Hot on the heels of Friday’s nostalgic, show-stopping reveal, developer DICE has opened up about some of the finer details lurking beneath Star Wars Battlefront‘s glossy aesthetic and, crucially, how it isn’t just a “big-budget Battlefield mod.”
Although this complaint was levelled at Visceral Games’ recent Battlefield Hardline not too long ago, speaking to Eurogamer, the studio’s General Manager general manager Patrick Bach touched upon the design philosophy behind Battlefront, and why the creative team are striving to bring the series back to its legendary roots.
“The whole idea of building a Star Wars Battlefront game is about two things. First of all, it’s called Star Wars Battlefront for a reason, so [we’re] going back to the roots and the core ethos of that. On top of that, it’s Star Wars together with LucasFilm. We have the opportunity to work with them on this; it’s a super tight relationship. We have daily contact with them – they approve everything, we discuss everything with them. It’s super tight.
“That doesn’t really marry with the thought of making it in a mold, right? The whole idea was: ‘let’s clear the table – it’s gone. What do we want?’ And from there, we start to put things on the table again. In some ways you could argue it’s close to what we’ve done before – because it’s something awesome and people want that – but in other ways it was like no, let’s go down this route because it fits with the IP, it fits with what Star Wars stands for.”
There’s still a long way between now and the title’s November release, but already the marketing material has struck a chord with the core Star Wars fanbase. Additionally, DICE confirmed that players will have the ability to switch between first and third-person perspectives at will, while Battlefront will run at 60 frames-per-second regardless of which platform you play it on.
These tidbits come mere days after we learned that Star Wars Battlefront will support split-screen co-op play in lieu of a traditional single-player campaign, whereas that signature element of destructibility that DICE achieves so well in the Battlefield franchise will only be implemented when appropriate in the company’s venture to a galaxy far, far away.
Following Friday’s blowout, Star Wars Battlefront has been scheduled to make its way to a galaxy near you — and indeed PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC — on November 17.