The fears of any lover of a series always comes to light when a company they’re not familiar with acquires the rights to the game series that they love, in this case it’s Star Wars Battlefront.
Ever since DICE and EA announced the next addition to the Battlefront series I had my doubts. Despite the assurances and statements saying that the game wouldn’t just be a Star Wars reskinning of DICE’s Battlefield series I still was left a little worried.
I’ve not known DICE for anything else, but surely it can’t be that hard to take a game and stick to the original formula that everyone seemed to love about it, right?
Well let’s take a look at what we know so far, ahead of the upcoming gameplay footage we’ve been promised.
Since 2005 DICE have mostly been credited with the world renowned Battlefield series. The game featuring intense team based action, modern conflicts and excellent multiplayer. In the recent generations it’s been the Battlefield and Call of Duty series’ which have gone head to head on consoles as the favourite shooters.
But what does this prove? It shows that DICE must be doing something right with their shooting games for Battlefield to remain a top contender for so long.
Looking closer at the Battlefield series you can see why it’s so successful, indeed I do prefer it to Call of Duty myself. The intense team based action, large scale battles and wide variety of weapons and vehicles make it feel as though you are taking part in a large scale battle, and you need a good squad to make a difference.
DICE do modern combat well. Vehicles and weapons in Battlefield feel phenomenal and Battlefield 4 generated very positive scores across the board when it was released, with the PlayStation 4 version receiving an average of 85 on Metacritic from critics.
But this isn’t what Battlefront should be. Indeed just calling the new game “Star Wars Battlefront” and omitting the 3 from the end is a slight warning sign. It is being called a reboot rather than a sequel. This could be seen as a bad sign as they could just ignore the previous two games and just make a modern shooter with lasers instead of bullets.
Further troubling news is the omission of the Clone Wars saga from the game, instead focussing on the Galactic Civil War of the original trilogy. While the prequels might not have been every fan’s favourite three of the six movies they still had some very intense battles shown in the films.
Storming across the darker sands of Geonosis or jumping into the Gunships and laying waste to the CIS forces was always an amazing feeling in the first Battlefront game.
It’s not just the lack of the battles, it’s the lack of the only non-human forms in the games, the Droids. There’ll be no more Super Battle Droid wrist rockets and no more Droideka balls rolling across the battles, ready to bring terror to the clones who wound up in front of their repeating blasters.
But a Battlefront game doesn’t necessarily need both sagas involved to make it a good game. Just because the first two games did something doesn’t mean that the third one should follow the same pattern.
The warning signs are there that Battlefront might not be the return to the classic games we’ve been waiting since 2006 for, but until we see the gameplay we won’t know at all.
All we can do is hope DICE stick true to their words.
Are you a Battlefront fan? What would you like to see from the new game? Let us know in the comments below.