Video Game / Star Wars: Battlefront

For years you've watched the greatest Star Wars battles.
What if...
You could actually live them?

—Trailer tagline for the first game.

A series of Video Games set in the Star Wars universe, developed by Pandemic Studios. The series was heavily inspired by DICE's Battlefield series.

The main gamemode, called "Conquest", there are two armies trying to gain control of Command Posts across the battlefield. If a player dies, they can respawn at any command post that their team controls. The battles are often huge, sometimes bigger than the movie scenes they are inspired by, involving dozens of players and even more NPCs. In addition, players can hop into various Star Wars vehicles ranging from tiny hover-bikes to aircraft to Humongous Mecha. It included two story campaigns (Prequel Era & Original Era) which were mostly recreations of the movies's big battles alongside some original battles set in planets from the Expanded Universe.

A sequel, simply titled Star Wars: Battlefront II (now renamed to Battlefront 2 Classic), introduced the ability to play as Jedi, Sith, and various other Hero units from the movies such as Han Solo and Boba Fett. It also introduced space battles, where players have to defend their team's capital ships from sabotage and shoot down enemy fighters. The game also includes a single-player campaign featuring the 501st Legion, a unit of clone troopers/stormtroopers (named after a fan organization that specializes in Stormtrooper armor and other uniforms) that served the Republic and Empire from the Battle of Geonosis to the Battle of Hoth and as Darth Vader's personal legion from the time Order 66 was issued onward.

In spite of the games' status as the best-selling Star Wars games up until Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was made, a true successor was never made by LucasArts and Pandemic. Instead, several spin-offs that comprise the Assault sub-series were created for portable devices. The first title, Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, introduced customizable soldiers and dealt with a black ops team led during the first stages of the game by Han Solo that conducted in behind-the-scenes means to allow the Rebel Alliance to win against the Empire up until the Battle Of Endor. Mobile Squadron was also made, existing as an excuse to release a Star Wars game on the mobile phone. Battlefront III eventually had leaked footage and was in the early stages of development, but with the collapse of Free Radical Designs (the company producing the game), Battlefront III was left unfinished without a developer. Content that was planned to be featured in Battlefront III was eventually restructured into Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, which would feature the ability to go from land battles to space battles in the same mission. It would also tell the story of a force-sensitive clone trooper named X2 and his trials as a Jedi and a member of the Rebel Alliance.

There was a game that LucasArts was planning to release to serve as a preview for what the next installment would be capable of called Star Wars: First Assault, although the game would play differently from previous titles in the series. This was subsequently cancelled when Disney bought the company and stopped LucasArts from producing content not related to the new films, giving the licence to EA. Electronic Arts would then go on to reboot the franchise in time for The Force Awakens.

The game was remastered and released in 2024 alongside its successor as the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.

For tropes on the 2015 game which has the same name, go here.

Series Timeline

Original Series

• Star Wars: Battlefront (2004)
• Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005)

Mobile Spinoffs

• Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (2007)
• Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron (2009)

EA Reboot

• Star Wars Battlefront (2015)
• Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)

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Tropes

Tropes common to the series:

• Ability Depletion Penalty: The Sprint Meter for characters and vehicles can be depleted into the negatives, preventing you from using their abilities for a moment.
• Achievement Mockery: There are awards given at the end of each game, which don't unlock anything and are simply there to denote who the best to do certain things was. Awards include "Dead Eye" for most headshots and "Tank Buster" for most destroyed vehicles, for instance. Then there's "Camper," for the most time spent in exactly one space (though it does let you turn), "Traitor", for the person who killed the most teammates (including themselves), and "Bantha Fodder", for the most deaths by any one unit.
• Adaptational Badass: B1 battle droids make up the CIS's specialist classes, and for the sake of Competitive Balance, they're every bit as potent as their clone counterparts instead of being weak Cannon Fodder.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Subverted with the Dark Troopers. In their source game, the Phase II Dark Troopers (which this series' depiction of them are loosely based on design-wise) are depicted as one-man armies capable of wiping out a Rebel base in minutes (and while not as powerful in gameplay, are still among the more dangerous enemies in that game and can take a lot of punishment). In the Battlefront games, Dark Troopers are no more durable than regular Stormtroopers, their main weapons in both games (a Blast Cannon and an ARC Caster, respectively), while lethal, aren't as devastating as the Assault Cannon, and they use Jump Jet Packs rather than conventional jet packs. The subversion kicks in with supplemental material stating that these are cyborg predecessors to the Dark Trooper droids.
  • The Hailfire droids' missiles aren't nearly as powerful as they're depicted elsewhere, doing little to no damage to an AT-TE, in contrast to the films, where one missile could obliterate the tank.
  • Super Battle Droids are called that for a reason — they're bigger, stronger, and tougher than regular battle droids, and a single squadron of them are more than enough to get Jedi Masters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi to surrender. Here, they serve as standard troops for the CIS, so they have the same health as regular clone troopers and bigger hitboxes to boot.
• Alternate Continuity:
  • The battles themselves have no impact on Star Wars canon as a whole. The campaigns may be a different story, except that ending for II implied that Empire was victorious over the Rebellion after invading Hoth (unless the soldier telling the story was simply Tempting Fate).
  • After the battle, the 501st had been given an indefinite paid leave of absence for their service, which is presumably their current status, given that in the Expanded Universe, as soon as the second Death Star blew, they immediately reactivated their commissions and banded back together to come back with a vengeance.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In both games, the AI cannot deal friendly fire damage to human players under any circumstance. Very welcome given that you can expect to eat grenades from your bot allies frequently.
• Artificial Stupidity: Tons and tons of examples, way too many to list here. See the game's entry under the first-person shooter subpage for more specific examples.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Hitting vehicles in their "critical hit location" (it changes between vehicles) will cause additional damage.
• Base on Wheels: The AT-TE and AT-AT walkers are mobile spawn points. In the first, the walkers count as command posts for the purposes of automatic unit attrition and "capture all command posts to win", meaning the enemy had to not only capture all the fixed command posts but destroy the walkers in order to win. And the walkers respawn.
  • The Space Battles include shuttles that can be landed in the enemy command ship and serve as footholds for Marines.
• Beam Spam: The battlefields can get very sparkly very quickly. Chainguns and Repeating Blasters use this as a legitimate tactical advantage; the chaingun especially creates a blitz of purple beams that are very visible.
• BFG: Several varieties.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence: Geonosis, Hoth, Endor... Heck, any map can be host to one of these.
• Bloodless Carnage: True to the source material in that way.
• Boom, Headshot!: Instant kills for sniper units, obviously. The trooper's weapon doesn't instantly kill somebody if you shoot them in the head, but a head shot does more damage to an enemy than a body shot. It's worth noting, however, that the first game has a very interesting definition of what counts as a headshot; you'll often find yourself shooting someone in the face only to deal normal damage, and a lot of actual headshots aren't counted as such in your score.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The common infantry soldiers (Clone Trooper for the Republic, Super Battle Droid for the CIS, Rebel Soldier for the Rebellion, and Stormtrooper/Snowtrooper for the Empire). Their weaponry (common blasters and grenades) is unremarkable and (with the odd exception of the Super Battle Droid's wrist rockets) they don't have any special tricks up their sleeves. But they're mobile and resilient enough to get the job done, and their damage, range and ammo capacity is just flexible enough to keep them from getting into too much trouble, unlike other classes that are handicapped either in speed or in overspecialized weaponry.
