Video Game / Star Wars: Squadrons

Pilots wanted.

"Five pilots."

"One squadron."

"The galaxy's finest."

Star Wars: Squadrons is a 2020 Star Wars flight sim game developed by Motive Studios and published by Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

The game is set directly after the events of the Battle of Endor, with the story alternating between two customisable pilots who are flying for the New Republic's Vanguard Squadron and the Empire's Titan Squadron respectively. Gameplay takes place in first person, inside the cockpit; all information is relayed to the player through their flight instruments.

The game's multiplayer mode support up to 10 players and pits two groups of pilots against each other. As players earn more experience, they can unlock new weapons, shields, upgrades and various cosmetic items for the pilot and their ship. The PC and PS4 versions are also playable in virtual reality using VR headsets.

Star Wars: Squadrons - Hunted is a tie-in cinematic short, centering around Varko Grey before the events of the game. Two short stories, also before the events of the game, focusing on squadmates from both squadrons have been released so far. The Light You Bring centers around Keo Venzee and Frisk, while Count To Three focuses on Shen and Havina Vonreg.

The reveal trailer can be seen here.

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Tropes:

Gameplay

• 2-D Space: Zig-Zagged. Capital ships will always orient themselves the same way, but starfighters have six degrees of freedom open to them.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The normal way of taking down capital ships, which have very obvious weak points (especially star destroyers).
• Automatic New Game: The first launch of the game starts with the accessibility and character customization menus before starting the story mode. Subsequent launches have the main menu.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: Each of the different starfighters represents this trope.
  • Fighters (X-Wing and TIE Fighter) are the balance type. While they have no standout traits, they have no drawbacks, either.
  • Bombers (Y-Wing and TIE Bomber) are the power type. They specialize in doing a lot of damage to adversaries and can take a lot of damage, too.
  • Interceptors (A-Wing and TIE Interceptor) are the skill type. They require careful piloting due to their weak hull, but are excellent for taking down other starfighters.
  • Supports (U-Wing and TIE Reaper) are more focused on helping their allies out, ranging from keeping them stocked and resupplied to acting as anti-capital ship artillery.
  • The B-Wing and the TIE Defender are the gimmick types. The B-Wing has a gyroscopic body feature that allows for rotation of the B-Wing independent of its cockpit, which affects how bombs are dropped. It's also slow and hard to control, but packs a lot of firepower. The TIE Defender has the exclusive Advanced Power Systems component, which allows it to focus even more power to its systems, especially when power is diverted to a single system. It's also one of two TIEs to have shields and power management. However, the TIE Defender's hull is fragile and requires mastery of both piloting and the Advanced Power Systems component.
• Competitive Balance: Attempted between the four different starfighter classes.
  • Fighters (X-Wing and TIE Fighter) are the well-rounded, flexible class with a decent amount of health, speed and firepower, and great equipment flexibility, though they pale in comparison to the more specialized starfighters.
  • Interceptors (A-Wing and TIE Interceptor) excel in outmaneuvering other starfighters and have the necessary weapons to make dogfights a short affair, but have the lowest toughness rating out of the four classes and aren't fit to deal significant damage on capital ships.
  • Bombers (Y-Wing and TIE Bomber) are the heavy hitters of the bunch, punching holes through capital ships with their powerful ordnance and being backed by strong shields that allow them to take a beating. However, they're very cumbersome, making it hard for them to win dogfights against nimbler starfighters.
  • Supports (U-Wing and TIE Reaper) have the second most durable shields and hulls out of the four classes, and are decently mobile for their size, though this comes at the cost of having the lowest firepower. They make up for it by gaining access to boons that keep their allies safe and stocked up, while being armed with weapons that greatly disrupt enemies, such as Tractor Beams, missile jammers, turrets, and mines.
  • There are also subtle differences between Republic and Imperial starfighters. Republic starfighters have shields, but all Imperial starfighters except for the TIE Reaper and TIE Defender don't and compensate by having slightly sturdier hulls. Also, Republic starfighters can direct their shields to the front or rear as the situation demands. Imperial starfighters, on the other hand, can convert their boost or laser overcharge into one another at a moment's notice, letting them stay highly mobile before flipping to full offense, or make a quick getaway.
