Star Wars Battlefront is A New Direction, Not “Battlefield With Star Wars Skin”

DICE's Patrick Bach says the studio wants a "fresh start".

Opinions may be mixed thus far on DICE’s Star Wars: Battlefront beta but it certainly has the world talking about it. Plenty of people love the approach to combat and the feeling of nostalgia with Star Wars while others have argued against the overall gameplay’s simplicity and lack of balance. One things for certain though – it’s not Battlefield. While DICE could have easily just copied Battlefield’s mechanics over to Battlefront, general manager Patrick Bach said that such a strategy wasn’t viable in the long term.

Speaking to OXM (via GamesRadar), Bach stated that, “You could have done Battlefield with a Star Wars skin; that would be safe. That would be the sane and sober thing to do if you just want to make money. That’s the money-grab; go for it. But that’s not very strategic in the long term.”

“Think where you want to be in five years and you won’t want that reputation behind you because that would be a burden rather than a benefit. You want a fresh start so you can go in a new direction. That’s exactly what we’re doing. The first Star Wars movie was in the same place. When you look at it now, it was the safest bet ever – but that’s easy to say now. Back then, why would you want this space opera?”

There’s certainly plenty of furore over Star Wars: Battlefront at this point but we’ll only find out how much people want it when it releases on November 17th in North America and November 20th in Europe.

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