We Played Star Wars Battlefront 2 Single Player And Now We Have Some Thoughts

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is going to offer fans the first ever chance to play a single player Star Wars story on the current generation of consoles. That alone is a big deal, but it’s compounded by the partnership between EA and Disney/Lucasfilm that gives the development team at DICE creative license to add characters and events to the official canon. All the events in Star Wars Battlefront 2 single player campaign are bona fide moments in the Star Wars Universe. And the start of the Star Wars Battlefront 2 single player hands on starts with a scene that’s as official as it gets.

The main character of Battlefront 2 , Iden Versio, is standing on the bridge of a Star Destroyer with her father, a respected Admiral. Emperor Palpatine is there too, by way of one of the messenger surrogates introduced in the Shattered Empire comics. They’re discussing Operation Cinder, and Iden is given a specific mission to do without specific information as to why. Her father makes it clear she’s not to ask questions. But she’s a loyal soldier with special forces training and an awful lot of badass swagger. I didn’t want narrative, I wanted action. And the single player campaign should have plenty.

The mission starts with Iden flying a TIE fighter in a pitched space battle as the Rebel fleet aims to wipe out the Imperial space station, one of the last strongholds remaining for the empire following the destruction of Death Star II. The controls have been modified from what you are likely used to, with the left analog stick controlling pitch in such a way that it's easy to find yourself barrel rolling in a blind panic when you first start out. Adjusting to the new scheme was easy though, and after a few minutes I had completed the objectives out in space (think blowing up specific ships) before I had to land inside another rebel vessel.

Yeah, you read that right. Battlefront 2 brings back the mechanic beloved in the Assault mode from the original Battlefront games that allows you to dogfight in space but then land on ships and do ground combat inside larger vessels. It’s incredibly promising to see it in the single player campaign and I can only hope the feature is part of the broader multiplayer focus for the game. I flew into a rebel hangar and laid down green plasma hellfire on everything in sight before hopping out of my TIE fighter and slaughtering the first wave of responding soldiers.

The interior portion of the combat mission was a bit shorter, but featured some fantastic gameplay details. My favorite thing during the hands-on was shooting/smashing door locks to make them close. It feels like such a Star Wars move to see a squad of soldiers charging at you down a hallway, but then a precision blast on a door panel seals the entrance and cuts them off. It’s a little thing, but I think it shows the depths of the detail we’ll find throughout.

My only criticism of the single-player Battlefront 2 campaign is that the mechanics are the same as the multiplayer, which includes a non-sticky cover system. You can do line of sight cover and crouch behind stuff, but it doesn't feel secure. In multiplayer it doesn't matter so much if you die over and over, but in single player it absolutely will.

Other than that, though, my Star Wars Battlefront 2 single player hands-on was brief but promising. It’s hard not to get excited for this if you’re a Star Wars fan, and I’d probably forgive some gameplay issues if the story and cutscenes continue to be as strong as what we’ve seen so far. This is canon, after all, and learning what happens between the Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens will almost certainly make this year’s release of The Last Jedi a lot more interesting. We’ll get the full story when Star Wars Battlefront 2 releases on November 17.