Controversy in the Galaxies

Star Wars: Battlefront II had a stellar debut. EA decided to put a microtransaction system inside the game and unleashed the fury of users. The company responded with a post on Reddit that reached 675 thousand downvotes (becoming the worst-rated entry in the history of the platform). The reaction is understandable, given that in the first installment of the game the upgrades and characters were not locked. Imagine buying a Star Wars game and discovering that you have to pay to play as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader.

Beyond the controversy, the best part of Star Wars: Battlefront II is the multiplayer mode. Although it's not the only one, there are also other modes like campaign or arcade. But the possibility of shooting it out simultaneously with 40 players--whether Imperial soldiers, Resistance fighters, First Order troops, or the Trade Federation--is reason enough to play online until your eyes explode.

As for the setting, the main difference with its predecessor is the time period we can play in. The first installment was focused on the original trilogy and this one takes place in earlier or later periods. The novelty is that besides playing with classic characters like Han Solo or Boba Fett, we now also have Yoda, Darth Maul, Rey, or Kylo Ren.

The gameplay has several new features. The main one is that the game is more structured. While in Star Wars: Battlefront you could customize characters at will, now we start by choosing four classes: assault, specialist, heavy, and officer.

With these changes EA seeks to further standardize the game and push it toward something more competitive. Despite the disastrous changes that could compromise the game's future, I still can't find a better way than blasting each other to bits in space to stay connected to the Star Wars universe.

This article was originally published in Pagina/12 on December 7, 2017.