  • The next big example of competitive balance is probably between the Rebel and Imperial capital ships. Compare the Star Destroyer's prominent shield domes - which are surprisingly difficult to attack whilst the shields themselves are up, due to the shape of the ISD's shield bubble - to the MC75's hull-hugging "gill" generators. Then compare the Star Destroyer's power system - a huge vulnerable dome on the underside - to the MC's, which is mounted on the prominent vertical stabilizer that benefits from the same shield shaping as the Star Destroyer's so long as the shields are online.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Going from the X-Wing series to this can be mildly challenging due to the changes in control schemes.
  • The mouse controls to direct shield power fore/aft or equalize, and shunt power on unshielded ships, are all bound to the same inputs.
• Destructible Projectiles: All missiles can be shot down by primary weapons. The tricky part is actually targeting and hitting them, especially if they're not flying straight towards you, though the targeting modes wheel does have a specific "missiles only" option.
• Diegetic Interface: Every ship has a different layout for their instruments, including the throttle meter, shields/hull integrity, laser charge, radar, combat computer, etc. While the game also has more traditional HUD elements like objective markers, these can be switched off to provide a greater challenge in relying entirely on your ship's instruments in battle.
• Diverting Power: This game brings back X-Wing's multi-power management system, with all of the tuning options visible on your cockpit. You are able to divert power consumption between engines, lasers, and shields; if your starfighter has deflector shields,^note Only the TIE Fighter, Bomber and Interceptor do not have access to them you can also divert your shield priority (forward, rear, or balanced) to where you need it most depending on the situation; finally, you can tweak your firing pattern to either keep it sustained, or burn it quickly for an effective burst. Just like the games it's derived from, effective power management in Squadrons is the key to success during heated engagements.
• Downloadable Content: Squadrons will see free downloadable updates that will add content in to the game. Update 3.0 in November will see Fostar Haven, the location of the single player's prologue mission, added as a multiplayer map location, and new selectable components for the starfighters. Update 4.0 in December will add the ability to play custom missions in multiplayer and two new starfighters to the game: the B-Wing for the New Republic as an alternate bomber craft and the TIE Defender for the Empire as an alternate fighter craft.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Players in VR are finding out the hard way how much this applies to Imperial hardware, now forced to live with their canonical design flaws in a mandatory first-person view. In addition to a lack of shielding, TIE variants rely on their extremely limited front viewport with no peripheral vision, which puts Imperial pilots at a significant dogfighting disadvantage against every New Republic starfighter.
• Fixed-Floor Fighting: Yavin Prime is a variation of this trope, with ships battling in orbit above the gas giant with no obstacles inbetween and no hazards save for taking damage by flying below the cloud layer (which can also be used to evade missiles and enemy sensors, if the pilot is crafty enough).
• "Instant Death" Radius: Enemy frigates, cruisers and flagships will generally kill you instantly if you get too close to them while your team is on the defensive in Fleet Battles.
• Interface Screw: Getting hit with ion weapons will cause your ship to malfunction and be left adrift, forcing you to mash or hold buttons until it restarts.
• Justified Tutorial: Various missions from the singleplayer campaign essentially serve as justified tutorials for the multiplayer modes, introducing you to how to play particular ship classes, how to perform advanced maneuvers like drift turns, highlighting the strengths/weaknesses of the faction capital ships (important for Fleet Battles mode) and how to go about engaging them efficiently, and so on.
• Lead the Target: Enemies in the vicinity of your crosshairs invoke an auto-aim function that puts your lasers on target. While some could argue about the reduction in skill, one cannot dispute that it allows the whole game to move faster: fighters can be more maneuverable whilst remaining vulnerable to people who aren't Ace Pilot Cold Snipers.
• More Dakka: The Bomber classes both have access to "rotary" cannons that have have a short spool-up time before firing, but unleash devastating streams of precise blaster fire once spun up, and can do so for quite a long time with full power devoted to weapons. They're ruinous against corvettes and starfighters alike.
