Battlefront II Revisited: Under Covered Skies

Welcome back to my series “Battlefront II Revisited”. When Star Wars Battlefront II was released in November 2017, a large part of my excitement was directed towards the inclusion of a single player story mode, which would be telling a new story in the canon and following a new set of characters: Inferno Squad. Having completed the story mode rather quickly, I have only really played the game in patches since as online multiplayer shooters are not really my thing, but all the recent improvements and new content have had me playing a bit more recently and I decided it would be fun to return to the story mode and give my thoughts on each level. Today looks at the 9^th mission Under Covered Skies

Please be aware there will be spoilers for the story

Previous missions:

• The Cleaner
• The Battle of Endor
• The Dauntless
• The Observatory
• The Storm
• Outcasts
• Royalty
• General Distress

With Leia having given Inferno Squad permission to go after Admiral Versio, the team make their way to Bespin, with Iden and Del looking to infiltrate in their X-wings. What follows is effectively a cutscene that we control, as we fly our X-wings to a landing platform on the bottom of Chinook Station – similar to the first stage of the flight section in The Battle of Endor. During this flight, Del and Iden’s conversation ranges from the mission (Admiral Versio’s fleet refuels at Chinook Station, overseen by Hask. They are looking to capture Hask and take out the fuel platforms), Del’s love of the Beldons they are flying past and his habit of researching the fauna ahead of missions, and what Del and Iden will do after the war. During these conversations, we hear that Del spent time on Lothal and Mykapo when he was with the Empire – a nice little nod to Rebels.

Landing on the platform, we need to make our way to a turbolift to reach the Overseer’s tower, where Hask will be. We soon find our way blocked by a lot of stormtroopers, apparently security is tighter than Inferno expected. There’s no way to avoid a fight here, but luckily the first couple of troopers have their backs to us and there is a blaster turret pickup right next to them, which makes the fight here so much easier.

Reaching the turbolift, Iden realises that the heavy security will make further infiltration hard, but comes up wit a plan. Iden and Del change into stormtrooper armour, allowing them to make their way through Imperial forces without being noticed. Due to the ID-10’s new paint scheme, he is ordered to make his own way to the tower to avoid suspicion. We make our way through some buildings and open areas  full of stormtroopers, and I must admit that I was a little disappointed not to have more ambient dialogue like in Maz’s castle, although there are some great nods to other stories that we can hear: references to Governor Adelhard and the Iron Blockade from the mobile game Star Wars: Uprising, while we can also hear troopers talking about something big coming and being transferred to the Western Reaches (where Jakku is located).

“I know it’s been a long six months, but we’ll get him this time. I can feel it.”

Iden and Del make it to the turbolift up to the Overseer’s tower, where they meet back up with ID-10, however when they make it tot he top of the tower, they emerge to find the room empty. A holo of Hask appears, where he tells them that the Corvus was picked up passing the blockade. We can run out onto a platform to see Hask’s Star Destroyer flying away from the station, before a TIE fighter rises up and begins shooting at us, forcing us to seek the safety of the room we had just left, which is now filling with stormtroopers from the far end. Luckily, there is plenty of cover for us to use to take these troopers out.

We make our way back down in the turbolift and the hallways below are now empty. Iden still wants to complete the other mission objective of taking out the fuel platforms, but they know it will be all-but impossible to get back to the X-wings. We can use the ID-10 to slice into the camera feed to find that a nearby platform has a couple of TIEs on it, so make this our destination. We come out on the high ground, but there are a lot of troopers and an AT-ST between us and the platform. Now, the smart way to navigate this section would probably be to get down there and use the cover to take out the troopers, while taking advantage of a rocket launcher we can take out in a nearby building. I managed to use a different technique however of staying at the high point and using a combination of my blaster, impact grenades and the blaster turret to slowly whittle down the AT-ST from a relatively covered position, before going down to ground level to take out the few remaining troopers. Definitely not so heroic…

We make it to the platform just as the TIEs fly away. After taking out the remaining troopers on the platform, we need to find a different vehicle. Del suggests the cloud car on the platform and there is nothing else usable around, so we’re stuck with this.

“When I said we needed a ship, I should have been more specific.”

“It has weapons! What more do you want?”

“For it not to be a cloud car!”

And so we reach the final section of the mission, as we look to use the cloud car (which does have blasters) to take out the fuel platforms, which are currently refuelling 3 Star Destroyers. The cloud car is patched into Imperial communications (which makes sense considering where we found it), which means that we are able to overhear the communications between the Star Destroyers and TIE squadron leader as the look to defend the platforms. The platforms are relatively easy to destroy, with 3 targets on each platform, and the combination of TIE fighters and Star Destroyer turbolasers is not enough to seriously trouble us. Destroying the 9 targets destroys the platforms and catches the 3 Star Destroyers in a chain reaction, while we fly away to safety.