Star Wars: Squadrons

dreamers75

https://twitter.com/EAStarWars/status/1271502677667528704

Trailer Monday.

chrislad

I imagine it'll be a Rogue Squadron like game, using the engine from Battlefront, as those space battles were fairly well done. May even throw in some Rebel Strike-like on foot sections.

Either way, I'm intrigued. I'm literally in the middle of a Fallen Order playthrough, and we could do with some more story driven, single player Star Wars games.

EoinMcLovin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0eRkhR1z6A

CatInABox

Seriously, this no gameplay **** is really annoying. What's the point of that? Is it a new game or another animated Star Wars TV show? Argh!


Also, the thing that popped into my mind while watching that?

DO A BARREL ROLL.

Stormhawk88

As a fan of the old star wars X-wing games especially Rogue Squadron I really hope this is gonna be good.

But the fact that its EA and the disastrous launch Battlefront 2 had I am not gonna get excited just yet.

EoinMcLovin

EA has formally announced Star Wars: Squadrons, a first-person space dogfighting game set after the events of Return of the Jedi, and coming to PS4, Xbox One and PC (via Origin, Steam and Epic Games Store). It will be released for $39.99 USD on October 2.


Developed by Motive Studios, the game will include both a single-player story and multiplayer modes (with cross-play support across all platforms), and can be played in VR on PS4 and PC.

https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1272546674133565440?s=19

chrislad

I'll wait for some gameplay and a bit more detail (the price point is worrying), but I'm all for a new Star Wars single player game.

Mr Crispy

VR support is a positive, but yeah, I just can't see EA not extracting every last drop of green alien milk out of this.

BeerWolf

I absolutely loved X-Wing and TIE Fighters back in the 90s, about damn time they've made another game!

Mr Crispy

I see Wedge has been dug up again.

pixelburp

"Game Engine Footage", ha. Nice use of semantics. I mean it's clearly not "in game" 'cos nothing looked like real gameplay. Do we know what engine this is? Are EA still forcing teams to use Frostbite?

Mr Crispy

Hmmm. From the official press release....

Star Wars:Squadrons will offer rich cosmetic and gameplay customization options with rewards and bonuses that are earned solely through gameplay. As players move up the ranks, they’ll earn components such as weapons, hulls, engines and shields to customize the performance of their starfighters; and gain cosmetic items to customize their cockpit, ship exteriors, and appearance of their pilot.

And regarding cross play;

players will be able to squad up with their friends and play against others, regardless of platform, as cross-play will be supported on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and VR.

Is there hope?

Andy Gravity

Just saw from the steam page, they're going with cosmetic rarities, common < rare etc. With the price point they're going with I wonder if mtx will be included, though they mention "earned solely through gameplay" so I'm cautiosly optimistic.

For preordering:

New Republic Recruit Flight Suit (Epic)
Imperial Ace Flight Suit (Epic)
New Republic Recruit Starfighter Skins (Rare)
Imperial Ace Starfighter Skins (Rare)
New Republic Recruit Decal (Common)
Imperial Ace Decal (Common)

Mitch Connor

pixelburp wrote: »

"Game Engine Footage", ha. Nice use of semantics. I mean it's clearly not "in game" 'cos nothing looked like real gameplay. Do we know what engine this is? Are EA still forcing teams to use Frostbite?

Nothing looked like game play, but there were certainly pieces that I thought looked like game engine to me.

Spear

Andy Gravity wrote: »

Just saw from the steam page, they're going with cosmetic rarities, common < rare etc. With the price point they're going with I wonder if mtx will be included, though they mention "earned solely through gameplay" so I'm cautiosly optimistic.

For preordering:

New Republic Recruit Flight Suit (Epic)
Imperial Ace Flight Suit (Epic)
New Republic Recruit Starfighter Skins (Rare)
Imperial Ace Starfighter Skins (Rare)
New Republic Recruit Decal (Common)
Imperial Ace Decal (Common)

They explicitly stated no microtransactions.

Falthyron

EA Play is on Thursday. I'm sure they will show gameplay then.

gizmo

pixelburp wrote: »

"Game Engine Footage", ha. Nice use of semantics. I mean it's clearly not "in game" 'cos nothing looked like real gameplay. Do we know what engine this is? Are EA still forcing teams to use Frostbite?

That's not really semantics, it's an important distinction and should, at this stage I hope, be understood for what it is - a cinematic trailer whose only purpose is to give a rough indication of what they're aiming for with the game.

