Quick Look: Star Wars: Squadrons

"It's been in movies." Oh Vinny

It weirds me a little to have a character look like Michelle Yeoh, but VO by someone else who kinda sounds like her.

I always liked LITTLE details the original trilogy got right. Things like TIE Fighters having no internal atmosphere to cut costs, the Empire not conscripting/employing alien life (except as "bounty hunting scum" when they need them). Honestly, I'm surprised the prequels didn't have a whole scene of the Emperor ham-fistedly pointing these little things out.

To be fair, the original trilogy never explained the mechanics of spacecraft other than "it's like WW2 but with pew-pew lasers"; a lot of that stuff was refined and expanded upon later on. I mean, hell, even when the original X-Wing/TIE Fighter games came out I was like, "Wait they can shoot missles too? I mean, it makes sense, but they never did that in the movies except for exactly-one-time-the-plot-demanded it".

All that said, aside from the crazy launch issues Squadrons had when it was first released, I've been having a blast. A lot of little design choices definitely feel like a deliberate nod to the LucasArts space-sims, like the "talk to your squadmates for role-play-purposes before missions" and the post-prologue "Scan these unarmed cargo ships for illegal contraband" Imperial mission. :D

Star Wars Episode X: Neutron Gutkiller's One More Kill

This seems cool enough, certainly it is pretty. For $40 I'll wait a couple months and play it on gamepass.

Brain on throttle and stick makes it harder to talk. Salute Vinny! o7

@undeadpool: All those scenes were cut in favor of putting in more scene sof Jar Jar tripping over himself

Without VR this game is pretty good. With VR it's pretty damn spectacular. If you have VR it's a must play. If you don't have VR you should still probably play it if you like star wars and stuff.

This has the best star wars cockpits around, by far. It was worth the price for me to just see those cockpits in VR. Tie fighters are lame with that little viewport and no real situational awareness (aside from one small window in the roof and one in the rear that you never use), just like I thought, but everything else is awesome. The support ships are my fav for some reason. They have really cool big cockpits and tiny windows, feels like a space 747 :D

The ethnic representation in the Imperial military is kinda weird to me. They're Space Nazis, and in the original trilogy every Imperial I can remember is a white male human. That's a deliberate contrast with the Rebellion, which includes humans of color, women, and nonhumans. I guess this move to prioritize representation is part of trying to rationalize playing as Imperials? Seems fucked up to rehabilitate them in that way.

Yea, in the current moment where a large group of white dudes are abusing their power to make the world worse it is super weird.

A generous reading would be that fascists will work with anyone if it enhances their power and control, Imperials may be space racist but if this alien will help you (Or has no choice but to help you) beat down on anyone you tell them to why not let them wear the uniform?

But I doubt anyone at EA was thinking it through that much.

@foggen: THANK YOU. The woke Imperials are the single worst thing about Disney Star Wars. I love the rebels being multicultural. I want the imperials to be a bunch of old, frail, pasty British men.

Whatever you want them to signify, nazi’s, the crown, the establishment... it underserved the premise for them to look identical to the Rebelion/Alliance. That’s just bad design.

As for Squadrons, I think it’s great. It’s a game we have needed for a very, very long time and I hope E.A. makes more similarly focused games. Every game doesn’t need to be “everything and the kitchen sink”.

@foggen: It's more like, "when Star Wars was filmed in 1978, the only actors we could get to play the Imperial roles were older British white men".

There have been, post original-trilogy, creative minds behind Lucasfilms/Lucasarts who have explained that the Galactic Empire IS racist, but in a very literal sense - that is, they view the Human race as superior to all other "alien" races (which is reflected in in the bridge crew's disgust when Darth Vader hires the alien Bounty Hunters to track down the Falcon).

Other than that, though, the Empire saw Humans as Human. As long as you made the cut in the Imperial Academies, they didn't care a whit about your gender or ethnicity.

Wow, Brad is right, those TIE fighters are way too durable. And they shouldn't have all those fancy mods, either. TIEs are supposed to be barebones by design, they don't have shields, they don't even have basic life support; they're the definition of disposable, and so are their pilots. They wouldn't have fancy modules to radically alter and customize performance like that, and they definitely couldn't tank dozens of hits from multiple enemies.

Jeez he just fully crashed into that capital ship and just.. bounced off. That really sucks.

Is it weird that this turns me off as much as it does? :\ I wasn't planning on buying this in the first place, but seeing how wrong the TIE fighers are, the stripped down systems, and the puny list of available ships (no z-95, no missile boat, defender, etc.) I'm not even interested in downloading it..

When are we going to get a proper TIE Fighter successor?

@goulash_enjoyer: The TIES in 1994's TIE Fighter were just as durable. As it turns out, most players wouldn't have fun if they exploded the instant an enemyl ship looked in their general direction. As it is, the fact that Republic craft have shields and Imperial craft do not (but the TIES are much faster and more maneuverable than their Republic counterparts) nails the feel of the old games pretty well.

This is a bit like complaining that Storm Troopers in Star Wars Battlefront can survive more than a single shot, and are actually capable of hitting a target 30 feet in front of them. ;)

@dasakamov: So I looked this up last night, because my memory of playing TIE Fighter was that those ships all had shields, missiles, and hyperdrive for the sake of gameplay, and I was pretty familiar with the EU to know those weren't the case "canonically." Turns out my memory was wrong, and the earliest missions in that game actually did have the standard, shieldless TIEs. I was also reminded of the TIE Defender, which I absolutely loved.

