There has been an awakening
I have very fond memories of Star Wars Battlefront. Well into my adolescence, whole summer weekends were lost to split-screen tournaments; when you lost a game, you lost the controller. Familiar Star Wars iconography mixed with sprawling open-ended action in the Conquest mode turned the series into a neighborhood staple, keeping my PlayStation 2 in rotation long after I had obtained modern gaming consoles that were capable of hooking me up with the latest Call of Duty. It’s a multiplayer experience unmatched by any shooter I’ve played since then — a sentiment many of my fellow youngsters seem to agree with.
Combine these personal expectations with DICE’s recent history and the stakes get even higher. The disastrous launch (and equally disastrous subsequent months) of Battlefield 4 dealt a crippling blow to the company’s image, tempering what would have otherwise been a home run of an E3 reveal. We haven’t seen too much of the game since last June, but that all ended at Star Wars Celebration yesterday with a demo for members of the press. Even though EA and DICE have yet to prove they can ship a game as good as Battlefield 4 (that isn’t broken), I liked what I saw of Star Wars Battlefront and I liked what DICE told us. I’m thankfully back to cautious optimism.
Star Wars Battlefront (PlayStation 4 [previewed], Xbox One, PC)
Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: November 17, 2015
During the preview event, we were shown what DICE claims was pre-alpha PlayStation 4 gameplay. It all felt too staged to be a live match, but there was just enough roughness to the visuals that I could maybe buy it. The gametype we were shown was called “Walker Assault,” which was not explained in depth but seems to be an asymmetrical mode similar to Battlefield Hardline‘s “Heist.” The Empire has an AT-AT, and the Rebels are activating Uplinks to summon Y-Wing bombers so they can destroy the AT-AT? Maybe? It wasn’t explicit, but that’s what I took away from both the match & the pre-rendered trailer we were shown. The Endor map also feels too detailed; there’s too much going on visually and it feels like the camouflaged Rebels will have an enormous advantage.
The other major thing I took away from the gameplay video was how much it looked like Battlefield, even with the Star Wars trappings. That’s not to say it’s a re-skin of Battlefield 4 or anything; it’s just that the game looks almost exactly like how you’d expect a hypothetical Battlefield Endor game to look, right down to the experience gain. Battlefront gives you a 25 point bonus for a headshot, eh? That sounds familiar. Even the gun sway animation feels like a holdover from the recent Battlefield titles. However, all of that changes in third-person. For me, Star Wars Battlefront has always been a third-person shooter. It looks like players will be able to switch at will between the two modes of play.
Heroes and villains will make a return, as we saw at the end of our demo when Darth Vader showed up and annihilated the player character. Boba Fett will also be playable, because this is a Star Wars thing. There’s currently no word as to the rest of the game’s roster, but I’d have to imagine some of the new characters from The Force Awakens will make an appearance. If DICE insists on gametypes with limited respawn tickets, a super-powerful character laying waste to an enemy team would certainly reduce average match times.
One thing we didn’t see was any specifics how ship-to-ship combat would be implemented. The reveal trailer included footage of dogfights, but I am very concerned by the lack of space combat gameplay being shown. I remember when I realized I could break into the enemy ship and sabotage it from within in the original game. How cool that would be with the 40-player count DICE is citing for Star Wars Battlefront? In fairness, there is a criminal lack of dogfighting in videogames these days in general. At this point I’ll take just about anything I can get, especially if the fights are accompanied by that iconic TIE fighter scream.
At the end of the gameplay demo, Battlefront design director Niklas Fegraeus took the stage to discuss some of the more technical aspects of the game. He showed off something called Dolby Atmos 3D, which just amounted to slightly better sound rendering. I bet if you’ve got a surround sound system or some killer headphones, that’ll make you a very happy person. Most of my online gaming happens with the volume off and a podcast on in the background, so an otherwise indistinct difference in sound just didn’t grab me.
What I did find interesting was the mandatory part of the conference where the licensor talks about how much they love the licensed product and how faithful they want to be. When it came time for DICE to visit the Lucasfilm archives, they incorporated a technology called Physically Based Rendering — PBR for short. As Fegraeus put it: “You have a [physical] object, you take a bunch of pictures and then a special software converts it into a digital object.” The models we saw looked fantastic, and that level of detail was certainly visible in the demo.
I was also quite taken with the new “partner feature,” an option in multiplayer that allows two buddies to form a tag team. In-matches, you will always spawn near each other and you can always see where the other person is on the map. Outside of the match, if one of you is playing and the other comes online, you’ll automatically be matched up. As somebody who doesn’t make very much use of clans in console shooters, it’s possible all of these features have been well-tread already, but to me this implementation felt new and fresh. But the most impressive aspect of this feature for me was the unlock sharing. If you get access to a sick gun before the other member of your tag team, they get access to it as well. This is both a cool way to make sure your team is perpetually strong while making the game accessible to more casual players. It’s the best kind of change — the kind that has no real downside — and I’d like to see it pop up under a different name in a Call of Duty or Battlefield somewhere down the line.
If competitive multiplayer isn’t quite your bag (and if that’s the case, why do you care about this game?) there will be missions inspired by battles from the film series that can be played solo or co-op (either online or local). One such mission is a free add-on entitled The Battle of Jakku, and takes place before the events of The Force Awakens, setting up the desert planet seen in both of the film’s teaser trailers.
The latest iteration of the Frostbite engine seems well-utilized, but it’s somewhat difficult to tell if I was being tricked. Although I firmly believe the match was choreographed to hell and back, the visuals had just enough jank to them that I also believe the game will absolutely look fantastic upon release. Now, will it hit the benchmark set by the demo? Not likely, but we know DICE can make a fine-looking console game.
This is all somewhat irrelevant: how pretty the game will be is not the sticking point here. When you consider just how god damn broken Battlefield 4 was, I was genuinely surprised our demo didn’t even nod at that ever-present sting. At time of writing, the DICE panel at Star Wars Celebration has not occurred, so there’s a chance the team will still address the wampa in the room. But even if they manage to address it in a way that feels satisfactory, will that be enough to rake in the pre-orders?
I think DICE has a solid core here, partially in thanks to its experience with multiplayer shooters. I’ve never played a bad Battlefield from a design standpoint (although I’m sure the comments will tell me otherwise), so there’s no way I was going into Star Wars Battlefront expecting a mechanical disaster. My apprehension comes from the remaining blank spaces. Will this game be able to pay tribute to its predecessors and the franchise without letting reverence smother progress? And — more importantly — will the game work on day one? Neither of these questions can be adequately resolved before copies start getting out, but I think it’s reasonable to get your hopes up just a little. As long as we’ve got space battles, everything will be fine.
…there are space battles, right DICE?
