One of the cool things about the game

is that we were trying to capture the feel of the films.

So what we've tried to do is build our maps

and our battle structures so that they are generally

plane aligned like the film,

but at the same time it's space.

So you can do whatever you want.

So like as a Bomber, it is perfectly valid to fly

upside down beneath the star destroyer

and be launching your bombs

upward into the base of the ship.

It lets you kind of have your cake and eat it too

in terms of feeling like Star Wars

but giving you a lot of control.

Hi, this is Ian Frazier

creative director on Star Wars: Squadrons.

Hi I'm Shadi Malik

lead UI artist on Star Wars: Squadrons.

And this is every star fighter in Star Wars: Squadrons

[gentle upbeat music]

Fundamentally Star Wars: Squadrons

is a game about being a pilot

a combat pilot in the Star Wars universe.

So you're gonna get into iconic ships

like the X-wing and the TIE fighter last round

in 5v5 Space Battles, both in single player.

We've got a story set after Return of the Jedi

and a multiplayer

where we have two different competitive modes.

So today we're gonna look

at all 10 playable ships in Star Wars: Squadrons.

We're going to have an in-depth look

at their design, gameplay and how we stay true to the films.

[Ian] The Fighter class is the multirole class

within Star Wars: Squadrons.

So these are the ships that are good at everything

but they're not great at any one thing.

If you wanna be flexible, able to switch back and forth

between offense and defense, fighters are where it's at.

[Shadi] The cool thing with TIE fighter is,

is one of the ships where we have a lot

of references from the films.

For any of the eight ships,

we would always start by the movies.

That's like the Holy Grail.

We would supplement that by looking at schematics, drawings

and various manuals that we had.

Grabbing all of that,

we would do first concept art in 2D.

So this is really just like in photoshop,

grabbing different parts,

moving them around, rescaling them.

Addressing all our gameplay needs

but making sure that we stayed true to Star Wars aesthetic

and the vehicle specific character.

So for the TIE fighter, it's a ship that actually

does have already a nice big central screen.

And we just had to kind of manipulate a few elements

that were already existing in the cockpit to go

and create the extra gameplay elements we needed.

We tried to act like we were incumbent

like we were sign our fleet systems.

Like we were the fictional companies

within the Star Wars universe that builds these ships.

We're looking at it partially as game developers

but partially also

from a purely fictional lens and going well

we had to really build one of these ships for real

what would you do?

Running this mixture between the films

and trying to capture the prop

but then knowing that the prop is a prop and then looking

at what it would take to really fly one of these things.

And then finally knowing that only it's a game.

So there's constraints around that as well.

We tried to take all those things together

to end up with the result that you see today.

The biggest challenge with getting the TIE fighter to

to play the way that we wanted,

was simply that the design of it is actually built

around this sort of porthole window, right?

You have this front facing window

that everything's focused around and we need to make sure

the player has enough vision, frankly.

So there was a lot of playing

with the distance where that window is,

where the control column is,

where your seat is so that both in 2D

and of course in VR that the amount

of visibility you have there is this kind of maximized

or we keep the iconic look.

Fun fact as we were working on it,

we ran into a problem.

The TIE fighter interior

where the struts are in the window,

don't match the exterior.

There was actually a production error in the New Hope.

So the inside of the TIE doesn't match up with the outside.

The angle of the struts is different.

We had to decide which which

of these is going to be correct.

Of course, being a pilot game focused within the cockpit.

We chose the cockpit view.

We needed for gameplay to have additional screens.

So we have a central console,

but we've got a lot of gameplay components.

We didn't want it to be 2D UI overlay.

We want players to have that pilot fantasy of really

using the instruments that are in the ship.

We had to add screens.

We were looking at reference that was outside the period.

And if you look at the first order TIEs

they have these arms inside

with like these triangular screens.

The discussion we had from there was like,

well you know, this is not the right time period,

it's not the right model.

We don't wanna to go there,

but could we maybe imagine

that there is a prototype of it that's already around

in our timeline?

That's one of the nice things

with our time period is we're right after indoor.

So both sides are kind of reappraising what

they're doing a little bit.

And we see some interesting technology evolve

that makes sense fictionally.

