlock, changing everything from laser cannons to hull to engines, that make them play quite differently. I have more flying to do (and a lot more experimentation with those ship parts) before I give Squadrons a score, but I'm eager to get back in the cockpit as soon as the servers come online.

 

[Naraya]

I'll just install FSO again thank you very much!

 

[J_C]

EA can go fuck itself.

What is this marvelous thing?

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

shit guys I kinda want this
flying spaceships was my favorite thing to do in OG SWBF2
and EA actually does a nice job with graphics, I bet it looks really awesome in game

also what's with these reviews even talking about 'story' literally who gives a fuck about 'story' in this kind of game lmao
temptation is strong with this one... if it turns out to be shit I can always just refund it anyway hmmmmmmm

 

[gerey]

What is this marvelous thing?

TIE Fighter: Total Conversion (TFTC), which is basically a "spinoff" of the XWAUP (X-Wing Alliance Upgrade Project) mod. XWAUP's goal is to upgrade the visuals of X-Wing Alliance and make it playable on modern systems without hassle.

TFTC builds upon XWAUP, the team wants to port all the TIE Fighter campaigns and missions over to the XWA engine, and after that they want to go back and remake many of the missions to take better advantage of the new engine, to expand the scope of the battles, and to rework the missions to be more interesting.

The player will still be able to choose between the original (or as close to the original as they can get in the XWA engine) missions and the "remastered" missions.

Also, here's another video featuring your properly Imperial room:

 

[Theodora]

ACG review up.

 

[Irata]

Although having diverse human characters is not a problem IMO, since the empire was always pro human, they were only against aliens and xenos.

I've seen other people claim that the Empire hates aliens. There is absolutely nothing in the movies that indicates the Empire was any less tolerant of aliens than the Rebels. Even in Jedi the Alliance is still essentially nothing but white men. You pretty much only had those lobsters and the guy sitting next to Lando for aliens. Then for humans there were like two or three black dudes (and that includes Lando) and a woman pilot. So diverse!

Plus, if the Empire has to be xenophobic to be totally 1930's Germany evil then why didn't they also have to add some historically oppressed group the Empire really hates? They could have called them "Jewas".

The Stormtroopers also didn't have one voice. They weren't clones.
From Star Wars:
Scott Beach ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Colin Michael Kitchens ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Morgan Upton ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Jerry Walter ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)

I mean the dude blows up a planet just to make a point. Isn't that evil enough?
"Hey, Tarkin just killed billions of people!"
"That's pretty bad, but so what? He doesn't hate Wookies."

[RANT OVER]

I was told that people were streaming the game today and weren't playing it very long before they quit. That doesn't sound good.

 

[Drakron]

I've seen other people claim that the Empire hates aliens. There is absolutely nothing in the movies that indicates the Empire was any less tolerant of aliens than the Rebels.

Its entirely obvious the Empire was human-centric, the movies dont say but the EU do show the Empire is xenophobe when it suits it and not when it suits it.
But thematically the Empire is faceless and uniform, every Imperial from soldiers to officers looked and sounded the same as the Rebellion is obviously more varied on both species as well gender because they are to be a ragtag gang that wants to overthrown the Empire, its a obvious contrast.

Even in Jedi the Alliance is still essentially nothing but white men. You pretty much only had those lobsters and the guy sitting next to Lando for aliens. Then for humans there were like two or three black dudes (and that includes Lando) and a woman pilot. So diverse!

Maybe because they werent looking for diversity quotas and George Lucas simply hired extras, back then California was mostly white, in fact I am checking and both white and black ethnic population have similar growth curve (and native americans), the ones that have shoot up been asian and hispanic (in fact hispanic are now the largest group) so if you want black extras then you have to be asking for then as otherwise you just get what the agency have at hand and back then (and now) they would be majority white skinned people.

Plus, if the Empire has to be xenophobic to be totally 1930's Germany evil then why didn't they also have to add some historically oppressed group the Empire really hates? They could have called them "Jewas".

How cute.

The Stormtroopers also didn't have one voice. They weren't clones.
From Star Wars:
Scott Beach ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Colin Michael Kitchens ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Morgan Upton ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Jerry Walter ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)

That is because they had voiced roles and they didnt or couldnt use the same actor for every line but the fact their voice is modulated to the point its obvious when Mark Hamill is talking since his voice is very distinct, this was done on purpose.

I mean the dude blows up a planet just to make a point. Isn't that evil enough?
"Hey, Tarkin just killed billions of people!"
"That's pretty bad, but so what? He doesn't hate Wookies."

[RANT OVER]

Well the purpose of the Death Star was to keep the Empire together since as long it existed any planet that tried to rebel would be annihilated, as pointed "fear will keep the local systems in check, fear of this battlestation", the destruction of Alderaan is not of "evil", its destroyed as a demonstration of the Death Star capabilities, the lack of concern about the deaths is because the Empire is uncaring and demands absolute obedience.

I was told that people were streaming the game today and weren't playing it very long before they quit. That doesn't sound good.

Same writers as of EA's Battlefront 2, that should had told you everything you needed.

I mean, not only EA's Battlefront 2 story is kinda shit (I can tell, I played it!) but its rushed and not overall interesting, it sounds like a terrible fanfic that lacks focus ... I am amazed like how old games that are "story-lite" are so much better in everything, including narrative, that todays "Magnum Opus" dont even come close, hell just play Star Wars Republic Commando and you have a far more interesting and focused story that the drivel from EA's Battlefront 2.

 

[deuxhero]

Even in Jedi the Alliance is still essentially nothing but white men. You pretty much only had those lobsters and the guy sitting next to Lando for aliens. Then for humans there were like two or three black dudes (and that includes Lando) and a woman pilot. So diverse!

And Mon Mothma, Orrimaarko, Dansra Beezer...

The Stormtroopers also didn't have one voice. They weren't clones.
From Star Wars:
Scott Beach ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Colin Michael Kitchens ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Morgan Upton ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)
Jerry Walter ... Stormtrooper (voice) (uncredited)

The better argument is the scenes where the troopers stand next to eachother and are clearly of vastly different height.

 

[Infinitron]

Looks like it's out on Steam. What's with the review bombing lol.

 

[Alienman]

Going by the reviews - it just seems lacking in everything?

 

[Naraya]

Going by the reviews - it just seems lacking in everything?

I can only speak for myself - I instantly lost interest when I found out that SP is a second class citizen. But that's because I have zero interest in MP.

 

[vonAchdorf]

For me it's a candidate for a sale, because i'm only interested in SP. Did they plan to add some SP DLC?

 

[Jedi Exile]

Looks interesting, but there are so many old Star Wars games I haven't played yet.

 

[Venser]

Just ordered HOTAS for this to play on PSVR. I heard the characters and the cockpit look great in VR but things get pretty blurry on the medium distance forward. Supposedly looks worse than Battlefront X-Wing VR mission. Wouldn't care about this game if it wasn't for VR.