Game Review--Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005) [Xbox]

"It's been said that the 501st got the best of the war.  We also got the worst.  On Felucia, the Seps dug their metal heels into the muck of that alien hellhole and dared the Republic to come in after them . . . Cut off and for all we knew abandoned by our superiors, our only hope was Aayla Secura, our Jedi commander . . . When her death came, I hope it was quick.  She earned that much."

--501st trooper, Star Wars: Battlefront II

The first Star Wars: Battlefront had a great premise with very lacking execution in key ways.  Star Wars: Battlefront II, the original 2005 Battlefront II, that is, rectifies some of those shortcomings by having a far better single player campaign with more elaborate storytelling, new space battles, playable Jedi and Sith, and more planets.  This comes with a steeper campaign difficulty at times: instead of levels being beatable by simply killing enemies until their reinforcements dwindle to zero, you are given a small amount of reinforcements and the enemy team has unlimited troops.  Completing objectives grants an often small reinforcement boost, but in certain levels, they can still die off very quickly.  This is overall a sequel that went in a markedly better direction than its predecessor even aside from this deviation.

Production Values

Only coming out a year after the original game, this sequel very much looks like an old Xbox game from what was at this point almost two whole decades ago.  The very different graphical limitations of a distant console generation mean that, though the character models and environments would look horrendous next to numerous modern or even last generation video games, the quality is not poor for the initial time of release.  Star Wars: Battlefront II can even handle a lot of units onscreen at once, as seen in levels like the Jedi Temple campaign mission where many clone troopers, Jedi, and Temple guards could be fighting at the same time.  There are also new locations like Mustafar, the inside of the ship boarded by the Empire at the beginning of A New Hope, and regions of outer space, so the environments are more diverse and numerous this time.  The pixelation or lack of detail is still very distinct compared to today's games all the same.  Even the loading screens can show lots of pixelation!

Gameplay

With the camera resting in a third-person position and the gameplay involving objectives like the capture of command posts with limited troops available, Battlefront II is in some ways very similar to its predecessor.  This time, the campaign forces you to complete specific goals instead of just killing a certain amount of enemy soldiers, which gives way to a sudden, gratuitous increase in difficulty in its final levels.  The imprecision or over-sensitivity of the aiming controls can be a much bigger issue when piloting a spacecraft, so the option of skipping campaign space battles makes the game more accessible even as the on-foot levels on Yavin IV and Hoth can be brutal for other reasons.  To offset some difficulties and provide novelty, there are times throughout the campaign where special characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, or Boba Fett can be played in a franchise first.

Outside of the campaign, different game modes with similar battlefield mechanics are offered.  You can take over one planet after another in Galactic Conquest, where the player and computer take turns moving or building fleets to engage enemy starships or attack their planets.  Credits earned over the course of these turns can buy single-user bonuses like extra ammunition capacity for a specific battle or they can unlock more troop classes; otherwise, for example, if you play as the Confederacy of Independent Systems, only the super battle droids, the standard unit, will be available.  Someone wanting a faster, less strategic alternate game mode can just launch an individual round of warfare and capture all command posts or eliminate all opponents.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The campaign follows a clone trooper from Geonosis, where the Clone Wars begin, to his service to the Empire in the Galactic Civil War.  As part of the 501st, the group that becomes the personal troops of Darth Vader, he exterminates rebellious citizens and even surviving Jedi after Order 66.  In one case, the 501st attack Naboo when the new queen after Padme does not submit to the Empire.  This unnamed clone trooper latches onto Imperial propaganda and retaliates when the Rebels destroy the Death Star.

Intellectual Content

Almost everything here was explored in much greater intellectual and emotional depth in Dave Filoni's Clone Wars show--after the far too lighthearted first season--but Battlefront II does deal with things like the attachment of the clones to specific Jedi commanders, their sincere loyalty to a corrupt government, and their lives after the war they were created for.  This was before the inhibitor chip was introduced in the Clone Wars show, so it is very likely that in this version of the timeline, the clone troopers loyal to the Empire simply submitted to the philosophical ideas behind the Empire's propaganda and just assumed that the hearsay and the ideology surrounding it are correct.  This removes some of the tragedy of the new canon version of Order 66 while still keeping a different sort of tragedy.  Ultimately, the campaign does not dive into the precise details of these events and the ideas driving them, but it does still somewhat bring them up.

Conclusion

In spite of the graphics being very clearly outdated, the old Star Wars: Battlefront II shows how a promising but underdeveloped game could be improved upon.  The AI still has its problems, and the increased difficulty of certain campaign segments is prohibitively intense sometimes, yet there are marked steps in a superior direction.  Battlefront II is still not quite the absolute gaming legend so many imagine it to be in this era of nostalgia.  It is an example of a game that builds on good concepts while still leaving room for a numbered sequel that never came to improve things further.  The series did continue before it was rebooted--it was just handheld games like Renegade Squadron (PSP) and Elite Squadron (DS and PSP) that eventually allowed innovations like character customization or transitions from ground to space or vice versa within the same battle.  Star Wars: Battlefront II was later rebooted with a new campaign for a different console generation, but that will be saved for another time.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Laser weapons and alternates like grenades or flamethrowers are major parts of the game, yet without ever drawing blood.