With the TIE specifically,

you'll notice that in the prologue,

which is set around the same time period as the first film

you don't have any missiles.

You don't have any countermeasures.

You have the basic lasers engines TIE fighter

but then when we jump forward

to the post end or period where most of the game is set,

now that the tightened squadron,

the Imperial group that you're with,

they start experimenting with these ships

and trying things that are a little bit more out there.

So you're gonna get some non-stock options

for weapons and components and stuff.

Once you get into that later time period.

The X-wing and the TIE fighter needed to be quite different.

This is the game that we've tried

to balance the balance in an a symmetric way

'cause each faction fictionally

kind of has its own strengths and weaknesses.

And we wanted to lean into those in actual gameplay.

The nice thing the X-wing has is it's got all three systems.

It's got its engines, it's got its lasers

and it's got shields.

But you can shift those double front

or behind you something you know

we've heard in the films.

But then the TIE fighters canonically

don't have shields at all.

So we said, Okay, what do we do to make that fair

to get to kind of balance these two ships out

but have similar roles, but are on opposite factions

and when we keep more or less lined up?

If you fly the two in our game

the X-wing feels a bit heavier.

It's got a bit more substance to it.

The TIE fighter has a zippier turns.

It's just a faster ship in a more easily maneuverable ship.

And so that helps kind of counterbalance the shields in

and of itself.

But the ability to control the shields to put them to front

or back is giving another edge to the X-wing.

So how do we counter that?

What we do is we use the same buttons that we would use

for shield control and next wing on a TIE fighter.

And some of the other ties,

we use that for emergency power conversion,

which is the ability to pull all the juice

out of your engines

and dump them into your lasers

or vice versa on the fly.

So you can quickly get out of trouble

or quickly juice up your weapons

for a massive attack in a hurry

in a way that the rebel ships can't.

Some of the things we had to do for the X-wing were

changing the viewport,

kind of slimming down the struts a bit.

It's a bunch of invisible changes

that make it feel like the movie.

I had to take the existing dashboard

and you know, its angular shape and how high it is.

That's iconic.

So we obviously had to have that we penned and scaled

and kind of moved around to create additional room.

So we'd be able to fit all the gameplay components.

For each of these changes,

basically there's slide in the deck

showing the original,

showing the intended change

and justifying why

but any changes we were doing,

you know using the materials

that were already in the cockpit you know,

paint or icons or buttons that came from elsewhere

and just making sure everything was really

authentic to that cannon ship.

We were treating them like real things, right?

So both from the fictional standpoint,

but also as prompts for the films.

We would ask, Okay, it's 1977

your ILM you're building a prop.

You don't have a flat LCD screen and those don't exist yet.

You're gonna notice that the lights

for your laser charge are actual LEDs,

old style like a little bowl

with a plastic coating over it,

that's coloring the light.

It's one of those things that makes the game

I think feel more real

because the teams tried to approach it as if it is real.

If we were making just any ship

just for the game,

you know, from a player experience standpoint

you're gonna put the UI element

exactly where you need it,

the size you need it.

In this case, the fantasy

is being a pilot in the Star Wars universe.

So it doesn't make sense to do that.

You'd be sacrificing the whole fantasy that, you know

we're trying to offer players

because you're just trying to be as efficient as possible.

Even once we had the UI there

with the right color scheme and everything looking great

in the retro, it still wasn't enough.

We wanted players to feel like they were really there.

So working with shader artists, we went and did materials.

We went to the point of being able

to emulate the screen resolution for each display,

having refresh rates

and keeping the frame rate down

to give that retro choppiness

you know like to the animation.

So how do we create the sense that these ships are real?

The first thing we did was the flight model

for the X-wing and TIE fighter.

And everything's really been built upon that foundation.

And what we tried to do with them

is look at everything we see in the films

that even some of the animated series and so on,

to look at what are the boundaries,

what are these ships capable of?

What are they not capable of?

For instance, there's no vertical thrusters on X-wing,

they don't go straight up and down.

It's not a thing that X means to do.

So we did not want that as part

of our flight model 'cause it doesn't fit the fiction.