@dasakamov said:

No they weren't. When was the last time you played TIE Fighter?

So, just like Star Wars Squadrons, then. ;)

According to my GOG account, back in 2016.

Didn't realize you were going to assume I meant *literally*. I don't have access to the code for either game, so I'm not able to compare the stats of the ships of two seperate games made made 15 years apart. What I meant by my comment is, just like in Star Wars: Squadrons, TIE fighters in..."TIE Fighter" can taken multiple direct shots from enemy ships and still survive, because if they exploded from a single hit like they did in the movies, that would make for a very poor video game experience.

Disney's "woke imperials?" We're seriously doing this? The most famous Imperial voice in Star Wars belonged to a black man.

I really think what Vinny was getting at was that quippy, upbeat people are a weird vibe for the Empire, not that only white actors should be allowed to play Imperial characters. The Empire is an authoritarian planet-exploding hegemony run by a melted evil space wizard, a diverse cast isn't going to suddenly throw their identity as the bad guys into doubt.

I just played TIE Figher a couple of weeks ago after Jeff had it on one of his streams. The standard TIE in that game is super-fragile. Four or five hits from an X-Wing will kill you. A capital ship will one-shot you.

Generally that was balanced by the fact that because you were the Empire, you had about a million other TIE fighters flying around with you compared to only a few rebel ships, and you could call for reinforcements during most missions. It really gave the sense that you were just a single replaceable part in a massive military machine.

And I think that's kind of what's missing from the modern Star Wars games - for the most part, the differences between the factions are merely cosmetic rather than meaningful. Somehow, the developers got it in their heads that everyone needs to be exactly equivalent to have fun. In fact, I would argue that the older games were fun precisely because the factions played so differently. Like how in Empire at War, the factions had totally different rules about how they made money and evolved up the tech tree. For example, the Empire started controlling a ton of planets, but you had to send probe droids to scout other planets and spot enemy fleet movements. On the other side, the Rebels had way fewer resources to start, but had omniscient knowledge of everything the Empire was doing.

Vinny wasn't kidding about those strange dialog pauses, it's like a very annoying version of Shakespeare's iambic pentameter; which, instead of adding flow and rhythm, makes you think the dialog queues are completely broken.

Sentence. [PAUSE] Sentence. Sentence. [PAUSE] Sentence.

It would be a shit game if you just died and died in a tie-fighter vs an x-wing. They have to balance the game.

So, again - just like in Star Wars Squadrons. :)

Honest question: have the people who are complaining about "tanky TIE fighters" and "boring symmetrical balance" actually played the game? We can look at the hard stats to show how different the Republic and Empire are:

X-Wing: 1,200 Hull + 800 Shields; 145 Speed; 160 Accel; 75 Maneuver. Default Primary DPS 450.1.

TIE/LN Fighter: 1,550 Hull, No Shields; 150 Speed; 211 Accel; 80 Manuever. Default Primary DPS is 480.

So, just like in the old-school games, the X-Wings can slug it out with their recharging shields, but aren't winning any races or agility contests.

TIE Fighters are glass-cannon ballerinas and need their advantage in speed and their insane maneuverability to play to their advantages. The rest of the ships follow the same basic guidelines (with their own unique traits.)

@dasakamov: I'll turn that back on you and ask - have you actually played the original TIE Fighter?

It takes waaayyy more hits in Squadrons to down a TIE than in the original. Squadrons also lets you get repaired with the rechargeable ability or a resupply from a support ship, so theoretically, your fighter has infinite hit points assuming you can escape a tail. In the original TIE Fighter, you were carrying any damage you took for the entire mission.

As far as "boring symmetrical gameplay" goes, I'm saying that the factions don't feel any different, regardless of what the stats on the ships say. Dogfights are always 5 v. 5. The fleet battles give the same objectives to each side. Yes, there is plenty of strategy in selecting the makeup of the teams and the load out of the ships, but there isn't any asymmetry in the objectives. What made the original games great was that it felt like the factions needed to win in different ways that was true to their canon.

but can you play the trench run?

no? Take her away!

@therealturk: Like I said in a previous post, I last played the OG games back in 2016. Regarding this game, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. :)

You don't balance an Empire vs Rebel Alliance game by making them more or less identical. You balance an Empire vs Rebel Alliance game by having each side play to their asymmetrical strengths. Yes. TIEs (including interceptors) should die fast and hard. Because that's what a TIE fighter is. Don't like it? Too bad. That's the Empire. You're disposable (remember how all their soldiers wear helmets that cover their faces and erase their identity?) and your ship has been built from the ground up as a disposable rapid attack craft lacking fundamental basics like life support, but those stripped down systems allow for more speed and agility and there are way more of you on the field. X Wings, on the other hand, are more expensive to produce because they include necessary systems like life support, FTL drives, shields, and onboard repair/navigation droid support. They're an example of how Rebel Alliance values the lives of their pilots because they need every pilot they can get.

The way they outfit their rank and file soldiers is kind of, like, the basic ideology of the two sides. It matters. Or, it did once. It doesn't anymore. Star Wars died decades ago.

"Vax Millesco" is a damn fine Max-Scoville-but-Star-Wars anagram.

I think there is a patch for the deadzone problem Vinny .

the best way I can describe the voice acting is that it sounds like there was a cut dialogue system or something.

@amishmonster: That HAS to be intentional, right?

Seems like the stilted way they talk is an artifact of ditching a dialogue system. The stilt happens when they suddenly switch topics to something that nobody asked about, and it seems like they might have had to asking simple questions.