Is Star Wars: Battlefront II Adding Character Customization After All?

Star Wars Battlefront II Cosmetics
(Image credit: Electronic Arts)

There's been so much controversy centered around Star Wars: Battlefront II leading up to and just past its release. A lot of it is nestled in around its previous monetary system consisting of loot boxes. Well, one of the ways EA could be fixing the game is through character customization.

According to Gamespot, dataminers have discovered some interesting new tidbits from an upcoming patch for Star Wars: Battlefront II. Reddit user Uninspired_zebra posted some of the media captured from the datamined version of the game in lieu of the upcoming PC patch, and it scrolls through some interesting new choices that may be available in the game... soon.

Through the main menu of the game, when you scroll through the options and make your way to the Classes section, you can select one of the grunts, such as the Assault, and within that menu you'll see the Star Card options, the weapons, and a brand new option called "Change Appearance."

Within this option you'll be able to change how the character class looks, selecting from a number of different skins and mesh types for the character. We see that for the Galactic Republic there are eight different skin types for the Assault class, including Theed and Coruscant Guard. The other skins in between show up but they don't have names, just the skin reference number.

Most of the outfits change the character's livery on the armor. We also get a brief demonstration of the Rebel Alliance skins, many of which are identical, but a few of them change near the bottom where we see a couple of different Rebel skins on display.

The interesting thing here is if it turns out to be true that there are going to be skins available in Star Wars: Battlefront II then it kind of flies in the face of what was mentioned previously by EA, when it was stated that the reason the company didn't want to add cosmetics to the game was because it would break canon.

EA CFO, Blake Jorgensen, mentioned that the reason the game didn't have just cosmetics in the loot boxes instead of player buffs was because adding things like a pink Darth Vader would have broken the canon of Star Wars.

A lot of people were dissatisfied with this kind of response because many pointed out that you don't have to break the lore to add cosmetic options for the characters in the game. In fact, EA and DICE seem to be acknowledging the fact that it's possible to add cosmetic options for the characters without breaking lore in Battlefront II.

What's more is that a producer at DICE had mentioned in a separate discussion with Angry Joe that EA would be looking into adding cosmetic loot boxes to the game.

One would definitely have to wonder if the game would have fared better in the public eye had EA and DICE originally launched Star Wars: Battlefront II with cosmetic loot boxes instead of stat-altering loot boxes? At this point we'll never really know, but adding additional cosmetic options to the game might help assuage some of the community unrest.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.