Late Spring has for over a decade been a traditional festival time for videogame publishers keen to showcase upcoming games that have an intended release later that year (and in some cases the following year), but with COVID-19 closing in-person expos alternative arrangements from the lavish spectacles needed to be undertaken. This past Monday EA snuck in a teaser for a new title set in the Star Wars universe that few were expecting, one that will be a returned to the first-person arcade/flight sim genre popularised by Rogue Squadron in 1998. It's called simply Star Wars: Squadrons.



Squadrons looks set to be a five-on-five dogfighting arcade flight sim with single-player campaign, but little is known outside of that in terms of its contents. The team at Motive are keeping their cards close to their chest, which is perhaps understandable considering that conventional wisdom dictates that these titles have a niche following at best. Many PC gamers in their 30's and 40's grew up with Star Wars: X-Wing, Tie-Fighter and the Wing Commander franchise, yet younger counterparts will have struggled to find Triple-A equivalents in the 00's and 2010's. First-person shooters such as the Battlefront series are a far more secure proposition.

A few other aspects of the title have slowly been divulged in conversations after the reveal however. It will apparently be a $30 rather than full-priced $60 title, and not incorporate microtransactions - a major policy departure by a publisher notorious for its full-price+full monetisation practices. Plus, VR HMD manufacturers will be ecstatic to hear that it will be a supported mode on PC, and to augment that experience the developers intend to support joysticks and HOTAS flight sticks (potentially up-to and including elaborate set-ups such as the Logitech G X5x H.O.T.A.S. range). And in a surprise move the team have even relayed minimum and recommended system specifications, well ahead of time.





These specifications should hold no fear for established PC gamers and will provide a good framework for upgrades over the summer to those who have let their systems lapse for a few generations. Given its modest CPU requirements, most modern systems equipped with an NVIDIA RTX 20-series or AMD RX 5600 XT (or better) GPU should be more than set for their next adventure in a galaxy far, far away.

Star Wars: Squadrons is scheduled for release on October 2nd 2020 across multiple platforms, and will be sold via Steam and the Epic Games Store.