Star Wars Battlefront II Confirms Chickens Exist In The Star Wars Universe

Chickens are Star Wars canon, sorry, I mean Star Wars “authentic”, as DICE would say. Not weird alien chickens like you might expect from the Star Wars universe – and actually there is something known as an Endorian Chicken, that I’m sure Ewoks love to each –  but standard Earth-like hens, running on in game on the map set on Takodana from The Force Awakens.

Sadly, as much as we chased them around, we couldn’t pet or pick them up, but animal rights activists will be pleased to hear that you can’t actually harm the chickens in any way. Still we can now have a good guess what was on the menu in Maz’s Castle bar!

This startling revelation came from our hands on time with Star Wars Battlefront II ahead of its Play First Trial release into EA Access and Origin Access, and that meant we were able to put the question to John Stanley and Dennis Brännvall from Criterion and DICE, respectively.

You can catch the rest of our interview with the pair later today, but for now, here’s what they had to say about the inclusion of chickens in the game:

TSA: Finally, I discovered while playing on the Takodana map that there’s actually chickens running around? Does this mean that chickens are now Star Wars canon? Or Star Wars “authentic” as you’ve been saying?

John Stanley: I don’t know what you’re talking about…

So, all of the flora and fauna in the game is approved by Lucasarts, so they are happy with said creatures in the game. And they all have names.

TSA: They all have names individually? [laughs]

Dennis Brännvall: All the races have names, but I don’t know them all! I consider myself a Star Wars expert, but I don’t even know all the names.

TSA: So, I did search for “Chicken Star Wars” and did come up with something called an Endorian Chicken, but where I saw these wasn’t Endor, it was Takodana, and they look like ordinary chickens, where the Endorian Chicken is a weird mix of a chicken with Orville’s head on it.

Dennis: So my favourite story with the chickens was at E3, where the public were able to play the game, and there’s a dad with his son and they’re both playing. The dad is having a good time, but the son is struggling a little bit and gets killed a couple of times. Eventually he finds his way to the side street of Naboo and he finds the chickens that are in the water, and he spends ten minutes practicing shooting the chickens.

His dad looked over in the middle of being Darth Maul or something, and he’s like, [pulls a confused expression] “You be you.” [laughs] It was amazing.

So there you have it, regular Earth chickens are part of the Star Wars universe. How does that make you feel?

Footage and info taken from an event hosted at DICE. EA paid for travel and accommodation for this event. You can also check out our thoughts on the adjustments made to the final game’s progression, loot crates and microtransactions.