At the same time we wanted

to create the idea of kind of World War 2

combat piloting is our foundation as it was for Lucasfilm.

And then from there go, how do we up that a notch?

How do we take things like power management

and eventually boosts and the drift maneuver to take it

and really take advantage of the fact that you're

in space and we can do some cool over the top stuff.

We ended up building an entirely new entity

to handle how our ships work within the frostbite engine

because we knew we were trying to do something

that had never been done before in our engine

quite like what we're doing.

We base it a lot off of the older games

like original X-wing and TIE fighter,

use that as a starting point in terms of the kind

of banking maneuvers we wanted to have

in terms of how we wanted them to handle turns.

And so on, we did that as a foundation early on

and then we started layering it things

in like power management

and eventually drip maneuver.

In legends, there was this idea in Star Wars

of the etheric rudder.

This idea that there was some kind of medium in space

that you actually kind of piloted through

which was sort of the fictional reasoning

behind ships handling or like aircraft

less like spacecraft.

Now, honestly, I don't even know

if that's canon anymore or not.

In terms of our, our thinking

of around how we make the ships move.

It helps as a visual representation

of how ships would move through medium.

[Shadi] These are the ships that are meant to go

after other starfighters.

So they're the most agile and fast

and they really pack a punch.

They're also the most fragile.

So you have to watch out

they're not meant to go after capital ships.

When going about designing the TIE interceptor,

the idea was that the TIE fighter,

the interceptor and the Bomber,

they're a part of the same line.

And when you're flying Imperial,

there's a certain standard

and there is efficiency in the design,

but we did still want each ship

to have its own unique character.

The way we did that for the interceptor,

it's a ship that's made to hunt

but it's also more fragile.

So it's a little details.

Like if you look at the viewport,

the spokes and then the rim around,

they're thinner, more refined,

giving it a more precise look,

but also a bit more fragile.

And the other big thing that we were able to

use were those screens that we were adding

on the side that we spoke about earlier.

So each of the tree ships got accustomed shape.

The one for the interceptor

are these kinda aggressive triangles that kind of cement

its look as, you know, a hunter.

So one of the most fun parts

of working in the cockpits for squadrons was figuring

out how you actually fly a TIE fighter.

And this is true for the Fighter, the Interceptor

and the Bomber is that if you look at the films

we see very little of the actual interior

of those ships and how physically you control it.

Now, an X-wing, it's a joystick

but with the TIE we see that there's a yoke

but it's not really clear how that works.

And so we've ended up with this design

around the pushing and pulling what it does when you twist

like what's a pitch, what's a yore.

How do you roll one of these ships

and make sure that what we do,

doesn't contradict what we see in the films

but is internally consistent

and make sense from a player standpoint.

So if you're playing the game

especially if you're in VR and you look down at

what your pilot's hands are doing,

it always makes sense.

So when we built the TIEs,

part of figuring out how they would control was sort

of the physicality of it.

So we actually built simple wooden armatures

that were the controls

like kind of imagine the yoke of the TIE fighter.

So that then when we did motion capture performance capture

of our actors for cinematics,

they were sitting inside these simple, you know,

wooden cockpits and then we'd work on the motions.

We're having a lot of fun with it.

So one of the things that makes the TIEs still

very distinctive from the new republic ships

and the TIE interceptor

is probably the best example of this,

is actually the sound design.

So those core mechanics of, you know

throttling your engine and that sweet spot

in the middle of the throttle where you turn better,

those are the same between the factions.

But the way we treat

that from an audio standpoint is quite different.

You know, if you're in a rebel ship,

if you listen to it there's rattles and clanks and clunks

and there's this distinct feeling that there's

duct tape somewhere behind you holding that ship together.

Whereas the TIEs it's clean, it's pristine, precise

especially with the interceptor,

you're gonna notice higher pitch.

You're going to notice more kind of clean hums

very little noise in the mix.

The whole idea is that these things

are engineered to perfection.

And that's your experience and kind of, you know,

the Imperial cleanliness and design there.

The A-wing is one of my favorite ships in all of Star Wars.

So we had a lot of fun developing it.

It has that very aerodynamic shape.

This thing is just, you know,

kind of a wedge flying through space.

