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'Star Wars Battlefront II' Has Some Major Dark Side Influences

With 'Spec Ops: The Line' writer Walt Williams tapped for the project, is a post-'Rogue One' Star Wars game ready to reckon with evil?

Above: Star Wars Battlefront II image courtesy of Electronic Arts.

Between Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Rian Johnson's highly anticipated The Last Jedi, the Star Wars franchise is in sturdier hands than it has been… maybe ever. Definitely since at least The Empire Strikes Back. And each new person attached to a major canon release is under increased scrutiny. In gaming, Star Wars Battlefront II is getting the campaign treatment its 2015 predecessor never had, and the narrative is being led by Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams. How you feel about this news will depend heavily on how you felt about that 2012 cult favorite.

A very loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness set against the backdrop of the War on Terror and an ecological disaster in Dubai, Spec Ops: The Line was a stark and decidedly political break from the rah-rah patriotism of that era's Call of Duty shooters and their ilk. You are not the good guy in Spec Ops: The Line. By the end of the game, you are responsible for horrific atrocities and untold destruction.

How Spec Ops: The Line played, however, was indistinguishably from shooters of its day, and there are large portions of the game where it can just feel like a "murder simulator" without any of the criticisms that eventually arise in the later portions of the story.

Williams has inherited a cinematic Star Wars universe that does not shy away from politics. Rogue One is about a group of political terrorists that militarize and radicalize the last remaining factions of the resistance to Emperor Palpatine. Star Wars Battlefront II will be told from the point of view of the Empire. We know that Williams can tell stories about being the bad guy; but will Disney let him tell a story as difficult and conflicted as Spec Ops? Will they let him craft a moment as upsetting as the white phosphorus incident?

It's a question that matters. Star Wars Battlefront II is not the first Star Wars game to be told from the point of view of a bad guy, but it is the first since the newest slate of films expanded the boundaries for what kinds of stories the universe could tell, in serious ways. And not only would Williams need to improve of the shortcomings of Spec Ops: The Line to get there, he would have to be allowed to tell a story that commits to the oppressive nihilism of the Sith order in a way that cuts against the action-driven focus of the Battlefront and Battlefield franchises—which by their nature tend to have a sympathetic stance toward militarism. Otherwise, the politics of the game could wind up in a very uncomfortable place.