Despite sharing a developer in DICE and many of the genre’s tropes, Star Wars Battlefront is shaping up to be an entirely different experience than the Battlefield franchise.
Ditching the likes of squads and classes, DICE is aiming to break new ground in the Star Wars video game scene, and the acclaimed Swedish dev spoke of the ways in which it differs from Battlefield – and its legacy – during an interview with The Guardian.
“We have a strong legacy with Battlefield, but we did not want this to be a Battlefield game – we wanted it to have a heart and soul of its own. We came at it from a very different angle. We know that the core audience of a game like this is different to the Battlefield audience. There’s a crossover, but Star Wars fans expect a Star Wars game, not a Battlefield game. We looked at what Star Wars stands for, rather than asking how can we tweak Battlefield to be something else.”
While it will boast a similar sense of scale across its 40-player multiplayer matches, Battlefront is being designed to be much more than just a simple palette swap for the creative team.
Based on the original, adorned trilogy, Star Wars Battlefront will whisk players onto some of the series’ most famous locations across the galaxy, including Hoth, Endor and Jakku via the prequel movie tie-in to be released later this year. Kicking single-player to the kerb, DICE’s rendition on the sci-fi classic has been built from the ground up with multiplayer in mind, with EA reportedly planning an “aggressive” DLC content plan for the months after launch.
Star Wars Battlefront is primed to launch across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on November 17 – you know, providing EA doesn’t opt to delay the shooter.