And yeah, I know there's no air in space,

but there's always that sensation

that this thing is incredibly fast

at the same time, it's pretty small.

And you have that, that field that, you know

one straight blaster bolts going to make your day real bad.

And we wanted to capture that

in all of the tuning and design around the A-wing.

You'll look at the rebel ships

and you'll notice that they use different fonts.

So we have all these fonts that are from the end

of the universe that you've seen on screen in the movies.

We've used them in different combinations

to help the character

of each ship kind of feel a bit different.

It takes, you know, a team,

you know of experts to bring the ships

to the players like this.

One of the things that's fun in the game

is we've been really careful with our collision.

The actual collision, geometry around all this sort

of stuff you could smash into in the game.

And as a result, if you're in an A-wing

you can pretty easily fly into say the trench

on the side of a star destroyer.

Flying to that area that's super tight

but that's a place where you can legitimately get in there

potentially lose a pursuer

as they might be a bit bigger and smash off the side.

We wanted to lean into that idea of being super fast,

super agile, but small.

And you hit like a truck.

So you're gonna have

this crazy experience of being very cautious

as everything around you can cause your death pretty easily

but being able to get in and out and do these awesome

hidden fade attacks and just make you feel like an ace.

The cockpit is pretty cramped as well.

In VR, we had to make a few modifications

and there's like this metal rim, right?

That like runs kind of across like the glass

and where it was positioned in the cannon ship.

It would be in the way of some

of the instruments that the player needs to use.

So we had to move it and thin it

and kind of play with that a bit

while still giving you the impression

that it's the same position, the same look,

even being able to let you personalize it,

like hanging flair

but not like intrude upon the gameplay elements.

Well, if this is a real ship that existed

and you got a fuzzy walk that you wanted to put in.

In the real world, somebody would sell an attachment

to actually put those things up.

And so that's what we did built.

[Shadi] If you look down and it's just

like that classic world war two cockpit stuff

that you'd expect to see,

it's just a great look.

It's the only ship that has a radial speed gauge

with an arrow that actually moves up and down.

And it just gives it that feeling of speed

like almost like a muscle car, you know?

So yeah, I really enjoyed working on the A-wing.

The Bombers are defined by being a bit slower,

a bit heavier, a bit tankier,

built to drop that massive ordinance

that's gona take out big capital ships.

Things like star destroyers and MC75's.

So they might need a little support getting there,

but once they get there,

they can do an obscene amount of damage.

[Shadi] For the Bomber we wanted obviously

to make it look different than the Interceptor and Fighter

'cause it has a very different role

and the exterior is also very different.

So we needed to bring that insight as well for the player.

Our job was made easier because the Bomber is a bigger ship.

So especially when you're looking around the interior

you'll see there's actually room where people can sit

behind you and all that's designed.

It looks very different than the interior

from the other two ships.

Even if you look to the side,

you will see that there's a door and there's the ordinance.

You know, you got all the bombs

on the other side and the compartment.

So it makes it already feel quite different just from that.

You can actually go against the capital ships with it,

you can make serious damage.

It needed to feel tankier,

kind of the reverse approach

that we had for the interceptor.

For the Bomber, we went and made the frames of the viewport

thicker, more armored, kind of like you could ram something

and really take a lot of punishment.

Once again, those secondary screens that we introduced

we gave it a different shape

for the Bomber or something bulkier

to just kind of confirmed its role on the team.

Well, the ships that have the off center cockpit

like the Bomber, the TIE Reaper were quite challenging

because as a player,

you don't wanna feel like all your control

is offset by you know, a meter or two

from where the ship's actually located.

It becomes incredibly hard to tell,

like can I get through that hole?

I don't know!

Where is the hole relative to me?

So what we ended up doing is we have the

the pilot seat is technically off center

but the pivot point for the ship has been moved relative

to the broader shape of the ship.

Effectively, you're driving it from the center of the ship

even though your seat is a little offset.

What we do to make the ships feel weighty is largely playing

with the tuning of their engines.

So how fast they accelerate,

how fast they decelerate

and how much momentum they preserve

when you go into a different maneuver,

if you're in a Bomber and you start to turn the degree to

which you have forward momentum there helps sell that sense

that it's actually kind of a heavy ship.

