When I’m not flying around in a simulated airplane, I’m zipping around the stars in an X-Wing or TIE Fighter in Star Wars Squadrons. The game has been plenty entertaining in both single and multiplayer and I’m looking forward to spending some more time with it. The exciting news is that EA and Motive Studios are releasing a free update with some new content contained within it and it comes with two ships that I was hoping to see in the title: the B-Wing and the TIE Defender. It also comes with some other new pieces of content and a new environment to shoot lasers at each other in. Let’s have a look!

No DLC… but a free update!

EA and Motive Studios have been clear on messaging that Star Wars Squadrons would not have content expansions via DLC or a live service. This seems to be something in between with a “free content drop” for the holidays being something of an exception and it’s about as good as I could have hoped for.

First, new components are being added. Prototype Piercing Torpedoes, for fighters and bombers, will go straight through a capital ships shields and do damage to components underneath if targeted correctly. Ion Rockets are a disabling rocket type similar to the barrage rockets. And a new rocket turret type for support ships will let them attack capital ships indirectly. Those all sound fun and there are a couple more on tap as well but I really want to get to the exciting bits.

New map: Fostar Haven

Coming on November 25th, we get the first of the new content including ‘Fostar Haven’ which is a new map/scenario for Squadrons. It’s based on a single player scenario and it looks like another fun area to fly around and dodge both enemy fighters and the surrounding structures and offering pathways between targets that involve both open space and the cover of the nearby trading post. Fun!

B-Wing and TIE Defender

Then, coming in December, we’re getting two new ships for the game.

Ever since I saw Return of the Jedi, I wanted to know more about the B-wing. It hardly had any screen time and subsequent games and titles haven’t given it much attention either. It looked like Star Wars Squadrons was going to follow in the same path but fortunately it isn’t. It’s coming and it’ll be offering a distinct experience from the Y-Wing – the other bomber available to the New Republic. The B-Wing will even have its unique gyro stabilized cockpit so that sounds interesting!

Then we have the TIE Defender. This is classified as a fighter but it will offer a different experience from the regular TIE Fighter. Bigger but also equipped with more lasers and shields (not common with the Imperial fighters), the TIE Defender was a favourite of mine in the TIE Fighter series. So I’m excited to fly this ship again too.

Of course this is something of a competitive multiplayer game so these ships will no doubt be balanced. But they should be fun to check out.

Custom games

For those looking for competitive matches that involve closed groups of players, EA and Motive look to be delivering with a new custom game system that should allow players to join small matches of their own with their own basic settings. Nice!

Nice to have these things

Although not expected and not likely to be repeated if I read between the lines of the announcement, this is a REALLY nice thing to see added to Squadrons. It adds a boost to the game just as it hits the new console generation and it adds the two ships that I was really missing from the title. Kudos to Motive Studios and EA for doing that and making it free!

Read the full announcement here.