  • Battlefront tends to be a lot more forgiving about dealing with AT-ATs than most other Star Wars games. Instead of the harpoon-and-tow-cable trick, you can take them down with land mines, grenades (from the ground, unlike the movies), or sustained rocket/turret fire (especially in the second game where hitting them in the neck will do more damage).
• Bottomless Magazines: Many weapons, including the default pistols, the Droideka's blasters, and most vehicle weaponry, have infinite ammo and are limited solely by overheating. Downplayed in the second game, where many vehicle-mounted weapons have infinite reserve ammo but have to be reloaded periodically.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Your team is blue or green (depending on which game you're playing) while the enemy is red on the maps. Natives were marked as yellow in the first game, but they default to either red or blue in the second depending on whether they shoot your current faction on sight.
• Commonplace Rare: Despite being indisputably the most numerous thing in the Separatist arsenal, the rank-and-file B1 battle droids rarely show up in these games, only appearing in the first two levels of the first game's campaign. In all other scenarios, the CIS's basic infantry slot is filled by the Super Battle Droid.
• Cosmetically Different Sides: Downplayed in the first game, as weapons from different sides tend to have slightly different properties, and each side has a unique special unit. For instance, the Rebel Vanguard's missile launcher shoots two missiles at a time while the Imperial Shock Trooper's only shoots one, and the Republic and Imperial snipers have a larger clip size than their Rebel and CIS counterparts but can only zoom in once, while the Rebel and CIS snipers can zoom twice. Played straighter in the second game, where the regular classes were made functionally identical for the most part, although there are still divergences like the Clone Trooper carrying less ammo than other Soldier-class units, and the special units are still unique. All factions also have their own vehicles, most of which pack different weaponry from their opposing counterparts.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • Sniper units are handicapped by their default weapon being borderline useless in close-quarters combat, with only an emergency blaster (low damage and slow rate of fire), grenades (low ammo and a crapshoot to hit targets with) and a recon droid (somewhat practical, but leaves the player a sitting duck for enemies) as backup weapons. In short, they're good for long range combat, but bad for everything else. The Clone Sharpshooter does have one ace up its sleeve, as its Recon Droid can be used to call for an Orbital Bombardment on a group of enemies.
  • Pilot units do their job very well when in the air and are great for repairing ships and equipment, but in close-quarters combat they vary from being Difficult, but Awesome (Pilot Droid due to its hard to aim but devastating Radiation Launcher and the Rebel Pilot's hard-hitting shotgun) to useless as a Bantha's nipple (Clone Pilot and the Imperial Pilot, whose primary weapons are legitimately worse at killing things than their emergency pistol). Their successor in the second game, the Engineer, is much more threatening in direct combat due to their shotguns being fully able to One-Hit Kill at close range.
  • Droidekas carry devastating firepower and their shields can take a serious amount of punishment, but are prohibitively slow outside of wheel mode (where they're completely vulnerable). You can move faster without your shield or your ability to fire your weapons though. Additionally, an entrenched Droideka can mow down infantry by the dozen, but bring in a single tank and it'll go down in short order since its blasters are nigh-useless against heavy armor.
  • AT-STs are great at picking off infantry, but that's about it. Their large cockpit makes them an easy target for units with rocket launchers, and their lack of maneuverability and somewhat slow rate of fire makes them borderline useless against starfighters or landspeeders, which completely outclass them in terms of speed, durability and firepower.
  • AT-ATs (and their Clone Wars counterpart, the AT-TE) take many of the same flaws and compound them even further—while they possess devastating firepower and the AT-AT can take a ludicrous amount of punishment, they move like a minute-hand on a watch and hitting anything that isn't a large or stationary target is largely a matter of luck on their part. On Hoth, if you're unlucky enough to have a snowspeeder land its tow cable on you, you may as well just hightail it because trying to shoot them down is a matter of very precise timing and luck, and that's assuming they're flying out far enough for your cannons to even hit them. On Rhen Var, its very easy to get them bottlenecked into a situation where speeders, infantry and turrets will surround and wail on them constantly while the AT-AT/AT-TE is stuck trying to back up or turn around to even try to shoot at them.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Just try switching between playing the first game and its sequel without instinctively trying to trigger a dash or trying to roll forward (which aren't possible in the original Battlefront).
