Star Wars: Squadrons gameplay trailer reveals a true X-Wing successor

EA has released a gameplay trailer for Star Wars: Squadrons, the space combat game revealed earlier this week. It's touted as 'the definitive Star Wars pilot experience', and it looks terrific. 

Here's the trailer:

It's played entirely in first-person for realism, with the entire HUD is presented in the cockpit of your starfighter. Ships are divided into classes, which are fighters, bombers, support ships and interceptors, and you'll get to try each of the game's eight ships before you get into multiplayer. You can unlock cosmetics and components to upgrade and customize your ship. The idea is you can adjust your loadout in line with the rest of your squad for great strategic play. 

The game starts with a brand new story, set after Return of the Jedi, that has a dual perspective narrative technique. You create both an Imperial and Rebel pilot, and once the singleplayer is done, you jump into multiplayer.

The two modes available online appear to be dogfight and fleet battles. The latter involves multi-stage combat, and you'll be able to co. You win a dogfight in the center of the map, then the next stage involves destroying a larger vessel, before moving onto the final phase of taking out another team's capital ship. If you hold the line, you can push back and extend the match in fleet battle mode. It sounds pretty intensive. 

Ian Frazier, developer Motive Studios' creative director, was on-hand to introduce the game. "I played all the flight games in the '90s and I got pretty obsessed with them," he says. The clear suggestion is that this project comes from a lot of love and nostalgia for the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. Frazier even illustrated the X-Wing cockpit as a younger man, which was shown during the stream to demonstrate his credentials. The developers are pulling from the heritage of those classic games, which is very promising.

Motive worked on Battlefront 2, and wanted to build on the space combat element of the game. Like in the X-Wing games, you can control elements of your ship, like shifting your shields from front to back of the ship to cover rear fire from enemy fighters. 

Star Wars: Squadrons' release date is October 2 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

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