Obviously the top end speed relative

to other ships also helps that sense of weight.

And there's a lot of kind of tricks

of presentation that help it doesn't make a bit

of difference to the way the ship handles,

but in your mind that that sensation,

that it's a kind of beefier ship

helps make it feel slower, feel weightier.

Similarly with the sound design,

when we're using a lot of lower pitches

that helps kind of correlate your mind

with the slower beefier, stronger ship

than the more like high-pitched tightly tuned Interceptor.

So the Y-wing has been a really interesting challenge

for us because we're trying to capture the feel of the ship.

And it's got a lot of similarities

with the X-wing in terms of its structure and cockpit

and you still want it to feel distinctive.

The cockpit team's done a great job

of looking at the instrumentation

looking at the shape language that you see

within that dashboard and the films

and then trying to make use of that as well as possible

whether it's the kind of like tube

that works its way over the instruments

or the actual shapes you see of the instruments there.

We tried to make use of those and really lean into them.

So it feels right for a while way.

And at the same time, kind of that heavy structure you have

around you are kind of left and right behind you.

You have a lot less of a window

to your astromech than you would inside an X-wing.

What's really interesting with the Y-Wng is it's one

of the oldest ships that the rebels have.

You can definitely see it in the design.

So it was quite a challenge for us to design something

that would keep its unique character but make it playable

because the ship is devoid of screens for starters,

like the only one that you see

in the movies is the targeting computer that comes

in from the side.

But besides that it doesn't actually have any displays.

It's kind of like hearkens back

to the syfy ships that had basically blinking lights

these huge computers, right?

With like lovers and blinking lights.

You look at the Y-wing of the cabin for a pilot.

It's been a versatile style ship

over different time periods.

And we've even seen it have two people in there.

Having the pilot and having like a rear gunner.

So it's a very long cabin.

And the pilot is kinda sitting

with like his legs out a bit more compared

to some of the other ships.

We had to play, you know

with like the dimensions and do a bunch

of tricks to make it feel like the shots

especially the ones you see in episode 4

but like make it playable.

So one of the things we did was bring in displays

that we designed for the X-wing

and layered them with some of the iconic things that were

in the Y-wing, like the cube,

and then that comb with a glass lens

that we use for the ship status indicator.

Even on the screens, I paid close attention

to the patterns that you have on those side panels.

So the painting patterns and those big grip

glass lights that kind of stroke.

We took those patterns and we made vector versions of them.

And we use them as backing

for the information under this place.

It was quite a challenge to be able to try

and keep that look, but introduce screens without, you know

kind of disfiguring the Y-wing.

The Y-wing for the longest time has been our example

of how you make two very different bills using components.

By default, they're built to be Bombers.

They're built to be really good

at taking down into the capital ships

not as good at dog fighting.

Depending on the components, you can slant them very heavily

toward taking out capital shifts

and just accept that you're gonna be awful

in a dog fight and need the support of your friends.

Or you can slant some more the other way

and be more of a heavy assault craft

where you're never gonna be as zippy as an A-wing

and you know, it's going to be trouble

with people, get on your tail.

But if they're dumb enough to come at you from the front

you can really end their day in a hurry.

What makes a ship part of the support class

is that you'll be piloting it to help your friends

and hinder your enemies.

So you're gonna have a bunch of tricks up your sleeve

that kind of gives you the edge and slow down your enemies

TIE Reaper and the U-wing,

both of our support ships actually come

from the film Rogue One.

And we were really excited to bring them to life in the game

because they haven't had as much exposure yet.

The Reaper in particular, just, you gotta love that design.

It's so cool.

I think it's probably my favorite ship on the Imperial side.

Originally, we looked at support and we said,

Okay we want kind of the entry-level class,

the class that's going to be the easiest to use,

that can be helpful for your team,

but isn't as effective at killing.

Did not work for a couple of reasons.

First is that the X-wing

of the TIE fighter are what everybody knows.

So no matter what we do

those are gonna be the ships that anybody new

or more casual is going to gravitate toward.

The other thing is we found

that in a dogfighter simply, you know, hunting down enemies

and shooting them is the most basic thing you can do.