  • The Droideka's form change button was moved from "enter vehicle" in the first game to "crouch" in the second.
  • Grenade physics are somewhat different between games; the second game gives them a much higher arc, while the first game has them being thrown low and rolling along the ground. Throwing grenades up or down a staircase can thus be dangerous if you're transitioning from one game to the other.
• Deflector Shields: In addition to the capital ship shields in the second game, Droidekas have personal shielding they can deploy in both games. It's also available as a perk in Galactic Conquest mode, where it gives Damage Reduction.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Mixed with Fridge Brilliance. When playing as the Empire or Republic, if you get a killing spree, your team has things to say about it. Rebels and Droids didn't seem to say anything. But the reason for the rebellion is they don't share comm links, you have to be right next to them to hear their remarks, and for the droids, they're expected to be able to do that.
    • Though in the Sequel, Your team will have something to say about your killing spree regardless of the chosen team.
  • Your team will also call you out for friendly fire: for example, Clone Troopers might yell, "Was it something I said?"
  • Water hurts droids when they are fully submerged. Just have a droideka roll into the Kashyyyk sea, or (in the first game) a droid go prone in the seas as well. They'll die after a few seconds. The AI will lose several unnecessary lives rolling through the water as droidekas. This was removed in the second game, though.
  • Conversely, on Polis Massa, everyone but the droids suffocates when they exit their vehicle outside of the asteroid base, because droids don't have lungs, which makes a bum rush across the barren asteroid from one endpoint command post to another the most efficient way of crossing the base, especially when playing against AI.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Droidekas. If you can master switching between wheel mode and combat mode, then they're as deadly as they are in the movies. However, being caught in the wrong mode makes you an easy target, and the AI's proficiency at handling this is... mixed, to say the least.
• Doom Troops: The "Phase Zero" Dark Troopers (Cyborg Super Soldiers with Jump Jetpacks and Blaster Cannons/Lightning Guns, depending on whether it's 1 or 2, these are cybernetically enhanced former Clones versus the later battle droids developed by Rom Mohc) and the 501st, Palpatine's personal legion.
• Drone Deployer: Snipers in the first game can deploy a recon droid to scout terrain and call down orbital strikes. In the second game, recon droids were instead given to special classes, while snipers got autoturrets to compensate.
• Enemy Exchange Program: Although vehicles that double as command posts like the AT-AT are off-limits to the other side, everything else is fair game and spawns unlocked. In the second game, you can even use an Engineer's fusion cutter to boot out a tank's occupants in order to take it for your side. This gets particularly ridiculous with the CIS, since most of their "vehicles" (including all of their starfighters) are different models of droids, and thus don't have an actual pilot. And yet, the Republic's clone soldiers can drive or fly them just fine.
• Energy Weapon: Most of the weapons fire laser beams, red or blue, of different calibers, so to speak. Some are very short shots meant to resemble bullets (used by infantry) while others are larger and more potent (used by vehicles and in anti-vehicle weapons).
• Faceless Goons: Droids, clone troopers, and most Imperials.
• Five-Token Band: The rebels in both games (White male soldier, white/black (depending on map) male rocket launcher user, Asian female sniper, and Ambiguously Brown technician). Their elite units are nonhumans (Wookiee and Bothan). Becomes extremely odd with the 2nd game's ability to change class at a command post.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Droids are perfectly capable of using Bacta to heal themselves as a convenient gameplay mechanic, which would be nonsensical in-canon due to their complete lack of organic material (although the Bacta Tanks bonus in Galactic Conquest is explained in-game as the droids being given self-repair capabilities when used by the CIS). There's also characters like Count Dooku being treated as a "Jedi Hero" during Galactic Conquest, even though he's not a Jedi (at least not anymore) and he is most definitely not a hero.
• Glass Cannon: The snipers on all four sides are powerful, but have very low health.
