During a recent interview with The Guardian, Patrick Bach, DICE’s general manager was able to respond to many different questions from fans about the new and upcoming game Star Wars: Battlefront. Some of the answers didn’t exactly answer questions directly, but there is now a clearer picture on what Star Wars: Battlefront will actually look like.
There is one major question that fans have been repeatedly asking and its why aren’t there any space battles in the new Battlefront game. Bach responded by saying: “There’s a lot of stuff we didn’t have time for, but we’ve picked the coolest moments, the ones that made most sense for multiple people playing together.” He also stated: “One design philosophy we always have is that we want different people to play together – we want flying vehicles with ground-based troops, we want to mix and match different types of gameplay on the same map – that’s what makes a multiplayer game fun.”
DICE decided that they would not include space battles basically because their focus is on other aspects of the game. This actually makes quite a bit of sense since DICE has been working on the Battlefield line of games for a while. The Battlefield series is based on capturing all of the different parts of a battle during one experience. DICE wanted to bring that same experience to the player but in a Star Wars world.
The Guardian asked Back also about the single-player campaign and stated that many fans think there will be little engagement on a map that is filled with bots. Bach was confident in his answer: “I don’t want to say, you just have to trust us, we need to prove it of course, but we’re using all the knowledge about depth and longevity that we’ve accumulated over years of making the Battlefield games.”
He then went on to talk about Star Wars: Battlefront and how it will feature missions that are longer than one you would find in a typical FPS game.
“The missions we have in the game have more longevity than most single-player campaigns. They tend to have a length of between 6-10 hours and that’s it – most people don’t replay them, most don’t go through the secondary objectives, they run through the story and they’re done,” said Bach. “In Battlefront, it’s very different, it has more to do with replayability than most narrative-driven single-player experiences. It gives you something else, something you may not be used to seeing.” Bach went on to explain that DICE has worked hard on making these missions something you’ll want to revisit again and again. “There are a lot of different ways to play the game. There’s a lot of variation,” he said.
The last thing that was asked of Bach was why DICE made the choice to focus on the original trilogy of Star Wars Episodes 4, 5, and 6 instead of included something from the prequel time period. The largest reason for this choice was to keep a cohesive universe throughout the entire game. The main goal for DICE and LucasArts was to make a game that stays true to the Star Wars universe.
“Staying with episodes four, five and six felt like a reasonable approach – they’re in the same time era,” Bach said. “So you can mix characters, vehicles and maps in almost any way without completely breaking the logic of the universe, whereas if you added the prequel era… well, you could argue it would be fun, but it wouldn’t be authentic.”
Another reason for the decision was to more easily tie Star Wars Battlefront to the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII movie release in December. “…it felt more natural to show you the things that happened just before that, rather than going back even further or mixing and matching, which wouldn’t make sense with the film,” Bach said.
Let us know what you think about Bach’s answers to these growing questions in the comments below.