'Star Wars Battlefront 2' Trailer: The Empire Strikes Back, Again, In Video Game Form

Star Wars has always been bigger than the movies, but that's especially true in 2017. Sure, you can watch the films and the movies alone and have a great time, but keeping up with the official canon means watching TV shows and reading books and buying large stacks of comics. And now, with the impending arrival of Star Wars Battlefront 2, that means playing new video games that fill in critical gaps in the timeline.

The new Star Wars Battlefront 2 trailer is all about story – there is no gameplay to be found. However, this means that this trailer may interest the non-gamers, people who are interested in the lore but don't know their way around a video game controller. In fact, the perspective here is twisted enough to pique the interest of even the most jaded fan.

The Star Wars Battlefront 2 trailer makes it clear from the start: you're playing as the bad guys. But in true Star Wars fashion, you get to play as the bad guys after they've become the underdog. Battlefront 2 takes place after the Battle of Endor and the death of Emperor Palpatine, placing you in the shoes of a loyal Imperial commando named Iden Versio, leader of the Inferno Squad, who isn't going to let the Empire fall without a fight. That means lots of blasting, lots of TIE Fighting, lots of taking orders from a programmed A.I. that delivers Palpatine's posthumous orders, and lots of squabbling with the remaining Imperial leadership.

While several comics and novels have started filling in the gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, this game looks to deal with the immediate aftermath of the second Death Star's destruction from a perspective we haven't seen before. The idea of playing as a loyal soldier in an army that has been presented as nothing short of evil is enticing and unsettling in equal measure. I hope the game can find the right balance between presenting their cause as something worth getting invested in without losing sight of the Empire being, you know, the bad guys.

But what of the game itself? DICE, who also developed the first game, have first-person shooter action games down to a science – they make beautiful, bold, addictive war games that handle like a dream. I imagine that Battlefront 2 will function similarly. However, the first game was just a multiplayer experience, a chance for players to battle it out on familiar planets using familiar weapons. With the introduction of the single-player story mode, they're entering a whole new realm. They have to make a game that plays great while also feeling like a necessary chapter in the expanded Star Wars canon! DICE's story modes have been hit-and-miss in the past (the Battlefield series, for instance, always offers jaw-dropping multiplayer and forgettable single-player missions), but this trailer suggests that we're in for something dramatic and different. I hope there's as much care put into it as the multiplayer.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 hits shelves on November 17, 2017. That's the same day as Justice League and Netflix's The Punisher, which means you have one crazy weekend to plan for next month.