Engine wise it'll most definitely be Frostbite but following the studios previous work on Battlefront II, I don't think it'll really hold them back for a title like this.

Spear

Spear wrote: »

They explicitly stated no microtransactions.

It's EA though. Hard to get excited by anything they make. You just know they'll **** it up somehow and try to bleed the player.

Falthyron

Deleted User wrote: »

It's EA though. Hard to get excited by anything they make. You just know they'll **** it up somehow and try to bleed the player.

Jedi Fallen Order and the CnC Remastered offers some hope. Yeah, there are shítty practices and (probably) a toxic culture of exploitation over the years, but two of their most recent releases have showed signs of improvement in delivering their products and how they treat those customers.

K.O.Kiki

https://twitter.com/tibermoon/status/1272736479920508928

I'm listening...

super_furry

Deleted User wrote: »

It's EA though. Hard to get excited by anything they make. You just know they'll **** it up somehow and try to bleed the player.

Think they got so burnt by Battlefront 2 that they're moving away from that approach. They have the billion dollar cash-cow that is FIFA Ultimate Team and that goes largely under the radar, so I think they're trying to stay in the good books of the public right now.

They eventually did a great job with Battlefront 2 and the space combat aspect of that game is the perfect foundation for a game like Squadrons. I'm optimistic.

pixelburp

Deleted User wrote: »

It's EA though. Hard to get excited by anything they make. You just know they'll **** it up somehow and try to bleed the player.

As someone said, Jedi Order & C&C showed some self-awareness to deliver both AAA games and something more niche with a passionate (if starved) fanbase. With Star Wars though, and I may be misremembering things, but I wonder how much the (apparent) backlash from Disney affected decisions. Battlefront 2 was a huge sh*tstorm even for EA, and getting publicly rapped over the knuckles by a larger corporation might have focused minds a little. Can't have been fun having Disney effectively go "WTF are you doing with our IP?" and seems more than coincidental that the very next game was the polar opposite of Battlefront in terms of commercialisation.

Mr Crispy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCcfJ9uEwvs

Kiith

Gameplay trailer looks fantastic. Really excited to see more of it, and it's out on October 2nd.

Sanjuro

I dunno how many people here played the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. TIE Fighter in particular is one of my all time favourite games. I've waited like... 25 years for something like it. And this looks A LOT like it.

Spear

Sanjuro wrote: »

I dunno how many people here played the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. TIE Fighter in particular is one of my all time favourite games. I've waited like... 25 years for something like it. And this looks A LOT like it.

I got a different impression from it. It seems more akin to the Battlefront/Battlefield style arcade shooter, and less like Tie Fighter. The original TF/XW games were more grounded militarily. There were more about realistic scenarios, escorting strike packages, interdiction, etc where you were just a cog in a machine. Squadrons seems like a poor substitute for them.

Shiminay

HOTAS Support has taken me off the fence and has probably made this a day 1 purchase for me

Kiith

It looks far more Ace Combat then the original x-Wing/Tie Fighter games.

And i don't mean that in a bad way.

Oafley Jones

I'm tempering my expectations here; while there's some nods to the Lucasarts games (e.g. power management), there is a whiff of a more arcade experience than I'm hoping. The great joy of the original games was the variety of missions and I'm not sure if that will translate into 6v6 multiplayer experiences. I never cared for it in X-wing vs Tie Fighter myself. Also, as cool as the battlefront VR mission was, the combat and control was pretty poor.

Homelander

Full VR support makes this an essential purchase for me even if it's only for the single player/limited MP.

pixelburp

Kiith wrote: »

It looks far more Ace Combat then the original x-Wing/Tie Fighter games.

And i don't mean that in a bad way.

That's fine with me too. As venerated as the Xwing games are, those ultra technical flight sims passed me by and just aren't my speed at all. More like homework than escapism so I'd not blink if this game leant more towards arcade thrills.

Oafley Jones

pixelburp wrote: »

That's fine with me too. As venerated as the Xwing games are, those ultra technical flight sims passed me by and just aren't my speed at all. More like homework than escapism so I'd not blink if this game leant more towards arcade thrills.

A button for routing power between shields/weapons and engines. A button for how much of your shields should be fore and aft. A button for what sequence you wanted your laser to fire. That was as technical as those games got.

BlitzKrieg

Oafley Jones wrote: »

A button for routing power between shields/weapons and engines. A button for how much of your shields should be fore and aft. A button for what sequence you wanted your laser to fire. That was as technical as those games got.

pretty much

I'm not looking for DCS level of complex air modeling

At the moment the gameplay trailer has def moved it into the want catagory

I play a lot of flight sims in VR, IL2 battle of stalingrad sits quite highly on my top vr games just for how damn good it feels to play that in VR and this looks to hit the same spot.