That is the most successful

and fundamental part of gameplay.

We ended up pivoting our, our mindset

for support ships to be less the entry-level ship

and actually the other way around.

They're more of a high-level ship that takes a bit

more skill to use effectively, but they're the specialists.

You can use a TIE Reaper to sort of batten

down the hatches around your area

to put up turrets, drop mines, to defend the zone.

You can do it to make your entire team invisible

to enemy radar, to ionize enemy shields

and bring them down to, you know, focus fire.

They're very versatile in terms

of what they can do with the widest array

of different components that can be equipped.

We were bringing a ship to the screen,

especially it's the cockpit that no one had seen yet.

So the outside has been seen, but like,

if this was gonna be new to our players.

There were some models that existed

because the ship was designed

for use for Jedi Fallen Order

Our biggest consideration was visibility from the ship.

We kind of cut the dashboard down and made it shorter.

So the pilot could sit closer to the front windows.

They still look like what you expect

when you're seeing it from the outside.

But once again, you know, truly like little tricks,

we make it more accessible for players.

[Ian] Working on the U-wing has been interesting

because as you may know,

it's a two-seater craft.

And so trying to balance your perspective

in a way that feels right

that feels like you're in the,

left-hand seat across the front there.

But also pilots in a way you expect.

Whats it's not difficult to fly

through a hole in a structure

because actually my center point is over there

has been really challenging trying

to make sure that our physics lines

up with kind of what your brain expects as a pilot

especially in VR versus the actual center point of the ship.

The other big challenge is, as you may know

is that the U-wing has S-foils, its wings unfold.

So, when a U-wing is jumping into hyperspace,

you've got the wings locked and it's in its iconic U shape.

But once you're ready for combat,

they fold back into more of a frankly, a Y-shape

but don't tell the Y-wings for combat.

And that means that their breadth is quite a bit bigger.

So if you're flying through say the interior

of a space station, you've got to be a lot more aware

of your surroundings and not your wing

that you might need to in something like A-wing.

With both the U-wing and the Reaper

they have places in them to have

whether it's a copilot or passengers in the back.

And if you look inside them in the game

you do see those seats

but we don't actually have them filled now partially

that's because our game is set in space.

You're not landing on planets

would have anywhere to drop them off.

Not a lot of reason for them to be there fictionally

but also because from a performance standpoint

the way the game runs,

we're trying to make sure we're giving you the things

that matter the most and giving all the attention there.

So the ships and lasers and explosions that are

in front of you, if we have a high fidelity character

two feet away from you,

everything out the window is gonna have to look worse

in order to make performance space

for that character right next to you.

Working on the U-wing was easier for two reasons.

One, because it's one of the later ships

I tackled in production.

So we were already getting really used

to finding creative solutions than a challenge we'd faced

on the other ships.

Also as luck would have it,

just the design for that big central screen.

And it has all that, you know, the mess of wires

and connectors, and it has a secondary monitor on a swivel.

I was able to just take that monitor, move it elsewhere

where it fit with the order that we have for components

because every ship is different

but gameplay wise, you know, he want people to

to know that the radar is going to be over on the left.

The speed's going to be on the left

'cause it fits with the controller, that kind of stuff.

So that led us easily move it around

without having to modify it as much.

So what we did for the U-wing is more rescale

and move around existing elements.

And we were able to quickly find a home

for most of our gameplay components.

I think for the most part

I only had to modify the top part of the central console.

So it would be able to display our load out.

And we use something that is existing, that you saw

this kind of glass part with red lights in the movie

it was close enough to our laser bar.

So it was a really a good fit.

So we've added these two new ships,

the TIE Defender and the B-wing.

Designed the game around the eight core playable ships.

But fortunately, thanks to all the support of our players,

we're able to add these entirely

new ships that fill new niches within the gameplay

and within their gonna add a lot to the game.

Even though the ships are a part of existing classes

they play very differently.

They're quite unique

and they get their own unique components as well.

A big part of the design of squadrons

is about team composition and the whether

you kind of lag your team and the way that you

support each other, like, okay, you know,

I'm going to need some people

that are handling just enemy ships and I need some people

that are focusing on the objectives and so on.