• Multiplayer Online Battle Arena: The "Fleet Battles" multiplayer mode is basically a MOBA IN SPACE!: 2 teams of 5 players (one team of which may be bots), augmented by AI-controlled minions, attack each other's installations, breaking through the outer defenses (buildings in a standard MOBA, frigates or cruisers in this one) to deal a Keystone Army defeat. Differences include: a lack of characters (there are only four "classes" in this game, though each ship has fairly diverse loadout options) and the addition of a Morale Mechanic which explicitly allows one side to take the offensive, with their big ships immune to damage and vastly more lethal for the duration. The side which is on the offensive will also launch a corvette/raider to close with the enemy fleet, and their frigates/cruisers will also act as resupply points so pilots can repair and restock without flying all the way back to their capital ship (handy if the team has no support ships). Meanwhile the side on the defensive has to focus on shooting down more enemy fighters (and gains more morale for doing so than the offensive team) and their frigates/cruisers must devote their power to weapons and defenses, meaning they don't act as resupply points.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: The ships and fighters of Empire and New Republic (formerly Rebel Alliance) reflect their philosophies on how to prosecute the war.
  • The Empire uses large, intimidating Star Destroyers as their primary combat ships, and deploys large numbers of agile, heavily armed fighters to overwhelm enemies. But as the Empire views the ships and their pilots as largely expendable, and to keep them small and maneuverable, the fighters are mostly unshielded, have no hyperdrives, and even no life-support system. They also are designed with very similar, standardized cockpit setups, which eases pilot training but also limits their visibility.
  • The New Republic, largely underfunded even following its transition from being the Rebel Alliance, can only afford to use much smaller capital ships, often converted from civilian vessels. However, because it is used to being outnumbered in every engagement, its fighters are each individually shielded and generally more survivable, with better visibility and often firepower. Moreover, they have their own hyperdrives, enabling them to conduct hit and run attacks on vulnerable targets and to run when the battle takes a turn for the worse rather than standing and fighting against overwhelming odds.
  • This is also played with throughout the course of the story. In the first two missions, set during the war before the decisive Rebel victory at Endor, this plays out the usual way: the Empire is hunting down refugees with overwhelming force and the Rebels are trying to save them and get away with their forces intact. But in the following missions, after a five-year Time Skip, this is inverted, with the New Republic on the offensive with the numbers advantage and building a superweapon, and the Empire trying to find a way to stop them. Then in the last few missions this is inverted again. The Empire succeeds in irreparably damaging the superweapon and concentrating their force against the New Republic, and they must once again find a way to come back from the brink while outnumbered.
• Remixed Level: Most of the multiplayer Fleet Battle maps are remixed versions of the story campaign missions.
• The Scream: Some of the New Republic pilot voices will release an absolutely bloodcurdling scream when their ship explodes around them. This is in stark contrast to the Imperial pilots, who instead tend to go for the "famous last words" approach.
• Subsystem Damage: Capital ships have various subsystems that can be targeted and destroyed to weaken them. Hitting one of their shield generators will weaken their shields, while destroying both will take the shields down for the duration of the battle. Destroying the targeting system will make the turrets on the ship less effective. Destroying the power system will create weak points on the ship's hull that can attacked for even more damage.
• Taking You with Me: The Unstable engine will not only make a TIE faster, but when the TIE is destroyed, it'll create a huge explosion that takes out enemy ships around it.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
  • Fly too close to any larger ship's engines and you'll take damage from the extreme heat. Significantly, this damage completely ignores your shields.
  • The limited viewports on TIE variants make playing as an Imperial pilot in VR difficult as compared to fighting in a Republic starfighter.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Composite Beam (available for bombers as the Beam Cannon component) fires a short-lived but powerful stream of green laser that can rip apart smaller capital ships. It is based on the prototype B-Wing that Hera piloted in Rebels, and is allowed to be equipped on TIE Bombers, even though they canonically can't use it. It is also based on similar technology as the Death Star, albeit scaled down for bomber-type starfighters.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Getting too close to a large ship's main engines will result in the player taking damage and possibly being destroyed.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: In Fleet Battles, trying to attack the enemy team's fleet whilst your team is on the defensive (or trying to attack their flagship before their frigates/cruisers are destroyed) will get you killed very quickly. To drive it home, the kill indicator is a special hazard-striped triangle, as opposed to the standard blaster/missile turret icon.

