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My thoughts on the Single-Player Campaign of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2017)

Preamble

I chose to judge this game based on its own merits, which is why I'll act as if the 2005 Battlefront 2 never existed. I haven't read the Inferno Squad novel, as a result of a lack of interest and/or the potential for this game to contradict the characterization of Inferno Squad's members in the novel for no justifiable reason. Also, even though I don't think that any of the Battlefront games needed a campaign just to be good, I was trying to give this campaign a chance by being as open-minded as possible. I didn't want to dislike this campaign, but I felt as if I was unsatisfied by the game itself. Therefore, I chose to make this in-depth explanation as to why I think that this campaign wasn't worth the hype, no matter how open-minded I was towards this game.

The Death of Battlefront

At first, I wanted to wait until release day to purchase this game, but then I waited two weeks just to play it because I wasn't interested enough to get it at launch. But, now that I actually beat the campaign, I feel that this discussion is important, as this game took the opportunity to prove how much work the Star Wars canon needs in order to improve itself, without having to consist of stories that are nothing more than glorified fanfiction, and I've read some very poorly written fanfiction in my time. If you dare to examine what went wrong with this game's campaign, you've come to the right place. Hopefully, this blog post will never be as boring as this game.

                     In my personal opinion, this cover art is just as halfhearted as the game itself.

For this blog, I have listed a bunch of elaborations of this game's shortcomings in the single-player department.

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Proceed to the bottom of this post immediately if you want to hear a summary of the problems I have with this campaign

Reason #1: Meandering Marketing

The first red flag that crossed my mind before the game was released was the way the campaign was marketed. In my opinion, the reveal trailer didn't do a good job of selling the story to me the way it was probably intended. It was supposed to get us interested in the supposedly Empire-only campaign we would be getting, but then there was something that accidentally flied in the face of the implications preceding it: a clip of the Corvus getting hit with a missile and losing two X-Wings simultanously. The way the X-Wings fell out of the hanger in that clip suggested that we should care for the Rebel Alliance. This especially became confusing with the idea that this game was supposed to be ditching the "Rebels good, Empire bad." approach in favor of giving us a story from what they claimed was exclusively from the side of the Empire. I feel as if Motive was trying to get us interested in this new story, but either didn't know or care about delivering a story that actually works, let alone respects, the fanbase that this game was catering to. In my mind, I tolerated the idea of an Empire-only campaign, but the question "What will this game become?" would sink in. And when I played the game, reality set in, and I was met with a disappointing experience that squandered its own potential instead of attempting to make a worthwhile experience. Even the trailers could never prepare me for how horrible this game's poster girl is.

Reason #2: Iden Versio, The Spineless Simpleton

Hi, there. Iden. How are you?

At first, I was open to Iden and how she would be the living embodiment of the Empire, at least in the first two missions. Therefore, I didn't mind the fact that Iden is a special forces commander, but maybe it would've been nice to give us some context in the game's prologue of how Iden trained as an Imperial in a similar fashion to the intro to Republic Commando instead of having to be told that Iden is qualified for the role of special forces instead of showing us how that is the case. Another problem with the prologue is how Iden acts in a way that she needs someone else to be with her at all times. Instead of saying "Of course I am, Rebel scum!", Iden silently stares at her interviewer, which shows that that the writers clearly didn't care about giving Iden a commanding presence, a reason for the Rebels to fear her. That interviewer also says to Iden that "The Empire's time has come." (for no verifiable reason) and that she shouldn't be an Imperial for life, with Iden reiterating half of his sentence. The way the scene was written appears to have the interviewer foreshadow the betrayal, only to contradict himself within the same sentence by saying that she shouldn't be an Imperial. This was the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the ineptitude that ruins this game's story. Admittedly, I do think that Iden had some warranted sarcasm with how she saluted the Rebels before being jettisoned out the airlock and into the Corvus' hanger. However, all of the redeeming moments this campaign has are few and far between. At first, it seemed like we were getting what Motive was trying to sell us, albeit with various scenes leaving something to be desired. But after having Iden be a hypocrite who questions and objects the idea of her homeworld being targeted instead of accepting the consequences of her choice (like she should have), the writers thought it was a great idea to have Iden and Del defect to the Rebels on Vardos. That plot twist was out-of-place, as it's a easy (and lazy) way of trying to have Iden be familiar with the Empire without keeping the promise that Iden would never join the Rebels, under any circumstances. Not only that, but I think that it would have been more preferable to have Iden executing one civilian to urge the other civilians to leave Vardos behind instead of making Iden have this forced pretension to sympathy by having Iden tell Gideon not to hurt a civilian, which I consider to be the wrong way to handle Iden as a protagonist. There's even the part where Iden is acting like a Stormtrooper on Bespin, which I feel is the writers' way of saying "We wanted to make an Imperial campaign, but we wanted to have Iden betray the Rebels, anyway.", which teases us about what could have been, had there been a better choice of writers OR have Walt Williams write the story himself. Otherwise, the decision to hire Mitch Dyer turned out to be a revelation of his own ineptitude, when it comes to writing a game. Speaking of ineptitude, Iden seems to have inconsistencies with how smart (or dumb) she is. For example, at the end of Royalty, when a TIE Fighter is brought down by the ion pulse (a level-ending Deus Ex Machina), Iden doesn't roll away from the TIE as it crashes, but allows her droid to be damaged with one of the TIE's wings. Or, when Iden's trying to help her dad evacuate an Imperial Star Destroyer, she throws all caution to the wind and flies right into anti-air fire that shoots down her X-Wing instead of trying to barrel roll away from the anti-air fire and ejects from her X-Wing before anyone has a chance to kill her in its explosion. I understand that nobody is perfect and accidents will happen at some point, but Iden is plagued by lazy writing, from the first mission on Endor and onwards. Instead of clenching her fist and being enraged at the fact that she witnessed the destruction of the second Death Star, she just ignores it until she speaks to her dad. Or, instead of sticking to a proper characterization by not only saying that the Rebels are hopeful, but also asking for evidence that shows how the Emperor was killed in any way, all we get is a single sentence of exposition, and then Iden is so dumbfounded that all she could is ask what to do next. Had this game be in the hands of a more capable writer, Iden would be more believable as a protagonist. But, no. They had to pick the worst possible choice of a second writer in Mitch Dyer to ruin the story with his own ineptitude, instead of Walt Williams (or any other writer, for that matter) write the story himself. And this leads to another problem that was caused by ineptitude.

