The uniforms may be as crisply and meticulously arranged, the enormous hangars swathed in the same metallic gray durasteel, but its soldiers, and its officers in particular, rather than the wrinkled old white men we’ve come to expect, are mostly young people of color. Squadrons’ single-player campaign, which has you fly as a Rebel and Imperial pilot both, is set in the years immediately following the events of 1983’s Return of the Jedi, offering a new installment in the never-ending conflict between the resurgent New Republic and the creaking old Empire.īut the Empire of Squadrons looks, admittedly, pretty different from how it was depicted in Return of the Jedi, or any of the rest of the films from which it bases the majority of its aesthetic.

In early October, EA released Star Wars: Squadrons, a shiny new, VR-ready homage to classic early Star Wars-branded space sims like LucasArts’ Star Wars: TIE Fighter and others.