If we added a whole new class

like we call them the heavier something

that compositional picture got a bit more complicated.

So instead we went, how do we fit these

into the existing kind of walls that we have

but offset enough in that kind

of spectrum of design that they all feel unique.

We don't want the TIE Defender to feel like a

it's a TIE fighter with a different cockpit.

You want it to feel distinctive

but we still wanna understand the role that,

okay this is a flexible ship

that can be used both offensively

and defensively in the way that a TIE fighter would.

I'm a big fan of it from the TIE fighter days

like the PC game TIE fighter.

We were so excited to see that come back into Canon

and went okay, well, we've got to let people fly this thing.

The reason we put it in that kinda fighter class

is that it is meant to be flux.

Something that can help offensively, defensively

where it's a bit different than say the TIE fighter

or TIE interceptor is it's really good within a given area.

It's not as good at getting

from point to point.

Heavily leans on boosts and drift

for all your maneuvre ability.

So you can really hold a spot,

but if you need kind of superiority

over the large space to hold the front

you don't want to rely just some defenders should mix that

up with the different teams composition.

The TIE Defender being part of the same you know line

as the TIE fighter, Bomber or Interceptor

obviously it has to have

a lot of things in common with them.

That's kind of the point of that series

for the pilots to just hop in you know, your home.

All the ships in the series

the main difference was the viewports

and also the secondary monitors that we have on both sides

of that central column,

that standard and all of them.

So the TIE Defender still has that console

in the middle and it has its own set of handles on the side.

One big thing with a TIE Defender is it has shields.

So it means it has more power management going on.

It also has more information that you need

to be able to consult as a player,

as we're flying that ship

we had fun playing with different shapes and patterns

and we found one that both felt robust enough

to kind of feel like this is a ship

that can take punishment,

but also still felt aggressive a bit closer

to the TIE interceptor than the Bomber I'd say.

We wanted it to look like the empire

spent more money on the ship.

There's a little bit more technology going on

a little bit more stuff built in

compared to the other three quartet fighters.

The ship status indicator.

If you look at the other three basic TIEs

besides the Reaper,

what we're showing you is the silhouette

of the ship seen from the front

because the defender has shields.

We want it to show you a top-down view.

So it would be clear right off the back of your looking

at your front and rear shields.

I love it's silhouette.

So aggressive with all those,

those spikes when you see it from the top,

but it's also a very challenging shape

to work with for the UI to try and,

you know, like surrounded

with the shields and fit that nicely within the screen.

So I spent, you know

quite a bit of time doing different iterations

and patterns and, and line art to that would

that would really go well

with the silhouette and still stay clear for the player.

In rebels, the TIE Defender is just straight up better

than the other TIEs in the context

of a competitive game that doesn't work ready.

It's like, all right, well

you've got five ships take that one's totally superior.

So what we've done more wise is

that after [indistinct] initiative, you know,

spoilers the things go sideways on the fall

that Defender initiatives put out a service

but the plans are still around.

So in our time period

when the empire is not doing so well,

the plans still exist

but they don't have the resources they once did.

So you're getting kind of a second generation more suited

for mass production version.

The whole game was designed to make you feel

like an ace pilot, but the Defender is a whole other level.

Now the elite within the ace pilot group

when I really master that ship,

which is a great feeling.

The cool thing about the B-wing is it's the last ship

from the Return of the Jedi era that we wanted to bring

to the light that we never got a chance to do

with the core game.

So the B-wing is really cool

because it's got this unique gyroscopic cockpit.

You can actually keep your cockpit stable

but control the entire rest

of the ship around with the cockpit.

Now, partially, this is just cool, just for fun

but also you can be using this tactically.

So it's something that improves your missile evasion.

It's something you can use to aim your bombs.

So you can have your ship like aiming upward,

fly under a ship and shoot your bomb straight up

for example.

And beyond that it actually is increasing

the rest of your ammo.

So if you take that component

the one that lets you control your gyroscopic cockpit

it's doubling whatever your other odds of the readout.

So we were wondering,

maybe we would only allow you to have it vertically

or horizontal.

And it would just kinda ease

by itself in between those motions.