Story

• All for Nothing: The Imperial story, though they end the story mode unaware of it. The entire Imperial storyline is centered around tracking down, figuring out and destroying the Rebel superweapon where it's being hidden. In the last mission, the imperials do find the Starhawk and destroy it. However, Titan Squadron makes the mistake of assuming the destruction of the weapon is all that is necessary, and don't stick around to ensure everyone who made the superwaspon - admirals, scientists, engineers - are taken care of. The end narration makes it clear that because of this, the Rebels are able to simply get away and make a whole fleet of Starhawks later, rendering Titan's efforts moot.
• Ambiguously Related: One of your Imperial squadmates, Havina, is a Vonreg, apparently related to First Order pilot Baron Elrik Vonreg. As Havina survives to the end of the game and mentions having dead brothers who served in the war, the timeline fits well enough for Elrik to either be her future son or her fatherless nephew.
• Asteroid Thicket: Esseles features one, but it's justified by being near a ringed gas giant, so the "thicket" was probably a moon that got too close to the giant's gravity well and could not accrete, or got ripped apart by tidal forces. The Nadiri Dockyards features one as well.
• Bad Boss: Captain Amos. Assigned to guard Desevro, his fleet of Star Destroyers has been gradually ground down by unsuccessful offensive actions until only the battered Tormentor remains. He nonetheless insists on attempting to destroy a convoy that the Overseer is following (so that it'll lead them to the Nadiri Shipyards and the Starhawk) despite being told not to, forcing Titan to defend the Rebels. Ultimately the already badly-damaged Tormentor is destroyed when a Rebel warship, in its own death throes, rams the Star Destroyer's bridge.
  Amos: But...But I won!
• Battleship Raid: Early on you need to trash an Imperal listening post in order to send a message; much of the mission consists of taking out various bits of sensor/communications equipment and cooling hardware, and ends with Vanguard Five flying inside the thing. The final Imperial mission has Titan-3 fly into the Starhawk prototype and destroy its tractor beam reactor from the inside.
• Big Damn Heroes: All throughout the game.
  • Echo Squadron's X-Wing fighters show up to reinforce Javes and the Alderaanian refugees during the prologue, and then the rest of Echo Squadron shows up to keep enemy capital ships busy while the Echo unit the player is attached to gets the refugees to safety.
  • During the campaign proper, Vanguard Squadron rushes to the aid of their allies several times, and in turn are repaid when Anvil Squadron rushes to their aid during the finale.
  • On the Imperial Side, Titan Squadron comes to the aid of the New Republic when Captain Amos opens fire on the Republic convoy in their operating area. It's entirely out of pragmatism, as the location of Project Starhawk that Titan wants so badly is present in said convoy's computers. A more traditional example occurs during Titan's side of the finale, when Admiral Sloane sends in a fleet to aid Titan in their mission.
• Blood Knight: Captain Amos disobeys orders, and prefers an Attack! Attack! Attack! strategy against the Rebels. It gets him killed, while Kerrill essentially says "Sucks to be you" and leaves.
• Broken Pedestal: Lt. Therisa Kerrill used to have Capt. Lindon Javes on one. It gets broken during the prologue.
• The Cameo:
  • Wedge Antilles makes brief appearances.
  • Hera Syndulla from Star Wars Rebels appears.
  • Chopper is available as a decorative rebel hologram, and the flavor text mentions he's with Hera at the Nadiri Shipyards.
  • Gideon Hask is also a decorative Imperial hologram.
  • Vader, Bail Organa, and Leia Organa appear only in the intros of the campaigns.
• Call-Back:
  • The prologue mission is about hunting down/saving the Alderaanian diaspora.
  • Operation: Cinder has already happened and Alphabet Squadron has already formed.
• Call-Forward:
  • The story centers around Vanguard Squadron ensuring the secrecy of Project Starhawk while Titan Squadron tries to figure out what it is.
  • Havina Vonreg is a relative of Baron Elrik Vonreg, a high-ranking First Order pilot.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • It's mentioned in the Imperial customization flavor texts that the 181^st Imperial Wing are an admirable squadron of ace pilots. They're best known for being in the old X-Wing comics.