But on the *is it Tie Fighter level?* I am seeing 1 hit and 3 misses



It does look like they are replicating the between missions briefings and narrative as gameplay element with the player experiencing them in first person and being able to actively look around. Which is an excellent modern update of the almost point and click adventure like animated segments that held all the inter mission stuff of the original

Thought it looks like with all the gameplay in cockpit that they will do some form of the shield/engine management but it looks massively simplified down to 3 items and possibly a basic shield/engine management. Not fond of the very simplified secondary weapons systems and Not massively fond of the components setup being a bunch of perks that offer brief power ups or unique attacks.

I am also worried about the flight model, it really looks like with EA Motive involved that this is rolling off the star wars battlefront 2 flight model which is based off the battlefield flight model and....well that's not a good flight model.

And I'm worried about the mission structure, a big part of the pacing of the original games was there was a lot of mission variety, the trailer is selling heavily on set pieces and diverse combat areas, while I'm hoping for a mission inspecting cargo for contraband that suddenly goes wrong when the smugglers make a break for it and we have to chase them down.


the structured multiplayer sounds good, with cross play it would be nice to find 4 friends and actually work together on it rather then randoms.

Though if I dont have friends playing it then I imagine trying to play structured multiplayer with randoms could be painful.

Nijmegen

The flight model is a big concern... I find the BF model like flying in treacle compared to something like X-Wing. I really came to love the flight model in I-War back in the day, with preserved momentum, but I suspect modern mass audiences wouldn't touch it.

Mr Crispy

The game will have a "hardcore" mode apparently, where you can turn off the UI and rely solely on the instrument panel in your cockpit. And for added realism, you can disable custom bling, so that your team-mate's purple X-Wing won't break immersion for you.

From PCGamesN.

dreamers75

If they copy Elites flight model this game will be a must buy.

Can see it being more Battlefield flight model tho which isnt bad just merked towards not dominating the sky.

BlitzKrieg

jackfrags is doing his usually shilling for EA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGSkCalsisU

But it does look like it's a much much simpler model of the tie fighter series. Very basic power management pretty much on the level that Oafley Jones said. Maps feel a bit small. The flight model does look a bit different to the battlefield system. There looks to be some more control.


Have my concern about the multiplayer modes.

Mr Crispy

They've just released a CGI short as a promo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2VmOqjV_7Q

Regis779

I already pre-ordered Star Wars Squadrons key since it sounds like the multiplayer will be quite an experience. can't wait to have my own spaceship and see what combat system has in store

wes

Will be interesting to see how this play on VR. I have the Quest and Link cable for my PC, so will be giving that a whirl over the PS VR.

Dr Bob

Played about an hour in VR so far, really fun!
(also seemed to release over in Europe early ...which was nice)

seandotcomm

Just found out earlier that they've added Flightstick support for PS4 now too.
Haven't tried one before but I'd imagine the combination of that and VR is unreal. might have to invest....
Hoping my Amazon copy arrives in the morning

Shlippery

Tried a few dogfights online there, it is hard but fun, feels rewarding when ya get a kill but definitely takes a bit to get the grips of!

seandotcomm

Got my copy in the post this morning. Only played in VR so far. It’s a really cool experience looking around the cockpit and the environments but the limitations in PSVR really show in this game due to how small and as a result, low-res the far away enemy fighters are.

Love how your HUD is laid out across the cockpit interface. Definately gona take a while to master

BlitzKrieg

Hmm

I had a very frustrating start

So I'm an avid VR flight sim guy, got my x52 pro joysticks, my htv vive etc setup for Il2 vr gameplay. Pretty excited to play Squadrons so I boot it up in VR.

First there is some wierd audio issue, I cant seem to get audio for any of the initial logos etc and the game on initial launch goes through player customisation and then puts you straight into single player campaign's first mission.

No chance to look at any of the keys etc, just plopped in.

Go through initial cutscenes and getting in cockpit, everything seems fine, then it tells me to press button 11. Which throws me for a loop. Impressive that it recognizes the joystick, annoying that I've never kept track of the joystick button numbers (in fact on the x52 the buttons are lettered not numbered) so it's kinda hard in VR to work out what button it is so confusing bit of fiddling to finally get into the game


and the joystick controls are dog****

the flight stick is not reversed so it goes against every other flight and space sim in terms of pulling the joystick back send you pitching down not up and it put the roll to the twist and the yaw to the Y axis. Its more often the reverse of that.