Once you triggered it

or we could allow total control, I'm pretty, pretty stoked

that we were actually able to allow you granular controls.

You can actually place it at any angle that you want.

As you're piloting.

We decided to go kind of old school with a dial that looks

like some something you'd have on an old fighter plane.

And you actually have a needle that's

like a B-wing silhouette shape.

And you see it rotate around the dial.

So you get like this precise feedback

You got a bubble cockpit.

So if you're doing free look

or especially if you're in VR

you can be just looking at the window as that

as that big wing is moving along.

You'll see it like, you know,

block out the light, like across your dashboard.

You Feel the rumble of using your controller.

You've got that kind

of a shuttering metal scraping sound.

As the entire ship moves around you

you can be firing your lasers,

[indistinct] Canon or whatever,

while you're rotating the wing.

And so you see the lasers kind of spiraling

around your cockpit as that's rotating

and you're still firing.

The ship is ungainly.

You go flying into a tight tunnel,

like in our new map foster Haven,

you've got to really be paying attention

to where are the constraints of that ship are.

You just smack into a wall.

And so having that level of situational awareness

having the new instrumentation that lets you actually

control and be aware of where the rest of your ship is

is a whole new kind of experience with the B-wing.

That's really unlike anything else in the game.

The references we had were mainly

the ships that were built

for the original trilogy.

So you've never seen them into movie like the inside

but they were built like as part of that,

that ship they were using photos outside shots

as they were flying through space.

And then there was references

from the rebels show for the prototype of the B-wing

From a fictional standpoint

the blade wing was the prototype.

So what we're trying to capture is more

of the standard B-wing that comes along a bit later.

And also because there's just something cool

about feeling like when you saw Return of the Jedi

that cockpit was actually there

in that B-wing you just couldn't quite see it

because of the camera work.

And we're finally getting to sort of reveal that

to the world, you know

very much in first person for the first time

The B-wing being one

of the later ships to be introduced,

it's little subtle things that it will set it apart

making the screens a bit higher resolution

and playing, you know, with the type

of CRT or LCD monitors you're seeing in some of the panels

the B-wing has a mix of like small CRT's

for like it's radar and then the ship status indicator.

But then it does have a nice big LCD display

for the combat screen,

closer to what you'd see on the U-wing.

So the B-wing in lore is a Bomber.

You know, it's a Bomber/Assault craft,

but being a great Bomber is a big part of its identity.

So we wanted to keep that concept

but it's also such a unique shift.

You know, it's something that a lot

of people love our fans of wanting to play.

We've got a lot of feedback of the B-wing, where is it?

Okay. We put it in guys.

It's gonna be okay.

It's that idea

of being able to control your bombs specifically that from

from a mechanical standpoint,

that well with the ship.

We thought that was such a good fit

that it made made sense to really lean

into that Bomber room.

The other thing is,

if you look at the design of our ships

the Y-wing has always been intended to be kind of a spectrum

between going all Bomber and more of a dogfighter

or somewhere in between.

We give you quite a bit of flexibility.

With the B-wing, we've gone even further to the right,

so it can dog fight but at the most

it's gonna be a backline fighter.

That's kind of providing think of it like artillery support.

Whereas on the other extreme, it is a Bomber that is good

for dropping bombs and nothing else.

And you darn well better escort it in terms

of team composition.

The thing with the B-wing is that it is the farthest thing

over on the extreme of kind of the,

I just murder people to I just murder capital ships spectrum

of different ships.

And so it's something that doesn't work well on its own.

This is a ship that benefits tremendously

from being paired with the U-wing and to a lesser extent

by being paired with other ships that can support

and protect it on way to the destination.

Similarly, you can set it up to be more of a dogfighter

but even in that case, it's not gonna be, you know

flying around in the middle of everything the way

that A-wing would, it stays more at a distance.

And while everyone else is keeping the enemy busy

it just guns them down, you know, tremendous artillery.

So it's very much a ship that leans into teamwork.

You don't want to run B-wings

without the support of your buddies

[upbeat music]

And that was every star fighter in Star Wars: Squadrons.

We hope this has helped you understand the game

a little bit better and brought that galaxy

far away a little bit closer to home.