How might the campaign work in EA’s Battlefront II?

EA’s first Battlefront was somewhat lacking when it came to single-player options.

There were a few tutorial levels and two types of modes called Survival and Battles when the game launched. Later on, DICE added Skirmish, which allowed for Walker Assault and Fighter Squadron to be playable offline. All in all, there just wasn’t much for those who wanted to experience Battlefront offline.

However, it seems EA wants to change that for the sequel, which is due out this holiday season. Back in January, the company’s CEO Andrew Wilson confirmed that the game would feature a “full single-player campaign”. While we don’t exactly know what he meant by “full”, it’s promising nonetheless.

A campaign definitely seems like it would whet many people’s appetites (nearly 80% of you said a campaign is more important than Skirmish in a Twitter poll I ran last month). Personally, I hope we’ll get both a campaign and more Skirmish, but I’m definitely looking forward to engaging with Star Wars via a narrative. It’s been nearly seven year’s since the most recent narrative-driven Star Wars game came out (excluding the LEGO Star Wars games) in the form of The Force Unleashed II.

Early work-in-progress shot of Battlefront II.

So how might this campaign function? I figured I’d suggest a few broad ideas below—I’ve avoided trying to pinpoint which precise characters, locations, etc. because then there would just be too many possibilities!

To start, I don’t think Battlefront II’s campaign will equal the length of a fully-fledged RPG that lasts 30-plus hours like the Witcher or Final Fantasy games. Instead, I expect it to run somewhere between five and 10 hours. This would match the original Battlefront II’s campaign length, which lasts roughly eight hours. Battlefield 1, another EA/DICE shooter, has a single-player portion that clocks in at a similar six hours. For these type of primarily multiplayer-driven games, a shorter campaign isn’t too far-fetched.

Moving onto the campaign’s actual story, there are a few ways I could see it going.

First, it could span multiple eras, covering the key battles throughout the Star Wars saga. This would be similar to Battlefront II, where the player followed Darth Vader’s 501st stormtroopers across famous battles, such as Geonosis and Hoth. This type of storytelling could help convey just how grand Star Wars is.

Promo image from the original Battlefront II.

On the flip side, the campaign could instead be focused on a smaller part of the story. Here, you might play as a Rebel trooper or stormtrooper and experience some battles that occurred off-screen from the movies. This type of story might only span a few years of in-canon time, instead of being spread out over multiple decades. A smaller campaign like this would help show the more intimate moments in Star Wars—something we don’t always get to see in the movies.

There’s also another option that might be interesting to see: Episodic missions that focus on different protagonists. This would be similar to Battlefield 1’s “War Stories”, which cover different aspects of World War I.  In this option, there could be a mission (or multiple missions) dedicated to each of the different factions in the Star Wars universe. There could also then be missions that are focused on heroes (i.e. Han Solo or Kylo Ren), missions that are focused on vehicular combat and missions that are focused on infantry combat.

An episodic format could potentially showcase the grander side of Star Wars without sacrificing the ability to tell the more intimate tales. Additionally, if EA really wants to double-down on single-player content, they could offer several missions at a post-launch as DLC—which could help keep the game fresh in the year after it releases.

That’s all I have for now. I didn’t want to go too crazy with this speculation—there’s obviously numerous ways the teams working on Battlefront II could tackle the campaign—but hopefully this helps kick off interesting discussions!

What do you want most out of Battlefront II’s campaign? Chime in via the comment section below, or ping SWGO on Twitter or Facebook.

(Top image by Cinematic Captures. Check out their flickr page for more awesome Battlefront screenshots. Second image source. Bottom image source.)