Electronic Arts unveiled more details and scenes from Star Wars: Battlefront, the big console and PC game that is coming this fall.
This return of the Battlefront series uses the Frostbite game engine — the same that DICE uses for the Battlefield games — to deliver outstanding 3D graphics. The effort is the best that one of the industry’s biggest companies can do to deliver a high-end gaming experience based on one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. Battlefront takes us back to the time of the original Star Wars trilogy. The game is the last hurrah for the last generation of Star Wars before everything shifts over to the new canon of the next episodes. It will come out Nov. 17 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and on Origin for the PC.
If EA does this right, it will mean a big bucket of money. While we’ve seen two previous Battlefront games, EA didn’t call this one Battlefront 3 because it was a rebooting of the franchise.
You can fight as the heroes of the Rebellion or the villains of the Galactic Empire. It has some intense multiplayer modes, featuring 12 maps on Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, and the previously unexplored planet of Sullust. You can control vehicles such as X-wings, TIE Fighters, and AT-ATs. You can play as Darth Vader or Boba Fett.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ4pFdW-QTU
EA’s trailer shows gameplay of the battle on the ice planet Hoth (as we all remember from The Empire Strikes Back), as the battle rages on foot between the rebels and Imperial stormtroopers.
Peter Moore, the chief operating officer of EA, introduced the demo of Battlefront, saying it was the convergence of the Frostbite engine, EA’s development talent, and Star Wars. They’ve been working on it for two-and-a-half years. The tech includes “photogrammetry” to make realistic imagery, Moore said. Moore noted that it was footage captured from a PlayStation 4 console — EA has received flack for not showing actual gameplay footage until this point.
“The results are completely stunning,” he said.
The game also features missions that are carefully crafted battles from the first three films. You’ll even be able to engage in aerial dogfights. Multiplayer battles range from eight players to 40. You can also play single-player missions as you wish.
Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir, the head of the team that is developing the game at DICE, said on stage at E3, “That being, whose mask still has the ability to strike fear in me, is Darth Vader.”
Regarding Lucasfilm, she said, “They have opened up their vault to us. When you fly an X-wing, it’s the real X-wing.”
EA already stoked our appetites by releasing a spectacular speeder bike chase through the woods of the planet Endor. The trailer showed big battle scenes on the planet Hoth and elsewhere. The game comes out close to the time when Star Wars fever will be high because of the pending Dec. 18 launch of the new film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The trailer has everything, including Darth Vader and the Millennium Falcon.
The first downloadable content (DLC) for Battlefront, dubbed the Battle of Jakku, will tell about the events that precede the The Force Awakens.