  • The Republic and Empire have the Jet and Dark Troopers, respectively, which combine this with Lightning Bruiser.
  • The Scout Fighters in the second game are this, being very fast and very effective at taking out enemy fighters, but are very fragile.
• Grenade Spam: The AI in these games love to toss thermal detonators around. Unfortunately, they're not necessarily good at it...
• Heal Thyself: Pilots carry around packets of health and munitions that they can disperse for others or themselves at will. They can also repair their own equipment (i.e. turrets, droids) or even slowly repair their own ships while flying them.
• Hitbox Dissonance:
  • The first game had issues registering headshots, as the hitbox for headshots was much smaller than the trooper's actual head.
  • The second game has an intentional example with the Beam Rifle, which deals no damage on headshots at all. However, this unintentionally gives the weapon extremely wonky hit detection, as you can sometimes shoot an enemy in the torso and not deal any damage. Furthermore, aiming well enough allows you to land headshots anyway.
• Humongous Mecha: Of various shapes and sizes.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Each soldier carries two guns. When they swap between them, whichever gun they are currently holding just sort of disappears.
• Idiosyncratic Cover Art: A trooper in the middle who fires his blaster toward the viewer's top right. There's scenery, starfighters, and other characters in the background. This also applies for Renegade Squadron and Elite Squadron.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: It's much easier to kill people with a rocket launcher than it is to hit them with blaster shots. Splash damage might have something to do with it, though.
• Lead the Target: Invoked with the fact that around 90% of the weapons fire energy projectiles. Unless you are using a Sniper Rifle, this is required over long distances.
• Legion of Doom: The CIS and the Imperials.
• Lightning Gun: The arc/bolt casters used by Clone Pilots in the first game and Dark Troopers in the second. They can also be charged to deal increased damage and, in the second game, chain between enemies.
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • The Hailfire droid tanks. Not so much in the first game (they could only fire five missiles before having to reload), but in the second, it can unload dozens of missiles at a time at the expense of those missiles being nigh-impossible to aim. The Alliance AAC-1, the Rebels' new tank in the second game, has a pair of swivel-mounted missile launchers that work much like the Hailfire's.
  • Interceptors in the second game can unleash a flurry of missiles at enemy targets, as can the CIS and Imperial gunships.
• Made of Explodium: Everything, even what appear to be totally solid objects like doors.
• Magic Tool: The fusion cutter, which can be used to build/repair literally anything that can be destroyed, and also hijack vehicles in the second game.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Unlike most trooper-class units, the Super Battle Droid uses wrist rockets instead of grenades and has a Tri-Shot blaster (basically a miniature shotgun) as a sidearm rather than a pistol. The second game also changed the mechanics of its primary wrist blaster, making it shoot more slowly than the standard blaster rifle in exchange for dealing more damage and not losing accuracy as quickly through prolonged fire.
  • Instead of the regular crouch/prone system, Droidekas switch between their turret configuration, which lets it bring its weapons and shields to bear at the expense of being slowed to a crawl, and wheel configuration, which lets it travel quickly (and, in the second game, jump) but is unable to use its weapons. They are also unable to use vehicles or turrets. In the first game, they could also be repaired by Jawas for some reason.
• The Medic: Pilots in the first game and engineers in the second can dispense bacta to heal the wounded.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The CIS Droideka is extremely slow when deployed, but can bring its twin blaster cannons to bear and has an outstandingly tough deflector shield.
  • The Wookiee Warrior is one of the toughest infantry classes around and packs a metric ton of explosives, but also has a very slow walking speed.
  • The heavy weapons units of each side carry rocket launchers that can one-shot most infantry and deal consistent damage to vehicles, as well as mines for area denial, and have the higher health than any infantry unit aside from the Wookiee Warrior and Droideka. They're also the slowest regular infantry type and take a while to reload their rocket launchers, limiting their efficiency in gunfights.
  • AT-ATs and AT-TEs carry a devastating amount of firepower, but move as slow as molasses.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Death Star and both Bespin maps. Seriously, wouldn't a couple handrails at least be nice when dozens of personnel are scampering only a couple feet away from falling into the sky?
