All the craze surroundingStar Wars: Battlefront 2, and my getting caught up in the mass return to EA’s 2017 title, scratched an itch I had long forgotten. The humming of lightsabers, iconic blaster sounds, and a brilliantly beautiful alien galaxy spurred me to revisit this classic franchise.
As a kid, I was aStar Warsbuff like any other. I owned a lightsaber myself, though not one as cool as in the movies. It was plastic and had to be pointed towards the ground to unravel its cones. But to me, it was real, as was Jabba the Hutt, his palace, Tatooine, and every other bit and part of that galaxy far, far away. I watched and rewatched the movies countless times as a child and spent countless hours on the classicStar Wars: Battlefront 2, the one launched in 2005, which brought me ever closer to that unique and strange world.
But then, around the time the sequels started coming out,Star Warsfaded from my life. It wouldn’t be until my friends mentioned everyone crawling back to the “new”Battlefront 2during a mundane match ofDota 2. YouTubers, streamers, players—it seemed for a moment that the entire gaming sphere simply stopped and collectively thought: why don’t we playBattlefront 2anymore? And upon coming back to the currently available version of the game, the one that has none of the borderline predatory microtransactions and impossible progression systems, everyone realized that it was, in fact, a very good game.
I’ve already spent dozens of hours playing the title and watching up close the world ofStar Warsunravel before me. Hell, I even fired up the original trilogy and binge-watched it all three in a row, as I was finally back into my earliest years of childhood, where Jabba and Boba Fett and Darth Vader were realistic and almost tangible. The combat and massive fights across the many realms in Galactic Assault elevated the scale of theStar Warsuniverse to what it was all those years ago before the incredible franchising and Disney’s purchase of the IP ruined just about most of it.
My tenure with EA’s most recent attempt at recreating the charm of the olden days also led me to purchaseStar Wars: Battlefront 2 Classic. Not EA’s re-release that ruined the original experience, but the actual 2005 title that, to my surprise, was as alive as ever. About 400 people were online when I joined one late evening, and full servers were readily available for anyone to hop on and duke it out on its many awesome maps, maps which EA also tried to put into its game but, well, didn’t really capture them.
I will say that, although they lack the grittiness of the original, the maps in the 2017 Battlefront 2 are awesome in their own right and provide enough ground for an amazing experience that rivals Battlefield 1, and I don’t compare games to that masterpiece lightly.
Even so, I was awestruck at how much more content and fluidity the oldBattlefronthad over the new one. You could fight in ships in space and crash land into the enemy hangar and start fighting them inside, or merely hop into another X-wing and fly out to take the fight to the stars. Jedis, heroes, and villains felt like real rarities and unique moments whenever someone got them, whereas the new Battlefront has them available for points, and there’s a handful active on the map at any given moment.
And that’s when I sort of understood that it wasn’t only childhood memories: game development, andStar Warsfranchise management, were on a higher artistic level back then than they are now. The original trilogy was a fun ride; the prequels not so much. Other shows and films in theuniverse just kept getting worse the more I looked into them, or rather, the newer they were. Highlights exist here and there, such as the recentAndor, but they are few and far between.
The originalStar Wars, which I am now once again a passionate fan of, was ironically re-introduced to me via a game that EA more or less abandoned and killed with their mismanagement and Disney’s indifference to how its franchise is handled (the most recent major update was five years ago). I loveStar Warsas it was, gritty, conditioned by the 1970s and 80s lack of technology and limited future predictions, lacking most modern conventions and understandings.
And EA has more than a shot, once again, to make that once greatStar Warsthe mainstream again. The interest is clearly there, and DICE and adjacent EA teams certainly have the talent to pull it off. So, here’s hoping that I get a real chance to love the franchise again. Only this time, without having to look back.
