It had been a long long while since we’d seen a genuinely impressive Star Wars game, but Dice managed to put in a big marker for the gaming world with the return of the Star Wars Battlefront series in 2015 for the Xbox ONE, PlayStation 4 and PC. Apart from a very short teaser trailer, which you can see below, and a very brief press bio from Dice, there was little to go on early on, but in all fairness that only added to the anticipation levels as we waited with baited breath for more information and a glimpse of the gameplay itself.
Star Wars has been a big part of gaming for a long time with absolute classics ranging from a lot of people’s earliest memories of the Star Wars shoot-em-up platformer on the SNES, to the amazing Rogue Squadron series or Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2. Star Wars Battlefront was a fairly big part of that legacy with the original creating the first battle-based first and third-person action adventure game that put the player in the thick of some of the film series’ most iconic scraps.
The 2015 return did a similar job, and while it picked up some criticism for the lack of a story campaign and the omission of space battles, it delivered a frenetic online shooter set within the Star Wars universe. Fortunately, for gamers and EA DICE, the sequel, Star Wars: Battlefront II, is set to put both of those wrongs to rights with its release in November 2017. This will include the space battle mode, Starfighter Assault, and you can read our guide to find out more about the various scenarios and ships that have made it into the sequel.
Gameplay
What we do know about the gameplay potential is that Dice are developing Star Wars Battlefront on their Frostbite 3 engine, so if you imagine a first and third-person action shooter equivalent of Battlefield 4 with the gaming environments of the Star Wars series you won’t be too far wrong. Instead of having abandoned cities or blizzard hit mountain bases to roam around in, with bullets and knife attacks in your armoury, you’ll have the potential of Coruscant or the Ice Planet of Hoth as your playground with laser blasters, lightsabres and the might of the force in your kit bag.
As well as getting to control the individual characters from the series you also get to take control of the vehicles that we all know and love, along with their vast arsenal of weaponry. Dice has commented that they will be bringing next gen vehicle mechanics to some of the quintessential Star Wars ground attack vehicles, air fighters and space craft, so it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty impressive combination.
If the previous two games in the series are anything to go by, the gameplay will be a mix of first and third person action with options for individual character and vehicle control. It will all be based on a faction combat model that will see different forces battling against each other in game modes that range from elimination to capture the flag type missions.
There will more than likely be a campaign mode for the game unless the developers decide to go down the Titanfall route, which we doubt very much. However, the real test for the game will be the online gameplay experience and if this can blur the lines between Battlefield 4 mechanics with the Star Wars and Battlefront concepts then it should be a whole world of fun.
Graphics
While the trailer doesn’t really tell us a great deal about the look and feel of the game, it does give us a little snippet of the high-res potential that it has. However, and more importantly, if we are to go on nothing but the graphics of Dice’s last game, Battlefield 4, then Star Wars Battlefront is going to have stunning granularity of detail, super sharp rendering, massive backdrops with long draw distances and epic action refresh rates to create a whole new, ultra-realistic Star Wars experience.
Dice themselves are promising “magnificent high definition”, “amazing special effects” and a “next generation” experience for the 2015 reboot and with the teaser trailer and what we already know about the visuals in Battlefield 4 we definitely wouldn’t bet against them.
Over the coming months things are going to become a whole lot clearer as Dice and EA Games start to release more details and, hopefully, gameplay trailers in the not so distant future. We’ll be updating details here as they become available, so if you’re a very big fan of the series you might want to check back every now and again.
Let us know what you think about the potential of the game by leaving a comment below.
