One of the common complaints about Visceral’s Battlefield Hardline is that despite the gloss, the sheen and the many, many explosions, it feels just a little bit like a mod of a proper Battlefield game.
DICE head Patrick Bach doesn’t want anyone to feel that way about the recently trailered Star Wars: Battlefront. Speaking with Eurogamer, Bach said the game will go back “to the roots and the core ethos” of the Battlefront series, while also keeping true to the Star Wars universe.
“I think it’s easier once you get a hands-on,” he explained, “but since we don’t have that (laughs), you’ll have to wait and see. So, again, we have not had the intention of or even had the process of building something that should resemble anything that we’ve done before. That is not how this game has been built.”
As for those cinematic battles we saw in the recent in-game engine trailer, the particular mode on display was ‘Walker Assault’, which sounds (though I’m picking through some waffly corporate-speak here) like it treats the iconic, shambling vehicle as an objective to be fought over, rather than a controllable vehicle. It’s one of a series of missions that are available both online and off, and attempt to capture the feel of key scenes from the films.
”We can’t hope that the players will recreate the (actual) battle exactly,” says design director Niklas Fegraeus, “so this is more like recreating the idea of the battle, or the battle next to the battle.”
Bach also revealed that you’ll be able to switch between various alien species when customising your character, though we “won’t be able to put a pink cape on Darth Vader”. For shame.
Star Wars: Battlefront is set for release in November 17 this year. Please be good, please be good, please be good, please be good.