Reason #3: Superfluous Cameos and Wrong-headed Overestimation

Before you ask, no, Iden and Luke never cross paths with each other in this game. Sorry.

Even as someone who might not be the biggest Star Wars fan out there, I can safely say that the Han Solo and Kylo Ren missions were completely pointless, as they contributed absolutely nothing to the story, and serve as intrusive filler. The former is an escort mission that pads out the game's length, while the latter is a failed attempt at a dream sequence that's packed to the brim with pointlessness, but could have worked without having Kylo on Scarif, which I feel is manufactured fanservice, or if the game's characters were better written. As for the Luke Skywalker cameo, I have two trains of thought on it: On one hand, I like when a game tries to give me gameplay variety and even alternate storytelling routes. On the other hand, I feel as if Luke's inclusion was a missed opportunity, as Del is characterized as an idiot in this mission. I can't believe they expected you to tolerate how Del has his E-11 handed to him by Luke, instead of having Del pick up the E-11 himself, even though he threw a frag grenade at a swarm of bugs and fall to the ground beneath by accident as a result of the explosion. Even worse, we learn NOTHING about what Iden or Gideon do on Pillio, without any communication between Iden and Del via radio, which could have at least kept having some attention to Iden while having Luke involved, as well. This decision to have multiple characters in the story could have gone either way, and they chose to hinder the story's creative freedom instead of doing what Halo Wars did, which was ensuring that the attention focused on the protagonist specifically, created for the game's story, except without shoehorning in pointless fanservice that does nothing for both fans and non-fans of the Battlefront series. Granted, they do have the ending focus on Del and Gideon (with Gideon killing Del because Del is now a Resistance fighter in the final mission of the campaign), but the game's ending represents how much of an afterthought its story is, at least to me. I genuinely thought that Gideon was dead when I shot down his TIE Interceptor, but I never cared about him. One of the major gripes I have with this campaign is how pretentious it is, and it appears that Motive would prefer to have a convoluted melodrama than a simple story that doesn't try to be more than it actually is. Like I said earlier, Iden should never have betrayed the Empire. More importantly, the game should have delivered on its promise by having a by-the-book mentality and having her view everything as a means to an end that justifies said means (in her mind), which should also have been done for Del and Gideon. Besides, nobody looks for stealth here, which explains why the attempts at stealth in the game are both pointless and pad out the missions, especially when you could push forward without a second thought.

