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Your Move: Battlefront II

Today, I really wanted to be telling you about how much fun I had playing the new Star Wars game, Battlefront II. I’ve been looking forward to the game most of the year. Battlefront II, which is focused on large team multiplayer gameplay, also has a single-player campaign with a story set right after Return of the Jedi, from the point of view of an Elite Stormtrooper, and what she does during the collapse of the Empire. I really wanted to play this.

But then, people started to get worried about the progression system in the game. See, to unlock characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, you have to spend credits. You get credits in the course of normal gameplay, sure, but it’s so little compared to what characters cost - it could take hours of gameplay just to unlock a single Hero. And if you play too much at one time, the game says you need to wait several hours before you can earn more credits.

There’s an alternative to this - you can buy Crystals, which you can use to open crates. These loot boxes have a random assortment of game items like weapons and abilities. When you get duplicate items, you can convert them to credits, and in that way, you can buy credits to unlock characters. On average, buying enough Crystals to indirectly unlock everything in the game would cost $2,100.

What really bothers me about this is that, with the random contents in the loot boxes, this is basically a slot machine. You can keep opening them, and maybe you’ll get that unlock you’ve been waiting for! But, more likely, you’ll get a couple of blasters you already have and some upgrade parts you don’t need. And, with a rating of T for Teen, this game is being marketed, in part, toward people who aren’t old enough to step foot inside a casino.

So, I won’t be buying Battlefront II. I’d love to enjoy the story, but I don’t want to support these kinds of business practices. Besides, I already have a full time job, I don’t need another one.

Samuel McConnell is a games enthusiast who has been playing games in one form or another since 1991. He was born in northern Maine but quickly transplanted to Wichita.