  • The Imperial side of the Tutorial Mission has you inspect BFF-1 bulk freighters for refugees. Those ships were originally introduced in the original X-Wing.
  • Frisk, a former conman, has been banned from playing Sabaac but finds a way around it by switching to Pazaak.
• Cool Spaceship: This game is the first onscreen appearance of the Starhawk, a New Republic battleship first featured in the Aftermath novels.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Has its own page.
• Distant Prologue: The game begins with a mission centered around the survivors of the destruction of Alderaan, taking place four years before the main story of the game. It also serves as a Video Game Tutorial.
• Dramatic Irony: At the end of the penultimate New Republic mission, Javes reveals that Hera has completely evacuated the Starhawk, seeing it as too damaged to defend, and put "the future of the project" (later reveled to be engineers with the plans to build new ones) on transports to escape. To cover this, he calls in reinforcements and hops in a fighter to make it look like they're making a fight of it. In the subsequent Imperial mission, it's shown that Kerill bought this plan hook, line and sinker, razor focusing on the Starhawk which the Rebels no longer need, and while she thought there was a distraction going on, she failed to realize that it was to cover something else. The player goes through the entire Imperial mission knowing that they're targeting the wrong thing, and never is there a point where any of the Imperial characters realize what the player already knows.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Vanguard Squadron was first mentioned offhandedly as a flight squadron working with Alphabet Squadron in the first Alphabet Squadron book. Here, they are your playable squadron for the Rebel/New Republic side of the story.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: The Empire is notably speciesist and does not allow alien pilots, but the squad is still diverse by human standards. The male squad leader was originally Javes, a black man, followed by an Asian. Both command two white women and a male cyborg of unknown ethnicity who relies on his pilot suit for constant life support. A third woman was shot down during the events of "Hunted."
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Javes, a longtime Imperial captain, defects after Alderaan was destroyed, feeling the Empire strayed way too far from its ideals when it killed billions of civilians.
  • Grey also openly regrets his squadron having to attack civilian transports and a medical frigate, though he does it anyway out of a sense of duty.
• Final Boss: Two, one for each side of the campaign, though in different flavors.
  • Titan-Three goes up against Lindon Javes himself in a one-on-one duel during the final Imperial level, as Anvil Squadron manages to pin down the rest of Titan Squadron, leaving the player on their own.
  • On the other side, Vanguard Squadron goes up against the entire Imperial fleet sent into the final battle over Galitran, which results in the player facing down a Star Destroyer and having to take it out personally, while also facing off against a literal army of enemy fighters and protect the Starhawk so it can be rammed into Galitran, causing an explosion that wipes out the entire Imperial fleet. Unlike the Imperial side of things, however, the player is backed up by all of Vanguard, a number of accompanying fighters and several capital ships, allowing them to avail of their teammates and nearby allies if necessary.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: During the second mission, Vanguard Squadron is asked to fly cover while New Republic forces steal a Star Destroyer. During the fight, you, as Vanguard-5, can knock out the ship's Weak Turret Guns. At the end, there's a cathartic moment when the Star Destroyer, now flying New Republic colors, is turned against several other Imperial ships... potentially by offering a very small amount of outgoing fire, which will nonetheless destroy said ships. Even if said ships were never actually shot at.
  • Starfighters do not instantly explode if they run into something, the most that happens is one takes impact damage that drains shields or damages the hull. Yes, even the TIE Fighters, which have canonically been demonstrated to spiral out and explode if even a glancing hit happens.
• Hey, You!: The player characters are only referred to by this, as "pilot", or by their callsign (Titan-3 and Vanguard-5).
