EA, Motive and Lucasfilm Announce Star Wars: Squadrons

erek

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Hopefully it's pretty cool.

"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. In addition, 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.

Star Wars:Squadrons will also feature a single-player story that brings to life events following the Battle of Endor when the Rebel Alliance has successfully destroyed the Death Star II. Through the story, players will learn what it means to be a pilot as they battle from the alternating perspectives of two customizable pilots, one serving in the New Republic's heroic Vanguard Squadron, while the other fights for the Galactic Empire's fearsome Titan Squadron. The authentic story features a diverse cast of original characters, as well as some cameos from familiar faces in the Star Wars galaxy.

Star Wars: Squadrons is available now for pre-order and lands on retail and digital storefronts on October 2 for 39.99 USD. EA Access and Origin Access Basic subscribers can enjoy up to 10 hours of play time at launch, along with 10% off the purchase of the full game. Origin Access Premier subscribers will get full access to Star Wars: Squadrons on PC along with all the benefits of Basic as long as they subscribe. For more details, visit."


https://www.techpowerup.com/268569/ea-motive-and-lucasfilm-announce-star-wars-squadrons
 
Sitting in an X-Wing cockpit in VR = they have my "full attention" (that's innuendo)
 
why can't they just remaster X-wing and Tie fighter already...all they need to do is that, tweak a couple of things and they will rake in $$$$
 
why can't they just remaster X-wing and Tie fighter already...all they need to do is that, tweak a couple of things and they will rake in $$$$

That'd probably involve sorting out some tricky licensing issues, and that's assuming there's a big enough audience for them. EA has the license to make Star Wars games, but it doesn't necessarily have the licenses to those games.
 
Banked turns in space... yea. There's a reason these are better on film than in gaming.
 
Banked turns in space... yea. There's a reason these are better on film than in gaming.

Flight mechanics are my first concern. Second is depth to the game. EA has a good track record of screwing up both.

Very interested but I’ll wait on some twitch streams.
 
As an old wing commander fan, I'm interested but I don't trust EA not to fuck it up. EA killed wing commander years back and I still have not forgiven them.

How did EA kill Wing Commander? Also, all the games were from Origin, as far as I can remember.
 
That'd probably involve sorting out some tricky licensing issues, and that's assuming there's a big enough audience for them. EA has the license to make Star Wars games, but it doesn't necessarily have the licenses to those games.

that is fine as well, copy its format and make a new game that harks back to what these were.
 
why can't they just remaster X-wing and Tie fighter already...all they need to do is that, tweak a couple of things and they will rake in $$$$

Didn't they do that already? I had a lot of hours in both of them back in the day when I had to install off of floppy.

Edit: I just looked it up. There are "Special Editions" of both games, but I'm not sure what's "special" about the "special edition."
 
The irony that this will have been completed in 1/4 of Star Citizen's ongoing development time, with 5% of Star Citizen's budget, and will have working space combat and servers
 
Watching with excitement, between battlefront 2 and fallen order I'm willing to give EA a chance as they have been turning things around so far, wont pre-order but will give it an honest look at launch. The amount of people that try and be "edgy" and shit on any game simply because its EA is laughable.

edit: oh shit I didn't realize it will be VR on both PS4 and PC and full crossplay between systems, that just changed things alot for me and I'm probably going to buy it unless its a complete turd. Also reading the forbes article and they have announced no micro transactions for the game :D

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joepar...e-vr-support-on-both-pc-and-ps4/#23cad9456f13
 
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How did EA kill Wing Commander? Also, all the games were from Origin, as far as I can remember.
Yeah, EA didn't kill Wing Commander at all. Chris Roberts had left in '96, which was the last year of a wing commander game and EA didn't mandate Origin Systems be an online only game company till '99 or 2000 and even then when it had cancelled Origin's projects, it was Privateer 3 that got cancelled but hadn't even started development until Chris Roberts had already left and went to work on Starlancer for Microsoft. EA has certainly crapped up the game industry, but there's no need to attribute things to them that they aren't actually responsible for. Even Ultima IX which was a massive trash fire of a game, wasn't really EA's fault as Origin shifted staff to work on UO and Richard Garriot kinda halfassed everything(much like his failed mmo kickstarter from a few years ago) and churned out a massive flop.
 
