Star Wars Battlefront II Turns 21 Today, and We Still Haven't Logged Off

Star Wars Battlefront II came out in North America 21 years ago today, on November 1, 2005. Pandemic Studios made it, LucasArts published it, and it landed on PlayStation 2, Xbox, PC and PSP a few days after it hit Europe on October 28 (Wikipedia).

I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember, and this is the game that took over my life that winter. Revenge of the Sith had been in theaters for about five months, I'd seen it more times than I'm willing to admit, and suddenly I could step onto those battlefields myself. Two decades later, plenty of fans still call it the best Star Wars game ever made, and I'm one of them.

Aspyr brought it back in 2024 as part of the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection. Here's the official launch trailer.

Why did the campaign hit so hard?

Battlefront II gave its campaign a real point of view, and it belonged to the 501st Legion. The Rise of the Empire campaign is told through a veteran clone's journal, voiced by Temuera Morrison, the same actor who played Jango Fett and Boba Fett. It runs 18 missions, from the Battle of Geonosis all the way to the Battle of Hoth (Wikipedia).

That means the narrator fought at Geonosis and was still on the front lines 25 years later at Hoth, even though clones age twice as fast as everyone else, so the math has never really worked. (We've been doing that math since 2005.)

The mission that everyone remembers is Knightfall, where you march into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant as a clone right after Order 66. You're supposed to feel like a loyal soldier following orders, and the game lets that sink in without ever telling you how to feel about it. It was the first time a Star Wars game made me uncomfortable on purpose, and I've respected it for that ever since.

From there, the 501st becomes Vader's Fist. You hunt down the Jedi, chase the Tantive IV and finish on Hoth in a mission called Our Finest Hour (The Let's Play Archive). Watching the Republic turn into the Empire from the inside is still one of the smartest things a Star Wars game has done.

Who else flew straight into an enemy hangar?

If you played Battlefront II, you know the move. You hop in a starfighter, skip the dogfight, land inside the enemy capital ship's hangar and climb out on foot, then blow up the shield generator and the defense mainframe from the inside. It was faster than shooting the shields down from outside, and it felt like Anakin crash-landing in the Invisible Hand's hangar at the start of Revenge of the Sith.

Space Assault was brand new for the series, and it was a big deal, because the first Battlefront kept every fight on or above a planet. Battlefront II let you fight across six space maps in Instant Action, from Kashyyyk to Yavin, and every Battlefront since has been measured against it (Wookieepedia).

Which hero did you spam in Hero Assault?

Heroes were the other huge addition, and if you scored enough points in a match, you could take over as Darth Vader, Yoda, Darth Maul, General Grievous, Han Solo, Boba Fett and more. A bar on screen counted down your time, and it filled back up every time you took someone out (Wookieepedia).

Then there was Hero Assault on Mos Eisley, the mode where every hero and villain fights at once in one dusty spaceport. It made no sense for the canon, and nobody cared, because you'd have Han Solo, Mace Windu and Chewbacca running down one street while Dooku, Jango Fett and the Emperor ran down the next. A lot of us spent more time there than in any other mode. Yoda's speed and his endless flips made him the pick that half the lobby complained about.

What made the classes so memorable?

Every faction had its own personality, and each one had at least one special class that changed how you played. The Separatists had Droidekas that rolled into a fight and threw up a shield. The Rebels had Wookiee warriors and Bothan Spies that could turn invisible. The Republic had Jet Troopers, and the Empire had Dark Troopers that could leap across half a map (Wikipedia).

Then there was Galactic Conquest, which turned the whole game into a board game like Risk. You moved fleets across the galaxy, fought planet by planet and spent credits on bonuses between battles. A lot of us lost entire weekends to it on the couch with a friend and a stack of snacks, and it's still the mode fans want back the most (we wrote about that in our Battlefront 3 wishlist).

The Hunt modes were the cherry on top. On Endor, Ewoks hunted scout troopers through the forest, and on Naboo, Gungans got their own fight (Wookieepedia). They were silly, chaotic and absolutely perfect for a night of split-screen with a sibling who refused to play as anything but an Ewok.

How is a 21-year-old game still alive?

It started as a massive hit, selling 6 million copies by 2007 and finishing as the sixth best-selling game of 2005 in the U.S., according to the NPD Group. Wookieepedia lists it as the top-selling Star Wars game ever.

Then it nearly disappeared. GameSpy, the service that ran its online matches, shut down its servers in 2014 and took the multiplayer down with it. On October 2, 2017, a patch brought multiplayer back on Steam and GOG for up to 64 players (GameSpot). Fans on the original Xbox are still playing online through a community service called Insignia.

The Battlefront Classic Collection arrived on March 14, 2024, for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC. It had a rough launch with broken servers, and Aspyr apologized to players (Push Square). Plenty of fans stuck with it anyway, which says a lot about how much this game still means to them.

Can Battlefront 3 ever live up to it?

That's the big question right now, since EA has confirmed DICE and Respawn are teaming up on a new project, and multiple reports say it's Star Wars Battlefront 3 (we covered it here). Neither EA nor Lucasfilm has said the name officially.

My read is that the 2005 game still wins on heart. DICE's games looked incredible, and the 2017 Battlefront II eventually became a great game. But Pandemic built something that felt like opening a toy box full of the entire saga. You could play the prequels and the original trilogy in the same afternoon, with a story, space battles and every hero you cared about. If Battlefront 3 can capture even half of that, fans will show up on day one.

Happy 21st birthday to the game that made a whole generation fight over command posts.

So tell us your main. Which map, which hero and which class did you play the most?

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Header image is official Star Wars Battlefront II key art, and in-article images are official screenshots, from LucasArts and Lucasfilm via Steam.