• Interquel: The game's story is set after the events of Return of the Jedi, but decades before the time of the sequel trilogy era. Interestingly, you start with a small prologue set after the destruction of Alderaan, before moving on to the post-Endor war between the Palpatine-less Empire and the rising New Republic.
• Idiot Ball: The Imperials send shuttles to retake their Star Destroyer without any fighter escorts, and only their continual destruction by the New Republic eventually gets them to escort their shuttles. Similarly, the New Republic's transport ships are easy prey for Titan squadron since they lack any escorts.
• Kick the Dog: The prologue has you hunting down Alderaanian refugees on Darth Vader's orders. This is what prompts your squadron leader, Lindon Javes, to defect to the Rebellion.
• Leonine Contract: After narrowly surviving their first encounter with the prototype Starhawk, the Overseer makes its way to a remote supply depot. Kerrill's orders technically supercede those of the local Obstructive Bureaucrat Colonel, but he pulls rank anyway (since Admiral Sloane isn't there to weigh in) and essentially press-gangs the Overseer and Titan Squadron into defending the depot from a local Rebel force. Kerrill can't really refuse, as the Overseer is badly damaged, so instead she sends Titan to identify the baradium munitions they'll need to "borrow" in order to destroy the Starhawk.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: The main goal of the Imperials is to find and destroy the Starhawk, along with Kerrill fulfilling her vendetta against defector and former mentor Lindon Javes. The Imperial campaign ends with both objectives seemingly being fulfilled, so Kerrill and her forces depart while other Imperial ships mop up. As it turns out, not only is Javes alive but the Starhawk is still usable. The final New Republic mission involves flying the Starhawk into a nearby moon, destroying the entire Imperial fleet that was sent. That's before mentioning all the required personnel to build another Starhawk have survived, along with the shipyard that built it. Since 3 Starhawks were present in the battle of Jakku, the Imperials lost many ships just to delay the Starhawk production by a few months.
• Multinational Team:
  • The New Republic's Vanguard Squadron. The Captain, Kierah "Gunny" Koovah, is a Mimbanese; Feresk "Frisk" Tssat is a Trandoshan; Keo Venzee is a non-binary Mirialan; and the black human woman Grace Sienar is the token Defector from Decadence. Depending on the features assigned to the Featureless Protagonist, it can even be a Five-Token Band, with nary a White Male Lead in sight.
  • Subverted by Titan Squadron, the main characters on the Empire's side. All of them are human, as befitting an organization known for its Fantastic Racism against non-humans, and only Shen lacks the Evil British accents that seem to be Imperial standard issue. That said, there's still some variation within the squadron: Varko Grey, for instance, is a Straight Gay Asian.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the rebel starfighter skins was called "Caravan's Courage", although it's called "Convoy of Courage" in the official release.
  • Denis Lawson once again affects an American accent for Wedge Antilles, as he did for The Empire Strikes Back. (This creates a weird Continuity Snarl as he was allowed to use his native Scottish accent during Return of the Jedi.)
  • Random names for Rebel and Imperial pilots are Keyan Farlander, Maarek Stele, and Ace Azzameen.
  • The first mission initially involves scanning numerous freighters for hidden enemies, just as the original mission for TIE Fighter did.
  • The end of mission 13, thanks to gravitic fluctuations, essentially becomes a Rail Shooter (particularly in the final room) on the inside of a ship. Combined with the goal of destroying a series of targets in a looping section, it heavily resembles a level from Rebel Assault.
  • The Starhawk has a rather similar appearance to the Gravestone and, like it, is a large and powerful battleship that is intended to be the ace in the hole of the protagonists.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Averted, as the story swaps perspectives with squadrons from both the New Republic and the Empire. Both get eight missions.
• No One Could Survive That!: The Overseer has to make an emergency jump after their first encounter with the Starhawk; the Rebels seem confident that nobody could survive making an emergency jump in the situation they were in. So, naturally, they survive.