Flight mechanics are my first concern. Second is depth to the game. EA has a good track record of screwing up both.

Very interested but I’ll wait on some twitch streams.

I hope they are good to but don't expect realism. Star Wars is as unrealistic as a "science" fiction gets.
 
But why would I play this when there is ace combat.
I need a new old republic single player.
 
But why would I play this when there is ace combat.
I need a new old republic single player.

I actually liked Ace Combat 7 multiplayer, but it isn't very active. One of the games that would benefit a lot from cross platform play since there is no mod support and everyone uses a gamepad anyways.
 
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I have my doubts because EA, but I am always up for another X-Wing (and Tie Fighter) style game. And VR is icing on the cake.
 
I wasn't interested but since it's VR, yeah I'm going there. Eve Valkyrie, once you get your space legs...or stomach...is a great VR killer App....this would be that-and-more.
 
Will this be on rails like a roller coaster or free form flying like the original x wing series?
 
Eh. Wasn't there supposed to be another game that was a space adventure flight game etc etc etc holy grail.

I can't quite recall the name. Star Person. Star Fighter. Star Adventure. Hmm. Something like that.
 
How did EA kill Wing Commander? Also, all the games were from Origin, as far as I can remember.

Origin was a developer working under EA. They weren't earning top dollar, but we're definitely profitable. EA management felt that they could make more money if they invested in EA sports instead. This decision put origin out of business and EA kept all the franchise rights only to put it on a shelf. Typical EA stupidity.

At the time, origin was working on a new game - privateer 3. Nobody knows for sure but it sounds like that game was roughly a year out. Maybe less.

It's not to say that there weren't problems at origin. I'm sure there was.
 
I would be more interested in this if it had a real story driven solo campaign. Sounds like solo campaign will be a short tutorial for online multiplayer. Ugh.
 
Origin was a developer working under EA. They weren't earning top dollar, but we're definitely profitable. EA management felt that they could make more money if they invested in EA sports instead. This decision put origin out of business and EA kept all the franchise rights only to put it on a shelf. Typical EA stupidity.

At the time, origin was working on a new game - privateer 3. Nobody knows for sure but it sounds like that game was roughly a year out. Maybe less.

It's not to say that there weren't problems at origin. I'm sure there was.

Honestly, in my opinion, once Wing Commander Prophecy was not finished, Wing Commander was finished, for good.
 
Wing Commander II was the Crysis of its day, the benchmark everyone used to show off what a PC game could be........the series died when CD ROM's became a thing and suddenly someone decided that Full Motion Video and streaming audio should take more focus than actual gameplay. Wing Commander...was it Privateer? That one that was like a Spiritual Successor to the first ELITE game (C64...whos with me!?!?) was fun because you could upgrade your ship, haul cargo and so forth, make more of a game of it, but by then the series was losing steam because every Wing Commander game can be summed up this way: Jousting in Space.

It's what killed off most of the early space games.....the whole concept of space combat got repetitive......to a certain extent its why you saw a demise in flight sims as well in the 90's into the 00's. You were just endlessly circling in space trying to get on the ass-end of your opponent. VR at least makes that repetitive concept..nauseating, so its like a ride :D

The Xwing games were a little better in that they made the AI more prone to doing 'cinematically stupid things' like flying over big capital ships so you could line them up and strafe them, they let you attack the larger lumbering ships and see things explode....but then we went to multiplayer in the age of the higher-speed-modems, and it went right back to being nothing but big "how tight of a radius can I turn and stay on this things tail" gameplay in those highly-regarded-but-repetitive-as-f Xwing vs Tie Fighter games...

