On the Empire side of things, only TIE fighters were available to us. First and third-person views were available, and while the former provided nicely detailed cockpits to admire, it also dramatically cut down our field of view, making only the latter really useful unless everyone is locked in first-person.
In our demo, the Empire and Rebels each took turns attacking and defending troop transports that periodically appeared, the destruction of which signalled the end of the round (although total kills was still the metric by which a victor was calculated). All participants were visible as blue or red dots though, so it was possible to set course for a target early, or to drop low and attempt something of a sneak attack using the clouds and canyons of Sullust as cover. Each life begans about 10 seconds above and away from the fracas, the action partially obscured by clouds. At Gamescom, we partook in 40 ship battles over a dusty Sullust, as two groups of 10 players and 20 AI scrapped it out for supremacy of the skies. It’s more Rogue Squadron than X-Wing, but Star Wars: Battlefront’s aerial assault Fighter Squadron mode is a hell of a lot of fun.