Problem is for some reason during the initial flight you cannot escape to the menu, so I'm stuck bouncing my fighter off every ship we pass struggling with the controls while smacking every key possible to get to the menu. I give up and ctrl alt delete out of the ****er and restart.

Spend time fixing the controls, go back into the tutorial. Things are better, but not brilliant.

I am going to need some time in non vr mode with my joysticks deadzones to get this right because the ships feel very loose in terms of joystick control, I found it very easy to loose control of my tie and my ability to track targets was pretty useless.

I might try it with one of my game controllers instead to see how it goes, otherwise it's a lot of tweaking that I cant do in game to get the joystick to feel right.

Otherwise visually impressive and all my other big complaint is that despite being built from the ground with vr as an option they never learnt one of the most basic vr control methods for handling menus etc, just look at something to select it. It's something a lot of vr titles use when they dont use motion controllers. centre of your view is a basically a locked mouse cursor and if you keep yourself looking at something for 2-3 seconds it's counted as a click.

Much easier then trying to have us use a mouse or buttons while in vr.

BlitzKrieg

2nd impressions

with an xbone controller the game handles a hell of a lot better. Disappointing, it does not look like the game has any in game tweaks for joystick curves which is why it handles like crap on the joystick.

But if you got a controller it'll play much better and its not the most immersion breaking, still fantastic to play in VR, visually great and mostly been fun. It's very much somewhere between rogue squadron and Tie Fighter.

Wizard!

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

2nd impressions

with an xbone controller the game handles a hell of a lot better. Disappointing, it does not look like the game has any in game tweaks for joystick curves which is why it handles like crap on the joystick.

But if you got a controller it'll play much better and its not the most immersion breaking, still fantastic to play in VR, visually great and mostly been fun. It's very much somewhere between rogue squadron and Tie Fighter.

I understand your frustrtation, EA did the same with Battlefield V... They had about 15 minutes of campaign to play, BEFORE you were able to enter the menus and customize anything. The majority of users in Discord and Twitter were cursing the design and the designer, but DICE never changed that, and now, I see they are doing almost the same.


As for the controller scheme, I am lucky, as my stick has number on it and I don't use a VR, so I could see which button to use. Also, I changed to "Invert flight" and switched X-Axis with Y-Axis, to proper flight.


Apart from these, it is really fun and hard at the same time. I spent couple of hours in Practice mode where you can add enemy squadrons and fight alone against them.


I didn't have high expectations from this one, just the revive of our childhood memories, but so far looks ok and the DEVS respond real quick in Reddit bug reports. Hopefully, they will keep the game tidy.

Oafley Jones

This is wonderful. I've heard of issues with Joysticks, hopefully they'll resolve it soon. I've a HOTAS 4 on order, and while there's no issues with the DS4, it just doesn't feel right.

Playing this on PSVR (Pro) and it's ugly. Lovely crisp cockpits and a sea of blur outside. Still, it's so hard to swap back to the (fairly lovely looking) flat mode. Sitting in an a-wing cockpit and just visually tracking your opponent for a kill is incredibly satisfying. The ability to sit forward in a Tie-fighters claustrophobic bubble cockpit and see out the sides is undoubted advantage.

Edit to say: This is a remarkable clean and focused game from EA. I sense they didn't have much hope for it commercially and hence it's un-encumbered by their usual ****e.

Wizard!

My son is getting a PS5 sometime next year and I got him to try it on my PC.
Although I am using a Joystick, I gave him the gamepad, so he can learn to use it, and be ready later.
But for some reason, it is not recognized as Controller, but 2nd Flightstick and as a result, the mapping between my J and his C are shared... This is a bit ugly, us his Yaw is on the vertical axis and there is no button 12, which is the default to start mission...
Also, he cannot change the throttle, I couldn't find any combination that allows him to...

BlitzKrieg

A common cause seems to be that the game struggles to seperate controllers if more then one are plugged in when on PC. So that might be the issue affecting your gamepad.

Try unplugging the joystick before booting the game?

EDIT: Also after a bit more in the campaign I realise this game feels closer to the freespace games imho then it does the tie figther/x-wing games

Wizard!

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

A common cause seems to be that the game struggles to seperate controllers if more then one are plugged in when on PC. So that might be the issue affecting your gamepad.

Try unplugging the joystick before booting the game?

I would, but we take turns and I am trying to teach him fly...