Now that Star Wars: Battlefront II‘s loot box controversy has died down and the developers found a proper way to award players Credits for playing the game, EA is beginning to unveil new modes that expand on their all-encompassing digital love letter to Star Wars.
In their first major expansion of the base game since The Last Jedi season last year, EA and DICE have unveiled Night on Endor, or an “Ewok Hunt Mode.”
Here’s EA’s description of the mode that will allow you to bludgeon storm troopers to death with rudimentary weapons:
The ambush begins as Ewoks attack unsuspecting stormtroopers, using spears, Wisties, and other skills to take down their opponents. Each stormtrooper defeated spawns as another Ewok, multiplying until the Empire’s forces have been completely eliminated, and the Ewok celebration can begin. However, the stormtroopers’ superior training and firepower are more than a match for the Ewoks. Armed with a cadre of weapons as well as flashlights to pierce the darkness, players must hold back the Ewok’s ambush if they have a hope of surviving until an extraction team can arrive.
It seems as if this is a stealthy, horror mode to the game that is a usually flat out, run forward and shoot things game. We’ve seen the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, and they are cuddly but vicious. Seeing them in the picture above, with the firelight dancing off their crazed eyes, makes you look at them like never before.
Here’s a stormtrooper, fearing for his life, and rightfully so. He’s being surrounded by screaming little bears in loincloths, ready to stab him with tiny spears. How terrifying are those weird bi-pedal animals, backlit by the moon and fueled by a furious want to defend their home? You don’t even have to imagine it, you’ll be able to play as this stormtrooper, overwhelmed and horrified as the beasts close in.
But maybe it’s not this new game mode. Perhaps Ewoks always were terrifying, or at least they seemed to be. The Battle for Endor made for TV movie at least scared me as a child. It’s those beady eyes and their weird mouths. Freaky.