Star Wars: Battlefront
Publisher:
EA
Developer:
DICE
Platforms:
PS4, PC, Xbox One
Genre:Action
Release Date:NA: November 17th 2015, AUS: November 19th 2015, EU: November 20th 2015
Star Wars: Battlefront is an upcoming action video game currently being developed by EA Digital Illusions CE or DICE, who are best known for their work on the Battlefield series of action shooters.
Currently, Star Wars: Battlefront is set to be published by Electronic Arts, after it signed a multi-year deal IP owner Disney to produce games for consoles and PC. Running on the Frostbite 3 engine, the game is going to be released exclusively on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
The game is simply slated for a Holiday 2015 release. When the game does ship, distribution is going to be handled by LucasArts and Disney Interactive Studios.
Development
EA acquired the rights to create Star Wars games in May 2013, after which Star Wars: Battlefront was first announced to the public at large during the Electronic Arts press conference at E3 2013. The announcement was accompanied by a short CG trailer.
Star Wars: Battlefront shouldn’t be confused with its original counter-part, the smash hit shooter from 2004 that was also called Star Wars Battlefront. Rather, DICE’s Star Wars: Battlefront will be a reboot of the franchise.
At the time of writing, substantial gameplay is yet to be shown to the public. However at a closed doors event at GDC of 2015, EA’s COO Peter Moore took to Twitter to say, “A GREAT show with my friends/partners @GameStop. Superb ovation for latest gameplay footage on @starwars Battlefront.”
The first portion of gameplay shown to the public is expected to be at the Star Wars Convention in Anaheim California on April 16th of 2015. Speaking about this planned reveal, EA have said “We could not think of a better or more appropriate place to debut the game officially for the first time than the premier event that celebrates the Star Wars universe and the legions of fans who have fallen in love with it.”
Söderlund said that it was the DICE staff that lobbied to have the game made. He later commented on the development of the game saying that Star Wars and DICE were “a match made in heaven”.
Since the announcement of the April 16th demonstration, other details have came out, including the announcement that there will be pre-order materials available for the game. While nothing specific has been distributed yet, the official EA Star Wars twitter account has said, in response to a fans questions about pre-order goods, “Patience, young Jedi. Star Wars Battlefront will be available for pre-order soon. Be sure to follow our channels to find out when.”
It has also said, “We will reveal more details as we get closer to Star Wars Celebration,” pointing towards some new updates in the lead up to the April 16th event.
On April 3rd of 2015, EA confirmed that there will be play testing events for the game held at their Canada Studios and EA Redwood Shores offices. These play tests were made accessible to the public by way of application online.
Story
At the time of writing, the plot specifics remain uncertain. On February 13th of this year, an allegedly leaked document detailed some points about the game and claimed that it would span all the Star Wars movies.
It has been confirmed that Star Wars Battlefront will feature Endor and Hoth as playable maps and that its release will coincide with that of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the latest film in the franchise.
Gameplay
Thus far, we haven’t seen any gameplay for Star Wars Battlefront but Patrick Söderlund revealed that it would pretty much be “DICE’s interpretation of what Battlefront should be” and will look to feature elements from the previous two Battlefront games.
A long expected feature that has been rumoured to be featured in the game is a seamless transition between orbital and surface based combat. This was once shown in a rare piece of alpha gameplay from the cancelled build of what was thought to be Star Wars Battlefront III.
Characters
Games in the Star Wars Battlefront franchise haven’t typically doesn’t used a customisable class based system. To keep the game balanced and fair, classes are pre-built and targeted towards a specific tasks. To this end, each army had pre-set classes but it’s unknown whether DICE’s Star Wars: Battlefront will follow the same tradition.
Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.