Ok, I have to come clean and make a couple of admissions.  First, I was one of those folks who were greatly disappointed that Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) shipped without a campaign mode.  I mean, seriously?  How do you make a gorgeous Star Wars game and then ship it without a playable story to experience?!  It seemed like a ludicrous situation; a grand oversight.  Partially because of that, even though I bought SW:BF on Day One, I never played it that much.  I enjoyed the offline missions from time to time, (the Speeder Bike sequence on Endor in first person mode is still amazing), but overall it remained primarily on the shelf to keep my bookcase company.

I was (most likely) going to buy Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) no matter what, I’ll admit it.  Once I heard it had a campaign mode, though, I was sold.  Which leads to my painful second admission.  I bought this game also on Day One, November 17, 2017, and although I did the first Mission (the prologue “The Cleaner”) when I originally got the game, I didn’t actually, really play the campaign until April 26, 2018.

OK!  Hold on, I have an excuse!  This was partially because everyone in my house wanted to watch as I played through it to experience the story as well and I was under orders from my kids and my wife to “wait for them”.  You know, like an Imperial Decree.  Well, as anyone with a TiVo or DVR can attest, often times waiting for that other person or persons who want to “watch it with you” can lead to that show never actually getting watched.  So, I finally decided “If we actually all gather around the screen at some point to watch this together, I’ll just play it all over again.”

So after deciding to finally just play the darn thing two weeks ago, this past weekend I completed the whole campaign (the main story as well as the three-chapter “Resurrection” DLC epilogue).  As I was going about my day today, the wonderful story that developer Dice created for Battlefront II continues to float around in my head, and for very good reason.  The campaign’s story line in the Battlefront II video game is far superior to the script for the movie The Last Jedi, and really even The Force Awakens.  But what is it that this game got right that Hollywood keeps getting wrong?  Let’s take a (spoiler free) look.

Iden Versio’s nobody’s fool. She’s Star Wars’ best written female since Leia, and character to wear black since Vader.

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This post isn’t directly related to the Episode IX Radio Drama Project, but it’s something I thought our audience would enjoy the multiple layers of irony of nevertheless.

Last night I was playing Star Wars: Battlefront II on the PlayStation 4, as I’m wont to do, and as I was enjoying a round of my favorite mode, Heroes vs. Villains, I unlocked the trophy “Choose Your Path”.  If you’re not familiar with the game, or this specific reward, a player receives this trophy when they accomplish the following: “While being marked, defeat 50 enemies in Heroes Vs Villains.” Being marked refers to the player essentially being “it”, the target that the other team will be after.

At the time, I was running around as Han Solo in his unlockable Hoth “Appearance” (which I imagine must’ve made the man quite a bit warm under all that insulation in the jungles of Yavin), when I was rewarded the “Choose Your Path” trophy for eliminating none other than Kylo Ren who was being controlled by the unseen force of a player whose name starts with “Starkiller”.  Choose your path, indeed! I found it all very ominous.

One of my favorite things when I unlock a trophy is when the system actually records a *good* screenshot of the moment I unlock and am rewarded said trophy. I find the timing on this to often be quite hit or miss, no pun intended; but this time it worked out beautifully and I’m happy to share the moment with you all.

Han Solo takes an ironic shot and gets a trophy for it.

That’s two I owed you, junior. One for Kylo, and one for Starkiller. 😉