Much like the Force itself, the Star Wars: Squadrons single-player campaign is a equilibrium. It’s full of excellent references for lovers and magical (in case ill-used) new characters equally, all crammed into a succession of cockpits which are available to leap in and bunny without dogfights feeling dumb.

You can, for the most part, just get a controller and get started chasing down enemy ships — but there’s also a nuance to adjusting your controller for better turning, swapping power between engines, weapons, and protects in the fashion of the grand older X-Wing matches , also countering missile locks. Things like this make flight more participating and give good pilots a opportunity to excel without requiring you to literally learn to fly a spaceship so as to playwith.

How it weaves the stories of two rival squadrons collectively sets up clever scenarios, occasionally letting you spring ambushes on your other half just to have the next mission swap viewpoints so you’re able to deal with the wake of your actions. It is very cool, and programmer Motive Studios proceeds to prove it knows how to generate a game fit into the Star Wars universe.

Part of this comes down to the cast of interesting characters, primarily made up of the squads on each side of the conflict. Whether it’s the war-torn Imperial Shen with a battle-scarred helmet that he never takes off or the somewhat Force-sensitive former racer Keo about the Rebel side, each one is different and well-designed sufficient to stand out in their own way — a lot so I could observe any one of them because a Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Impact Companion with them feeling out of place at all.

In fact, I expect they do appear in an RPG daily, since they aren’t utilized very well here. Learning about these and their backstories is almost exclusively limited to optional discussions in your hangar between missions, which often feels ham-fisted to get a getting-to-know-you exposition-filled info dump. These stories are nicely written and acted, however they’re just sort of irrelevant at the course of all Squadrons’ events. I enjoyed listening to these, but it’s unfortunate that you could bypass each one and it wouldn’t affect your experience of the primary story at all.

That story is an entertaining one however, based around the New Republic’s creation of a new kind of warship and the Empire’s search to prevent that weapon by joining the struggle. It’s undoubtedly amusing the whole way through, however, it doesn’t strike me as particularly memorable. Neither side really makes much point about the greater battle, you are not requested to make any decisions or even really question anything they do, and both rival squads never even directly combat like I hoped that they would — that could have been fascinating. It just seems like a missed opportunity not to do something much more interesting with this special campaign structure, where we have perspectives from each side of this conflict.

Having said that, it will provide more than sufficient reason to jump into the cockpit and fly some really fun missions. Most objectives do boil down to"you are in distance and you want to shoot X item," (which is the whole premise) but the narrative’s setup for each one makes them feel more diverse than this — especially when you are leaping between good guy and bad guy every point or two. The dogfighting itself is so great that it never got dull, even though I did occasionally need there was a bit more objective selection here — for example, it would have been cool to see scenarios centered around piloting through tight spaces or perhaps place nearer to the surface of a world (or even moon-sized space channel, though the galaxy is short on people within this time period).

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Luckily, the places you do move consistently show off just how amazingly gorgeous Squadrons is. Even if objectives begin to feel like, weaving through muddy nebulas or round shattered moons distinguishes them in magnificent fashion. Missions are action-packed, however most thickly start slow and give you an opportunity to take in some of the grandiose sights that they must offer prior to the turbolasers begin flying. That spectacle exists in cutscenes as well, which often upstage those discretionary hangar discussions and allow them to feel like an afterthought by comparison.

Star Wars: Squadrons’ single-player campaign assignments are a feast for Star Wars lovers’ eyes and ears, especially in VR. Its participating space battle is a wonderful balance of arcade control with the added nuance of both simulation-like systems, which combine with astonishingly comprehensive ships and cockpits for the most authentic-feeling ride because LucasArts’ legendary X-Wing and TIE Fighter games back into the’90s. Star Wars: Squadrons does not end up doing something too memorable with its charming characters or interesting rival squadron installment, but this campaign still tells an entertaining Star Wars narrative I liked no matter which cockpit I was at.