Star Wars is a broad franchise, kids love it too. Then we added a level of game design that had the same spirit. “Everything from the focus on the epic, to the technology, the weapons and gadgets, the worlds, the characters and how they behave. “We looked at what Star Wars is,” says Bach. Really, the immediate joy is in just being there, in Star Wars, on Tatooine. These side elements are perhaps the main similarities to the complexity of Battlefield, but otherwise, Battlefront feels very different – almost retrospective in its avoidance of modern military FPS features. There are also intermittent weapon drops, which may line you up with something devastating like a thermal imploder. This adds some tactical intrigue and focus to the action, encouraging players to work together, covering each other’s backs. Photograph: Electronic ArtsĪs well as surviving the attack waves, players also have a secondary job – to find and secure two escape pods that have landed nearby. The map is large enough for you to race about looking for cover or cunning vantage points but it’s small enough to ensure the action is frantic and demanding.Ī scout walker is attacked by two X-wing fighters, emphasising the game’s mix of air and ground combat. Stormtroopers move just like they do in the movies, and when they’re hit, they fall in the right way too. Dice has captured everything from the reddish hue of the planet, to the shape and sounds of the weapons (those Ben Burtt noises perfectly recaptured) and the pulsating score. Even though this is basic Horde mode stuff, it is ridiculously thrilling. The first wave is just a bunch of basic grunts, blasting in from the edges of the map, but then come the heavy gunners, and finally At-St walkers, stamping towards you. Then you’re out amid the desolate valleys and hilltops of the desert planet, waiting for the stormtroopers to arrive. There’s a jump pack that provides brief boosts into the air, a barrage of three grenades, a personal defence shield and an ion torpedo – essentially a vehicle-targeting homing missile. On top of this players get to chose two special abilities, one for each hand. The A280C blaster is your basic all-round assault rifle, while the DH-17 pistol is more of a submachine gun, and the DLT-19 blaster rifle is the light machine gun. In the demo you choose from four weapons that roughly correlate to first-person shooter arcehtypes. There are no classes to select from, no perks or items. In the co-op mission, entitled Survival on Tattooine, you and another player crash land on the planet’s craggy, inhospitable surface and have to survive six waves of increasingly aggressive, well-armed imperial soldiers (the final game features 15 waves). On the E3 showfloor, gamers queued for hours to get a 20-minute demo of Battlefront, which included a co-op mission and a large-scale multiplayer map. We just thought, okay, we’ll figure it out as we go.” But on the other hand, your heart is screaming yes! Because of course you want to make a Star Wars game. And we had enough in our pipeline to be able to say no. We thought, no, this is too intimidating. “When we were asked to do this we were really scared. “We knew it would be a cumbersome process – to create what we wanted to create,” says Patrick Bach, Dice’s general manager. And it is certainly not like the original Battlefront or its ambitious sequel, which mixed ground and space combat missions to thrilling effect. Star Wars Battlefront is a multiplayer and co-op focused game. There would be no single-player campaign, just a selection of themed maps with AI enemies. There would be no space battles, no characters or environments from the three prequel movies there would be no Battlefield-style squads or customisable classes. Then details of the game were revealed at the Star Wars Experience event in april, and controversy erupted.
But the studio came into this project facing three fan bases all ready to take offence: its own Battlefield fans, the Star Wars community and the veteran gamers who recall the original Battlefront titles with nostalgic reverence.
Best known for its Battlefield titles, Dice knows how to design compelling large-scale multiplayer conflict.
This is the Hoth attack map from Star Wars Battlefront, EA Dice’s take on the classic Star Wars shooter series, originally developed by Pandemic Studios for the PC and PlayStation 2.