Star Wars Battlefront 2: Celebration Edition is free on the Epic Games Store through Thursday January 21st and there has never been a better time to play the game.
The quality of Battlefront 2Launching in 2017, the single-player campaign and breadth of content in the multiplayer modes have been overshadowed by EA’s controversial monetization strategy, which relied heavily on loot boxes. Players were upset and EA completely overhauled the game’s economy. The drama dominated the headlines and then it seemed like everyone just moved on. There was a half-hearted apology at E3 next year, and that was that for most people.
However, this original version of the game no longer exists and has not existed for years. There are no more updates on the way and the terrible original player progression system has been redesigned. What is left is a huge bucket of single and multiplayer Star Wars content that includes all of the movies and compounds The Mandalorian also. You can even integrate Baby Yoda via a PC mod.
In other words, the noise has been removed and it remains a pure signal. And there’s enough interest in this kind of large-scale Star Wars experience that the new players crashed the servers when the game first went free last week.
See error message 623 or 918 in #StarWarsBattlefrontII?
Sit tight, it’s our turn! An incredible number of players have joined us during our time @EpicGames Save the free week and we’ll expand new servers to welcome you all to the battlefront.– EA Help (@EAHelp) January 15, 2021
Battlefront 2The campaign isn’t perfect, but it’s much better than it needs to be. It shows a great performance by Janina Gavankar as Iden Versio, an imperial officer charged with finding and destroying the uprising. In other words, you are one of the bad guys and that puts you in the awkward position of having to do terrible things in the name of duty.
As Dave Tach put it in Polygon’s original review, “Versio’s internal struggles intensify as the narrative unfolds. It begins with the kind of personality who could potentially buy the pro-imperial arguments about maintaining order and peace of the galaxy that Emperor Palpatine seeks to sell throughout the films. But few people can break down their morals when they have to do or witness things that are clearly wrong. Here it is after the first missions Battlefront 2The story finds its bottom and Versio’s character gains the much-needed depth. “
It’s this trip that makes the narrative so interesting, even if there are some chunky moments.
“There are more narrative evasions and cameos that I’m not going to spoil here because they’re catnip for Star Wars fans, but suffice it to say the campaign isn’t quite as simple as it initially seems,” Tach continued . “The perspective of the story occasionally shifts from what Versio gives Battlefront 2 the opportunity to explore the central conflict from different angles. The downside is that these are often more interesting as a story than as a mission to play with. “
After the economy has been removed and more content has been added to the multiplayer component, Battlefront 2The different modes are more like a buffet of cool Star Wars moments than a cohesive whole, but that’s part of the charm at this point.
When you see all of these characters from so many eras and films, all working together or fighting each other in so many battles, modes, and options, it feels more like playing with my Star Wars toys in a literal sandbox than with a traditional video game. Nothing is perfectly balanced, but that is almost irrelevant. Everything looks, feels, and sounds so perfect in Star Wars that the weird jumble of characters and play styles gives it a kind of joyful, adventurous quality that has often been lacking in the latest films.
This is the perfect time to jump in after the last time you thought about it Battlefront 2 was during a heated online debate about in-game economies. What exists today is a huge pile of sights, sounds, environments, vehicles, characters, references, and even plot changes, all of which serve as a celebration of anything Star Wars related.
It’s free now too, so you have nothing to lose except a little bit of time. If The Mandalorian proved fans are in the mood for lighter, less self-serious Star Wars experiences, the Celebration Edition of Battlefront 2 is the perfect way to keep that mood going.