VR, again, makes this a more fun/realistic experience. For those too young to remember, this below was *the shi*".
 
Wing Commander II was the Crysis of its day, the benchmark everyone used to show off what a PC game could be........the series died when CD ROM's became a thing and suddenly someone decided that Full Motion Video and streaming audio should take more focus than actual gameplay. Wing Commander...was it Privateer? That one that was like a Spiritual Successor to the first ELITE game (C64...whos with me!?!?) was fun because you could upgrade your ship, haul cargo and so forth, make more of a game of it, but by then the series was losing steam because every Wing Commander game can be summed up this way: Jousting in Space.

It's what killed off most of the early space games.....the whole concept of space combat got repetitive......to a certain extent its why you saw a demise in flight sims as well in the 90's into the 00's. You were just endlessly circling in space trying to get on the ass-end of your opponent. VR at least makes that repetitive concept..nauseating, so its like a ride :D

The Xwing games were a little better in that they made the AI more prone to doing 'cinematically stupid things' like flying over big capital ships so you could line them up and strafe them, they let you attack the larger lumbering ships and see things explode....but then we went to multiplayer in the age of the higher-speed-modems, and it went right back to being nothing but big "how tight of a radius can I turn and stay on this things tail" gameplay in those highly-regarded-but-repetitive-as-f Xwing vs Tie Fighter games...

VR, again, makes this a more fun/realistic experience. For those too young to remember, this below was *the shi*".


I do not agree with most of what you typed here. :D I found that Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4 was the best and the stories were fantastic.

Wing Commander III Intro

Wing Commander IV Intro
 
Honestly, in my opinion, once Wing Commander Prophecy was not finished, Wing Commander was finished, for good.

You may be right. They made the secret ops missions but that was a piece of garbage. Low budget and half assed.

However, I don't think it was too smart to axe the company shortly before they released a new game. It's not like privateer 3 was a concept at that point. Let them finish it to recoup the development costs and then scrap the company if it doesn't pan out to be worthwhile.
 
It's up for pre-order on steam for 40?! That's strange, maybe this is not a full AAA $60 game?
 
Mark Hamill, John Ryes Davies and Malcolm McDowell in FMV.....you have the sheer AUDACITY to raise that up against WC2!?!?!?! :D If only you added in WALKEN I'd say you checked every box for "ensuring your CD-Rom based game was doomed in the 1990's"... :D

A Bold Move. What do you object to, the fact that WC2 was a benchmark for PC gaming in 1991 (it was) or that "space jousting" is what killed off the glut of space fighter pilot games.......X Wing, Tie Fighter, XWingTieFighter, Wing Commander I, II, 3, 4, Privateer (?), Privateer 2...then there were those other games right.....the names escape me now 20 years later but even the multitude of Descent games and their offshoots kinda got hella repetitive and in the PS1 days they tried to port some of them with limited success. Not saying they were bad but you could say the advent of the First Person Shooter killed the cockpit-games that had kinda been done to death. PC gaming was about 'Simulations" of vehicles in the 90's more than anything else.......or so I recall it skewing that way. Consoles were the systems that gave you 2d platformers and such.

Its like the same way that people got tired of all the MechWarrior type of games because once you figured out the entire gameplay strategy could be summed up with "Sweep The Leg!", all the rest of it started to make little sense. ignore everything but the legs.....kinda kills the imagination a bit. MechAssault on Xbox was a good game because it sort of arcadified that genr......ok look I'm waaaaay TF off topic now :)

A good solid space/flight sim in VR? I'll bite.
 
It's up for pre-order on steam for 40?! That's strange, maybe this is not a full AAA $60 game?

If it was MP only I'd see that, but even for a game from EA that seems like a stretch. With a campaign (even if crappy) that seems odd. Call me skeptical but there has to be some catch to it.
 
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