Star Wars Battlefront 2 video tells 'The Story of an Imperial Soldier'

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Star Wars Battlefront 2 is taking an unusual approach to its single-player campaign by telling it from the perspective of an Imperial soldier. The Empire, of course, have traditionally served as the bad guys of the Star Wars mythos, and that's a tough perception to turn around. But as Lucasfilm creative executive Steve Blank explains in the new "Story of an Imperial Soldier" trailer, it was an approach EA Motive wanted to take right from the start.

"They pitched us a story that would span from Return of the Jedi through the events of The Force Awakens," Blank said in the video. "One of the great things that they included too was like, 'we want to do it from an Imperial point of view, because it hasn't really been done—at least not in that fidelity before."

The trailer reveals a little bit more about Iden Versio, the commander of the Inferno Squadron commando team at the heart of the game. She's not just a soldier (and a very good one at that), but part of "an Imperial family": Her father is an admiral in the fleet. "She is the perfect candidate to believe in the good of the Empire," EA Motive game director Mark Thompson said.

The studio wants to avoid portraying the Imperial forces as "faceless" villains—"They aren't conscripted, they aren't forced, they aren't brainwashed," Thompson added—and instead aims to "take [players] to a place where they can understand Iden, and why she makes the decisions that she does." It's a rare but not unprecedented approach: TIE Fighter did the same thing with Maarek Stele in 1994. Coincidentally or not, it also stands to this day as one of the finest Star Wars games ever made. That hopefully bodes well for the future of this one.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 comes out on November 17. Catch up with everything we already know about the game (minus this video, because it's new) right here.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.