There will be plenty of options available in Star Wars: Squadrons for players to decide what kind of piloting experience they want. Power management will let you orchestrate your ship’s resources, there will be options to turn off seeing the in-game cosmetic customizations, and you can turn it into a Star Wars flight sim, of sorts, if you fancy.
In an interview with IGN, creative director Ian S. Frazier ran through some of the main areas Squadrons will let players fiddle with the gameplay. One such area is the inclusion of a specific mode that removes the UI, forcing you to rely on the consoles in the cockpit (and the force). “When you start the story, we ask if you want the standard experience – which we’d expect most players to take – or a hardcore mode,” Frazier said. “Which gets rid of a bunch of UI that helps you localize yourself in space, and makes you rely entirely on the readouts in the cockpit.”
We’ve already seen footage of the detailed cockpits in action, suggesting an option like this was on the cards. In a similar vein, if you want to keep the multiplayer feeling as authentic as possible, you can switch off seeing what cosmetic alterations other players have made, meaning from your perspective all other ships will look just as they do in the Star Wars movies. “Some players aren’t going to want to see any of that. It won’t matter how plausible it is, they just want to keep it to exactly what we’ve seen in the films, no more and no less,” Frazier explained. “And we totally get that. And so we have an option in the game to hide everybody else’s cosmetics.”
Squadrons has a system of power management, too, where you can prioritize among your shields, weapons, and engine what gets how much energy. It’ll be rudimentary by default, but can be broken down at your behest if you think you have the X-Wing or TIE Fighter know how to do so.
Star Wars: Squadrons won’t have microtransactions, and it launches on October 2. Here’s the best Star Wars games, to scratch that itch for some action from a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, while you wait.