• No Ontological Inertia: Downplayed. The Emperor's death and the destruction of the second Death Star did not immediately spell the end of the Empire, as it still exists in this game, albeit in a state of decline as the once-unified Empire begins to fracture and splinter, and squabbling power-hungry despots all try to stake their claim or try to enforce what they think is right.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Averted. One of the explicit goals of the final New Republic mission is to buy time to evacuate the engineers and technicians responsible for the Starhawk prototype from the stricken ship, allowing the New Republic to later build more replacement Starhawks.
• Outrun the Fireball: The final Imperial mission makes a big deal out of how you'll need to outrun the Starhawk's imminent explosion. Instead, Titan Three gets catapulted out of the core down the barrel of the beam emitter. Still, you get to have your cake and eat it too, as Vanguard Squadron has to outrun the entire moon exploding after they crash the Starhawk into it to take out the rest of the Empire's fleet.
• Perspective Reversal: The plot involves the New Republic developing a secret new superweapon that will turn the tide of the war, while a plucky band of Imperial pilots risk their lives to discover what it is and destroy it: essentially the classic plot of Star Wars turned on its head. It even ends with the protagonist pilot flying inside the weapon and blowing it up from the inside, then escaping a fireball on the way out, the same as the Death Star II.
• Simultaneous Arcs: Judging by the Continuity Nods, the main story takes place after the start of Alphabet Squadron but before the ending of Shadow Fall given Yrica's status.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The Empire did not instantly crumble just because Palpatine and Vader were killed in the Battle of Endor. While obviously struggling with issues of supply and personnel, it's still full of competent people dedicated to its ideals. However, with Palpatine and Vader dead, the cracks are beginning to show, including multiple instances of internecine squabbling and breakdowns in the chain of command, both of which are things neither would have tolerated.
• Traitor Shot: Of the rare heroic variety, as Javes takes a moment to all but spell out for the player than he is going to defect.
  Javes: You hear me, Terisa, but you don't understand me...
• The Unfought: Despite being archnemeses who continually act in contention to one another, there is never a point where Titan Squadron and Vanguard Squadron actually confront each other - for obvious gameplay reasons. They're never even in the same place at the same time. This is probably best illustrated in the final two missions: after the Imperial mission, Kerrill orders Titan to retreat from the ongoing battle, assuming their part is over thanks to their personal victory. Then Vanguard Squadron rolls in and completely wipes out the Imperial forces, rendering Titan's efforts a Meaningless Villain Victory.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: In the Imperial campaign, you're often given opportunities to destroy additional civilian targets, and your Squad Lead later comments on this indirectly, suggesting that Might Makes Right; because you have been trusted with a starfighter and all that that entails, you have the power to decide who lives and who dies. In several missions, you're even encouraged to do so for 100% Completion
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Starhawk makes a weapon out of its tractor beam, which is several times more powerful than standard, enough to pull in a Star Destroyer. When Javes's Starhawk prototype used it on Kerrill's flagship, it tore chunks of its front hull off.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The Imperial plotline focuses on the infighting among the Imperial leaders, and how a government formed on backstabbing isn't exactly the best way to run a nation. Rella Sol, one of the pilots of Titan Squad, points out that the succession chaos would be far less disastrous if the Imperial Senate was still around and if any ace pilot got the ear of Grand Admiral Sloane, petitioning for it being reinstated would be a great idea. Of course, she happens to be the daughter of two senators...
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Javes warns that an Imperial Star Destroyer's exhaust will melt TIEs that get too close to them. Kerrill will note that daredevil pilots do it anyway and suffer the consequences.

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