The Empire is without an emperor. Last week, a Star Wars Battlefront 2 update apparently brought back the evil Emperor Palpatine’s game-breaking ability to shoot lightning through walls. An emergency fix completely removed him from the game, and it’s unclear when he’ll return.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 allows players to fight as iconic heroes and villains from the films, provided they’ve scored enough points during a match to unlock the character. These characters range from the stalwart Jedi Luke Skywalker to the most famous Star Wars character: Bossk.
One of the game’s most powerful villains is Emperor Palpatine, who has the ability to leap around the battlefield and shock enemies with lightning. His Chain Lightning ability caused issues earlier this year, allowing him to zap players through walls. Palpatine was then nerfed, stripping him of the ability to target enemies through walls.
A June 28 hotfix aimed to help Palpatine’s lightning ability work better on enemies in close range, but now he’s being removed from the game altogether.
Some players believe the tweak brought back his previously nerfed lightning. YouTubers and community members on social media are saying that Palpatine’s zapping them through walls, possibly as result of the hotfix’s change to the abilities tracking.
EA Dice hasn’t said what the cause for the removal was. “We plan to execute our Kill Switch (KS) for him,” community manager Ben “F8RGE” Walke said in a post on the game’s official forums.
“This means he will be removed from the game. He will be disabled until a hotfix can be deployed. We don’t take this decision lightly, but we feel it is in the best interest for everyone until a fix can be deployed.”
This is not the first time a Battlefront series hero has been turned into a monster. A patch in 2016’s Star Wars Battlefront infamously made Lando Calrissian so powerful that the splash damage from his blaster even killed himself.
For now, there’s no clear timeline for Palpatine’s return.
Reaction to the Palpatine situation seems caught between appreciation for the quick response and frustration that there was a problem to begin with.
“I’ve completely lost count on how many times the game has been broken by updates and patches,” Battlefront YouTuber Star Wars HQ said in a comment on their channel.
“A patch is supposed to fix the game, NOT break it. Get better Q&A (sic) please. We love you Emperor Palpatine. You and your beautiful laugh will be missed, if only for a short time. See you again someday!”
Comments
5 responses to “Battlefront 2’s Emperor Palpatine Was Quietly Removed From The Game”
People still play this?
i bought the game during e3 while it was on sale, couldn’t join any matches
It’s a shame.. it’s actually a damn good game now without any P2W.
You only get Australian matches during peaktime. Generally, you have to change your region to the 250ms range to ensure you get a game.
It was Palpatine’s ability to zap me through walls that made me stop playing.
I didn’t play for long, either. I returned Battlefront II within a week to EB Games and got a full refund.
I found that the single player campaign was boring (I was playing because I wanted to see the story for myself, as an avid Star Wars fan) and when I played multiplayer, I got bored because I didn’t have any friends who played the game and my favourite mode, the star fighter dog fight mode, kept crashing on me, connection failed and that sort of thing.
Played the Beta but thats as far as I got as soon as I found out more details I knew I wasn’t going to get it. Played the pandemic battlefronts and loved them, its a shame.
I wish they’d remove all the ‘heroes’ and make the game what it was about… the Star Wars soldiers in a battlefield. Instead of trying to shoehorn a god awful Overwatch clone into a 20 v 20 match.
Why can’t EA with all their money release more than one Star Wars game every 2 years and make that a overwatch clone and make Battlefront an actual Battlefront game, even a simple Battlefield clone would be nice at this point.
Or have Lucasfilm remove the sole Monopoly it gave EA for Star Wars and make it about creating good entertainment instead of the monies.