With the newly released ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ trailer already getting fans excited for the revival of the franchise, EA, working alongside the developer DICE, has officially announced their own take on ‘Star Wars’ series also set to release this winter: a multiplayer shooter called ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’.
Set during the original trilogy, battles will take place on the planets Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, and the previously unexplored Sullust, with players able to use blasters, speederbikes, snowspeeders, jetpacks, and AT-ATs within combat. Not only will players choose sides between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, they can even take on actual characters from the original series, such as Darth Vader and Boba Fett.
While players will get to fight in aerial combat with X-Wings, TIE Fighters, and even the Millennium Falcon, there won’t be any actual ‘star wars’ – that is to say, all the combat will be limited to within planets, with no battles occurring out in space. Patrick Back, General Manager at DICE told IGN: “Most battles are planetary battles, so our focus right now is to make sure we only get that right.”
From that same article, ‘Battlefront’s’ producer Craig Mcleod said, “One of the biggest challenges you have when working on Star Wars is the breadth of it. How do you choose which areas to pick? We grew up with the Original Trilogy. We love it. It’s absolutely loved by our fans. In the new teaser, when Han Solo says, ‘We’re home,’ that’s the feeling we’re going for…We’ll get that right.”
Pre-orders of ‘Battlefront’ will give you the Battle of Jakku (the desert planet shown in ‘The Force Awakens’ trailers) DLC on December 1st, but if you decide to not pre-order to you’ll still get the DLC for free on December 8th, just ten day short of ‘The Force Awakens’ premier. You can find out more about pre-orders here.
‘Battlefront’ will be out on November 17th on PS4, PC (through Origin), and Xbox One. Also, while EA is shutting down most of their free-to-play PC games, ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ is alive and well, with story-driven updates on the way.
You can check out the ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’ trailer below, which EA claims was made off their real game engine. Let’s hope that the actual game turns out just as beautifully detailed as this footage: