EA’s flashy first trailer for Star Wars: Squadrons earlier this week certainly caused an immediate rise in excitement levels among fans of the franchise but one key component missing from the reveal was gameplay.
Fortunately, however, we haven’t had to wait long in order to get an idea of what the game will look like in action, as the publisher delivered exactly that during yesterday’s EA Play event. As the aforementioned cinematic teased, Squadrons looks incredibly slick in motion, with all eight playable spacecraft (four each, for the Empire and Rebels) meticulously recreated by Motive Studios. As expected, each of these vehicles on both sides is intended to play a specific role in battle – the A-Wing and TIE Interceptor, for example, excel at infiltration and swift manoeuvering – and can be customized to best suit its pilot’s needs.
So eager has it been to ensure players have plenty of options in that regard, in fact, that Motive has individually created 60 different components that can be mixed and matched at will and you can check out the whole lot down below.
Various performance, weapon and shield upgrades are par for the course, then, and it’s worth noting that components are largely functional in nature. In order to noticeably change the appearance of an X-Wing or TIE Bomber, you’ll need to unlock what’ll assuredly end up being numerous cosmetics which, as EA clearly stated in the gameplay trailer, will be obtainable via in-game means – not microtransactions.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Star Wars: Squadrons will be free of additional purchases when it launches on October 2nd, of course, and we’ll hopefully have clarification on that subject in the near future, so stay tuned.