As I pull out of a tight turn that brushes the carved stone surface of an asteroid dockyard, I gun the engines of my TIE Interceptor, flipping through enemy radar signatures to find that one incessant X-Wing pilot who's been on my tail since the battle began. I've taken a bit of a beating on my assault run on a New Republic frigate, and have just now narrowly shaken a homing missile. As I boost away from the asteroid and back toward the fray, a haunting thought arrives unbidden: But I thought you didn't care about Star Wars anymore.
Clearly, this is nothing but the evil seduction of the Dark Side, because it obviously isn't true - not now, in the midst of one of Star Wars: Squadrons' signature Fleet Battles, in which I'm cast as a starfighter pilot on the front lines of a zero-gravity skirmish between two massive battle cruisers. Red and green turbolaser blasts rake across the blackness of space as I bank around an outlying shipyard structure, finding my home star destroyer taking repeated barrages of enemy fire.
Star Wars: Squadrons is an unabashed throwback of a game, a passion project from developers at EA Motive who remember the Star Wars flight games of the '90s with fondness. That love shows in the fastidiously detailed cockpits for the classic Star Wars fighters - it's the familiar, charming grubbiness of the original film trilogy, all designed to hold up well in VR.
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