Battlefront II’s campaign is the best official Star Wars story in years.

Ok, I have to come clean and make a couple of admissions.  First, I was one of those folks who were greatly disappointed that Star Wars: Battlefront (2015) shipped without a campaign mode.  I mean, seriously?  How do you make a gorgeous Star Wars game and then ship it without a playable story to experience?!  It seemed like a ludicrous situation; a grand oversight.  Partially because of that, even though I bought SW:BF on Day One, I never played it that much.  I enjoyed the offline missions from time to time, (the Speeder Bike sequence on Endor in first person mode is still amazing), but overall it remained primarily on the shelf to keep my bookcase company.

I was (most likely) going to buy Star Wars: Battlefront II (2017) no matter what, I’ll admit it.  Once I heard it had a campaign mode, though, I was sold.  Which leads to my painful second admission.  I bought this game also on Day One, November 17, 2017, and although I did the first Mission (the prologue “The Cleaner”) when I originally got the game, I didn’t actually, really play the campaign until April 26, 2018.

OK!  Hold on, I have an excuse!  This was partially because everyone in my house wanted to watch as I played through it to experience the story as well and I was under orders from my kids and my wife to “wait for them”.  You know, like an Imperial Decree.  Well, as anyone with a TiVo or DVR can attest, often times waiting for that other person or persons who want to “watch it with you” can lead to that show never actually getting watched.  So, I finally decided “If we actually all gather around the screen at some point to watch this together, I’ll just play it all over again.”

So after deciding to finally just play the darn thing two weeks ago, this past weekend I completed the whole campaign (the main story as well as the three-chapter “Resurrection” DLC epilogue).  As I was going about my day today, the wonderful story that developer Dice created for Battlefront II continues to float around in my head, and for very good reason.  The campaign’s story line in the Battlefront II video game is far superior to the script for the movie The Last Jedi, and really even The Force Awakens.  But what is it that this game got right that Hollywood keeps getting wrong?  Let’s take a (spoiler free) look.

Iden Versio's nobody's fool. She's Star Wars' best written female since Leia, and character to wear black since Vader.

Iden Versio’s nobody’s fool. She’s Star Wars’ best written female since Leia, and character to wear black since Vader.

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