  • Concerning the Death Star, well, this is the Galactic Empire we're talking about. As for Bespin, Lando may not be a bad boss, but he's probably too cheap to worry about it — and he probably expects his cronies to be good enough at their jobs not to need them.
• No Scope: When playing as a Sniper unit, its certainly possible to kill enemies in close quarters combat with it, but its very impractical to do so and will more than likely get you killed due to the rifles slow recharge rate leaving you a sitting duck for other enemies to attack you. Additionally, the PC versions take away your crosshair while unscoped, making it much harder to land hits.
• One-Hit Kill: Headshots, as stated above, but it's also possible to land on top of enemy units with air and space-based vehicles. This is the easiest, if not the only way, to kill Jedi in the first game. An easier One-Hit Kill (on some battlefields) is by shooting the ground near them with a missile or grenade, blowing the Jedi into whatever bottomless pit happens to be nearby. The most satisfying one, though, is to use a vehicle to push the Jedi into the waiting tentacles of the Sarlacc on the Tatooine map.
• One-Man Army: You can easily become this. And much of the time, you'll have to.
• Paper Tiger: AT-STs. They can be downright brutal when dealing with infantry, but put them up against a Landspeeder, an X-Wing or even a turret, and they'll go down in seconds.
• Press Start to Game Over: Due to the random nature of where you respawn near a checkpoint, it is entirely possible to respawn where a vehicle is and die on the spot.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Certain classes, several of which are a commander in some fashion, get a fancy gun, such as a Sonic Emitter pistol or a chain gun. Any hero will likely also count, including General Grievous, the Emperor, most Jedi, and Darth Vader.
• Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Subverted: Both games' box art depict troopers marching menacingly towards the viewer, but in both cases, their weapons are firing somewhere off to the side.
• Shout-Out: Rahm Kota from The Force Unleashed acts as Mission Control for several missions in Elite Squadron. Notable in that it was his only appearance that was not part of The Force Unleashed series. Considering the fact that he spent a good chunk of The Force Unleashed II trying to convince Malek that you can't clone Jedi, meeting X1 and X2, both clones of a Jedi, must have been a bit awkward.
• The Siege: Hoth.
• Slow Laser: Green, blue, and red, as expected from the series. The second game adds the occasional yellow and purple.
• Sonic Stunner: Sonic blasters are the Geonosians' trademark weapon, and the Imperial Officer in the second game also gets one as his primary weapon. Due to firing sound waves rather than concentrated energy bolts, they tend to have larger projectiles with wider hitboxes but low damage, though in the second they deal considerably higher damage on a direct hit.
• Spider Tank: The CIS controls one with a particle beam cannon. Slow, but damned effective on both infantry and armor when it gets into range.
• Spiritual Successor: Pandemic's The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which is essentially Battlefront but not in space, but in the Trope Codifier for Heroic Fantasy.
• The Squadette: The Rebel sniper in both games is female, although they are male on some maps in the second game.
• Sticky Bomb: Concussion grenades in the first game, when thrown at an enemy vehicle or turret, are designed to stick to the target before exploding. They were removed in II, and the function was given to thermal detonators to compensate.
• Strategic Asset Capture Mechanic: All Star Wars: Battlefront games feature "beacons" that act as spawn points for your teammates. There's always one or two that start out as belonging to a team, and a number of neutral locations smattered about. Capturing these points involves killing any enemies nearby, and then keeping it clear of them for ~30 seconds.
• Stuff Blowing Up: A lot!
• Suicidal Overconfidence: A single stormtrooper attacking six Wookiees, a guy with no grenades left and a pistol attacking a tank, a scout ship going up against the most heavily armed capital starship in the game...
  • It should be noted that while it doesn't happen often, success in these situations does happen from time to time.
• Tank Goodness: Every faction gets at least one tank type. Even the Rebellion. Meaning that on the right maps, one gets epic infantry/armor battles.
• Third-Person Shooter: Can also be set to first person.
• Unfriendly Fire: Possible (in fact, friendly fire cannot be disabled in the first game), though the tutorial videos are very indicative of this, including one demonstration of the orbital bombardment ability for snipers where a bunch of stormtroopers get blown away by a bombardment from their own team.
• Urban Warfare: The Cloud City and Theed maps. Chokepoints, hiding places, and sniper balconies galore.
• You All Look Familiar: There are five types of rebels in the original, and six in the sequel.
  • Generic Jedi characters in Battlefront II's campaign are like this, too.
• You Are Number 6: Only the Rebels get actual names; the clones, droids and Imperials are stuck with designation numbers.