Reason #4: Underwhelming, Repetitive Combat
 

On paper, it sounds interesting to pick from various weapons and/or Star Cards at a supply depot you find anywhere in a mission. However, like other good ideas for this game, Motive fails to do the loadout idea justice, as you would have to switch from all the weapons if you die on foot instead. And, that's just on my first playthrough. Even worse, there are only three slots for Star Cards instead of having a proper loadout system that not only allows you to choose your weapons and/or grenade types, but also the abilities and perks of your choosing, rather than forcing you to have one Star Card slot be reserved for a perk or for having the star cards be mapped to the right shoulder buttons without letting you choose where to map the Star Cards to the buttons by accident. Having to switch weapons as an ability is nonsensical to me because instead of letting you have a weapon wheel (by holding Y) or switch between weapons organically (by pressing Y), you're forced to deal with ordering your personal ID-10 droid by pressing Y when looking at an enemy, much to your/my chagrin. As a result, every time I restarted from my last checkpoint, every enemy encounter boiled down to trial-and-error. The gunplay is extremely lackluster. Remember when you could use a wide variety of weapons that looked and felt different from each other in Fall Of Cybertron? In Battlefront 2, that weapon variety is almost nonexistant. Every weapon in Battlefront 2 is a "Pew pew pew." gun that has little to no defining characteristics that separates it from one another, with the only interesting weapon being the TL-50, which has a secondary fire that destroys everything in its path. The droid you carry around has an overpowered shock attack that the game convinces you to use against one of several attacking enemies with a picture of a lightning bolt over that enemy's head, but you can't choose to equip it yourself because the game also forces you to have the droid on your backpack at all times. Melee attacks are also a pain because you only have two swings, and you have to repeat the two until an enemy dies. Thankfully, the stealth takedowns aren't as bad as regular melee attacks, but that's not saying much. There are sections where you need to use vehicles in order to progress, such as the AT-AT section in the Vardos mission, but the problem is not their quantity, but their quality. The TIE Fighter sections are either "Go here, shoot this." or "Defend this at all costs." or both, making them boring, repetitive and tedious all at once. The AT-AT section is just as bad, as the design choice to have the AT-AT be on-rails shows how risk-averse the developers were for this game. Instead of actually piloting the AT-AT yourself and having fun with how the game would've given you full control over the AT-AT, Motive made piloting an AT-AT so boring because the AT-AT section is actually just another variation of "point-and-shoot". Even the Jedi hero combat is disappointing, as the lack of any distinction between the Jedi controls and the soldier controls makes the Jedi levels feel underdeveloped, in my opinion. The things that ruin the combat in this game the most are not just having the same enemy types on a loop (or even one enemy type in Luke's mission), but also the horrible attempts at bosses and mini-bosses. For both boss types, all you need is to keep firing until that boss has finally been killed off. In theory, a Rebel stealing an AT-ST sounds like it could be a fun miniboss, but all you need is to grab a rocket launcher, shoot one rocket at a time and then you blow up the AT-ST. Or, you have the closest thing to a final boss fight in Gideon's TIE Interceptor. Both boss types are basically damage sponges, "bullet sponges", if you will. They don't offer any interesting attacks or strategies that aren't spamming RT over and over again because of how little effort actually went into this campaign. It's like this entire campaign was nothing more than an extended tutorial for the multiplayer, and a bad one at that.

Take this game, get rid of the co-op, turn the secondary weapons into abilities, get rid of anything that provides a semblance of fun, and you have Battlefront 2's campaign in a nutshell.

Reason #5: A Forgettable Soundtrack

It's no secret that the soundtrack is one of the things Star Wars usually gets right, but for a game that's supposedly telling us a story that we've never seen before, this game's soundtrack failed to strike a cord with me. No, the inclusion of tracks from the movies aren't the problem, but it's the tracks that I can only assume were made for this game, which were so forgettable I couldn't remember which was which. Even in the levels on Jakku (The Battle Of Jakku and Until Ashes), I couldn't remember any of the songs playing in the soundtrack. It's nothing to write home about, especially when Republic Commando gave us a memorable soundtrack throughout its campaign.

Reason #6: A Needless Cliffhanger

The cutscene at the end of the Until Ashes mission made me think that the game was actually coming to a proper end. And, then, I watched the final cutscene of the game, and that was not at all the case. Instead, after executing Del personally, Gideon walks away, and the screen fades to black with no credits whatsoever (at least not during my playthrough). This unexpected stab in the back from Motive doesn't give us any reason to trust them to have a proper follow-up with the inevitable campaign expansion Resurrection. Would it killed the writers to have a great beginning, a good middle part and an ending that actually has a semblance of closure? Apparently, they think it would. This cliffhanger was the thing that sealed the deal for me. There was nothing of note in it or the mission that happens before that ending, and it's a shame because this game could have at least tried to give us a serviceable ending instead of having Motive ripping us off at the very end, like the greedy miscreants they are. This is how my mind responded to this game's ending:

Conclusion

Overall, this is a terrible campaign for fans and non-fans, alike. Its poorly-executed story, questionable campaign progression and other factors put the final nail in the coffin for any hope I may have had for Motive as a development studio. But, you want to know what the worst part is? You never unlock Iden in the multiplayer by completing the campaign, even though they give you credits or crystals for completing every mission. I feel that Battlefront 2's campaign could have avoided becoming a travesty, but alas, we may never be satisfied by a Star Wars game ever again, if Motive keeps going in this direction.

                                               This GIF is worth every word in this blog.