My Hopes for Star Wars: Squadrons

We are now just over a week away from the release of Star Wars: Squadrons, and if I’m honest, it still feels like we know very little about the game. My pre-order is in place and I feel nervous, but cautiously optimistic. With the game now so near, I wanted to give some of my hopes for what we get from the game.

A decent length story

If I had to make one complaint about the story mode of Star Wars Battlefront II, it would be that the campaign was too short, which made everything feel rushed, especially considering how often we were playing as the heroes of the Original Trilogy rather than Inferno Squad.

With Squadrons‘ story already split between the Imperials and the New Republic, it needs to be a decent length in order to do the new characters and the 2 stories justice. I’m not asking for a 40-hour epic, but we at least need to have enough hours to make this feel like a legit part of the game and not something grudgingly added last minute to grab some money from fans who aren’t interested in online multiplayer.

An Imperial story

Star Wars Battlefront II‘s story was marketed as an Imperial story, but it wasn’t long until the character we were following defected from the Empire and joined the New Republic. Hopefully, Squadrons‘ story having an Imperial story and a New Republic story means that this time, the Imperials will actually be staying on the Imperial side, especially after the recent “Hunted” CG Short saw Titan Leader Varko Grey choose to continue the fight against the New Republic.

It certainly isn’t easy to write the bad guys in this time and keep them as the bad guys while still making them people you can like and support, but that is why the writers get the money they do. Whether Titan Squadron go out in a blaze of flame, get captured and detained or flee to the Outer Rim, I just sincerely hope we do not see them switching their alliance.

Something for the single players

I’m well aware that the life of the game is going to be its online multiplayer, but there will be times where I won’t want to find myself online and would rather just face the AI. Hopefully, there will be a way to play the online multiplayer modes as an offline single player mode as well. It will give us a chance to improve our flying and try out different load-outs for countermeasures and squadron makeup, without the added pressure of success or failure online affecting our record and the quality of opposition we face.

Objective-based mini-games (eg races against the clock through certain marks on a map) will be great additions to the game for single player content, but it ts important that we also have the chance to play the usual large-scale modes without having to go online and play with strangers or firing up the story mode.

Future content

I don’t know how likely this is to happen, but I wold love for extra content to be added down the line. Extra cosmetic options will be the obvious option here, but I would personally love to see something more involved, such as extra maps. To add to this, the Fleet Battles could have more variety by creating some variation to the capital ships (Imperial-class Star Destroyers or MC75 Star Cruisers) to also include Starhawks, Super Star Destroyers and MC80 Star Crusiers, while you could also add Venator-class Star Destroyers, which were used by the Empire in the early days following the Clone Wars.

Similarly – and I will quickly say that I can’t see this happening – it would be great to see extra fighters added to the game, such as B-wings, TIE Defenders and V-wings, which were used by the Empire but soon phased out in place of the TIEs.

Not only would these changes bring more variety to the game and also some freshness if added a few months down the line, but they would also be a great nod to fans of the wider Star Wars canon, who will recognise where these ships are from and their relevance to the Empire and Rebels/New Republic.

And, to take this idea to a bigger degree…

A sequel

Yes, this is definitely something to not think about too much right now, but if Squadrons goes on to be a success, it could lead to a much bigger sequel. This sequel could expand to cover not just the end of the Galactic Civil War, but also the Clone Wars and Cold War, and even some High Republic content if we are talking a game releasing a few years down the line.

A story mode could focus on any of these eras, or we could have a story for each era, while the online multiplayer (and single player equivalents) could include the Empire, First Order, Galactic Republic, Rebellion, Resistance and Separatists.

Obviously, there could be some degree of crossover of ships, as many of the Civil War ships would only need slight variations to become the variations seen in the Cold War, while the Y-wings could also be easily amended to go from the Rebellion version to the Republic version.

I have heard some people discuss the possibility of Clone Wars content but question how the droid fighters could be dealt with as they are droids in their own right as opposed to ships with a pilot. This could be dealt with by basically seeing what the fighter would “see”, probably giving us a more open view than a cockpit would allow, but with the extra information flat on the screen, while the added visibility could be offset somewhere else to keep the balance between the fighters.

Of course, if we are to have any chance of getting this larger sequel, we need this game to do well. While I’m cautiously optimistic for the game itself, I must admit that I’m surprised it will be that much of a success.