Tropes specific to the first game:

• Adaptational Wimp: The ARC Troopers in the first game, contrasting their usual role as special forces units and sometimes one-man armies in both the Canon and Legends Expanded Universe, are little more than the Republic's munitions unit, and the only advantage they have over other factions' munitions units are they can fire two rockets individually per clip (the Rebel Vanguard has a similar advantage, but fires both rockets per shot). This is likely why they were renamed Heavy Troopers in the sequel, but only using the ARC Trooper skin on Geonosis (designated ARC Troopers show up as re-skinned Clone Commanders for the Clone Resistance faction in the campaign).
• Anti-Air: The Bespin Platforms map has rapid-fire anti-air turrets intended for shooting down fighters. They're also quite effective against infantry, if you're inclined to use them that way or if an enemy tries to raid your command post.
• Anti-Vehicle: The basic trooper's concussion grenades. They stick to vehicle hulls and deal heavy damage to them, but are much less effective against infantry.
• Apocalypse How/Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Class X in the first game's Galactic Conquest mode, courtesy of the Death Star. Can happen repeatedly until the playing field is nearly barren.
• Artificial Brilliance: Surprisingly enough, the AI is actually rather decent at tying up AT-ATs with the Snowspeeder. While their aim with the harpoon gun can be a bit spotty, a human player in a snowspeeder can rack up a decent number of walker kills by landing hits with the harpoon gun and letting the AI take care of the rest (and switching over to the pilot seat for strafing runs against ground troops). Unfortunately, the snowspeeder AI Took a Level in Dumbass in the second game.
• Balance Buff: Several of the weapons were rebalanced in the Steam version of the game.
  • The Rebel Marksman and Assassin Droid had their clip sizes increased from 4 to 5, and their reserve ammo was increased accordingly as well.
  • The Wookie Smuggler's time bomb had its fuse time reduced from 10 seconds to 5.
  • The Clone Pilot's Bolt Caster now deals higher damage, making it legitimately dangerous as a hitscan weapon with decent fire rate that can kill most enemies in 2 uncharged shots.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • Out of all the planets with playable maps, Rhen Var is the only one that never appeared in the movies, and was likely included as a nod to Pandemic Studios' previous work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. While it did have some relevance to the Legends continuity, it's reduced to a mere footnote in the Disney EU. Downplayed with Kashyyyk, which was more of an Early-Bird Cameo for the planet's proper debut in Revenge of the Sith^note though the planet had previously appeared in the infamous holiday special; however, the movie's Kashyyyk battleground (depicted in the second game) was completely different from either of the playable maps in the first game.
  • Similar to Rhen Var, the Republic's TX-130s Fighter Tank came from Pandemic's The Clone Wars video game and not any of the films. Made for this game, however, are the TX-130t Fighter Tank (which is simply a recolored TX-130s to give the Empire a more conventional tank on some maps), the Rebel Combat Speeder (a modified Gian Speeder introduced to give the Rebels their own tank when they had none in the films), and the Separatist MAF (which was mainly included to give a Separatist counterpart to the Republic's LAAT, and is a mix of recycling unused concept art from The Phantom Menace and a loose Early-Bird Cameo for the HMP Droid Gunship in Revenge of the Sith; the HMP would replace the MAF in the sequel).
• Death from Above: Raining death on your enemies is a perfectly viable way to use the various starfighters in the maps that have them, especially since they can chew through heavily armored vehicles in seconds.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In this game, heroes can only be used by the AI, and they are also completely unkillable aside from a few specific methods.
• EMP: Clone Troopers carry EMP grenades instead of thermal detonators, and Jet Troopers' EMP launchers fire EMP rockets. Naturally, they're deadly against droids, but ineffective against vehicles and organic targets; in practice, this means you can't kill your allies with them, but they'll do a serious number on the CIS.
• Four Is Death: Upon winning four battles in Galactic Conquest, you will be allowed to instantly conquer an enemy or contested planet. If playing as the Alliance or Republic, that planet is put under your control; if playing as the CIS or Empire, it is instead removed from the map (due to being blockaded by the Trade Federation or targeted by the Death Star).
• High-Altitude Battle: The first map on Bespin, starting off on the gas platforms seen in the background on approach to Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back.
• Interface Screw: Holding Rhen Var in Galactic Conquest allows you to jam the enemy's sensors, preventing them from seeing units on the minimap.
• Mêlée à Trois: The Tatooine Dune Sea map has the Rebel Alliance vs The Galactic Empire vs Tusken Raiders. (Or, you know, Republic vs. CIS vs. Tusken Raiders, depending on the era.) This is the only case in the first game of a native faction having their own command posts and being hostile to both sides.
• Nerf: Several showed up in the Steam version when weapons were rebalanced.
  • The Blast Cannon used by the Rebel Pilot and Dark Trooper had its projectile spread increased, thus cutting down its effective range.
  • Super Battle Droids were reduced from 4 wrist rockets to 3.
• Never Trust a Trailer: On the Instant Action menu, if you look at the preview for Kamino, the video will show a Jedi starfighter being accessible on the map, when there isn't one.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Jedi Heroes in this game are impossible to kill by conventional means; they deflect any projectile (including rockets and grenades) aimed directly for them, and instantly regenerate any damage they actually take. The only reliable ways to take care of them are to land a starfighter right on top of them (which requires very lucky timing on the players part), throwing them into a bottomless pit with an explosion (which only works on certain maps), or depleting the enemy's reinforcements below 20, at which point they automatically drop dead and don't respawn.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Neither campaign in the first game has a real plot to speak of, even though many of the levels are based directly off of scenes in the movies.
• Orbital Bombardment: Courtesy of the Sniper classes' Recon Droids, which have the ability to summon an orbital strike on their position. Great for dislodging stubborn groups of enemies and potentially taking out vehicles; just make sure you're not doing it under a ceiling.
• Painted-On Pants: The Rebel Sniper wears what look like skin-tight latex pants.
• Pre-Rendered Cutscene: Movie clips are used as cutscenes for the Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War campaigns in the first game.
• Ramming Always Works: The heroes are immune to every weapon, but running them over with a vehicle (or landing a starfighter on top of them) does the job.
• Ring Out: In addition to ramming, the only way to kill heroes is by blowing them off the various high surfaces in the game, most notably the Bespin Platforms map.
• The Siege: Rhen Var's harbor map.
• Unique Enemy: The Naboo Security Force appear only as the enemy faction for the second Clone Wars campaign mission.
• The Voice: Emperor Palpatine, Master Yoda, and Admiral Ackbar are heard giving out mission briefings (for the Empire and CIS, Republic, and Rebels respectively) in the campaigns, but never appear in person.

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