Star Wars Battlefront (2015 video game)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Star Wars Battlefront, released in November 2015, arrived as one of the most anticipated games in the history of the franchise. More than nine and a half million players participated in its open beta alone, making it the largest beta Electronic Arts had ever run. The questions that drove that excitement were simple: could DICE, the studio behind Battlefield, actually capture the look, feel, and scale of the original Star Wars films? And what happened when they tried to make a game accessible enough for children playing with parents, in a franchise whose hardcore fans had waited more than a decade for a new entry? The answers turned out to be more complicated than either the praise or the criticism suggested.

• 2. A Reboot, Not a Sequel

  ›

  In May 2013, Electronic Arts secured exclusive rights to develop Star Wars games for gaming consoles. LucasArts had just been shut down, and EA's subsidiaries DICE, Visceral Games, and BioWare began work on new Star Wars titles. DICE first acknowledged their project at EA's E3 2013 press conference, alongside a teaser trailer. Studio head Patrick Söderlund stated that the game would be "DICE's interpretation of what Battlefront should be", while incorporating elements from the previous two games. That framing mattered. EA and DICE deliberately chose not to call the new game a sequel to Battlefront II. The reason was tied to a larger shift in the franchise: after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, the company established a new Star Wars canon, replacing the expanded universe that had built up over decades. The 2015 game was designed to fit that new canon, which meant treating it as a reboot rather than a continuation. Söderlund later said the game almost was not made at all, and that staffers at DICE had actively lobbied to be given the project. He called DICE's development of Battlefront "a match made in heaven".

• 3. Building the Galaxy

  ›

  Instead of relying on traditional modeling techniques, the developers used photogrammetry to produce the game's visual assets. Small artist teams selected which assets level designers could then use to build out maps. According to DICE, this approach took half as much time as building the assets for Battlefield 4, which had been created the conventional way. The result was a visual fidelity that critics consistently praised. Steven Storm of Ars Technica wrote that "DICE has at least captured the look and feel of Star Wars, perhaps better than any other game with the license before it." Mitch Dyer of IGN described the game as one of the best-looking games of its generation. The locations stretched across planets from the original Star Wars trilogy including Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, Bespin, and Sullust, plus Jakku from the sequel trilogy. Fellow EA developer Criterion Games, known for making racing games, helped DICE develop the speeder bikes. Visceral Games contributed in an undisclosed capacity.

• 4. A Deadline and a Missing Campaign

  ›

  In late October 2014, it was revealed that the game would release Christmas 2015 to coincide with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Meeting that deadline carried a significant cost. The team had to remove the game's single-player campaign mode entirely. In early March 2015, the first gameplay footage was shown at a private retail event and received a standing ovation. By April 2015, at Star Wars Celebration 2015 in Anaheim, California, the studio revealed full gameplay details and a second trailer, along with an announcement of the first downloadable content pack, titled Battle of Jakku. The open beta launched on the 8th of October for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. It included the Walker Assault, Drop Zone, and Survival mission modes. Originally set to close on the 12th of October, it was extended a day to the 13th for testing of what EA described as "extreme scenarios". The absence of a campaign remained the sharpest point of criticism after launch. Blake Jorgensen, Electronic Arts' chief financial officer, later admitted publicly that the game had been intentionally designed to be accessible to people new to first-person shooters, or children wanting to play with their parents, rather than the hardcore fanbase of the 2004 Battlefront.

• 5. Multiplayer at the Center

  ›

  Multiplayer was the main focus of Battlefront at launch. The game shipped with 16 multiplayer maps across five locations: Hoth, Tatooine, Endor, Sullust, and Jakku. Matches supported up to 40 players. The mode roster ranged from Walker Assault, where Rebels tried to destroy advancing AT-AT walkers, to Blast, a team deathmatch with 20 players where the first team to 100 kills won. Hero Hunt pitted a single hero character against seven pursuers, with the first player to reach 50 kills or the highest kill total at match end winning the round. Heroes vs. Villains ran in rounds, with teams of six protecting three hero or villain characters while trying to eliminate the opposing side's. The first team to win five rounds took the match. Hero characters available at launch included Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Emperor Palpatine, Leia Organa, and Boba Fett. Those characters, along with vehicles, were unlocked mid-match by finding tokens that spawned randomly across maps. Leon Hurley of GamesRadar, reviewing the beta, praised the game's gunplay as "strong" but heavily criticized Walker Assault for the difficulty of winning it as a Rebel. He also noted an unusual balance between heroes, pointing out that Darth Vader could be destroyed by any passing ship while Luke Skywalker fared far better in combat.

• 6. A Season of Expansions

  ›

  A season pass was announced on the 12th of October 2015 and covered four DLC packs released across the following year. The first major paid expansion, Outer Rim, arrived on the 22nd of March 2016, adding maps set in Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine and a factory area on Sullust, along with Nien Nunb and Greedo as playable characters. Bespin followed on the 21st of June 2016, introducing Cloud City and adding Lando Calrissian and bounty hunter Dengar. The Death Star expansion launched on the 20th of September 2016, marking the debut of the Death Star in the game, and brought Chewbacca and bounty hunter Bossk as playable characters. The final Season Pass expansion, Rogue One: Scarif, released on the 20th of December 2016, tied to the 2016 film and introduced the tropical planet of Scarif, Director Orson Krennic, and Jyn Erso. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer criticized the season pass approach, writing that he felt "a little cheated" given how sparse the content was at launch. Criterion Games also developed a separate PlayStation VR exclusive, the Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission, which was released free for PlayStation 4 in December 2016 and required both the PlayStation VR headset and the PlayStation Camera. The Official UK PlayStation Magazine listed it as the fifth best PS VR game.

• 7. Commercial Life Despite the Critics

  ›

  Electronic Arts had originally expected the game to sell nine to ten million copies before the end of the company's 2016 financial year on the 31st of March 2016. After the beta, that target was raised to at least 13 million. Star Wars Battlefront debuted at number one in the UK for retail non-digital sales in its first week and became the fourth fastest-selling title released in 2015. It marked the biggest launch of a video game in the Star Wars franchise and exceeded the sales of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, the previous record holder, by 117%. In Japan, the PlayStation 4 version sold 123,908 copies within its first week, placing it at number one on the all-format sales chart. Mizuho Securities analyst Neil Doshi, noting the negative reviews, had predicted early on that the game would still prevail as a financial hit. By December 2015 analyst Michael Pachter estimated 12 million copies had sold. EA met its goal of shipping 13 million copies by the start of 2016 and had shipped 14 million by May 2016. Although launched in 2015, the game sold well enough to rank as the seventeenth best-selling game in the UK in 2016. A sequel developed by EA DICE, Motive Studios, and Criterion Games was released on the 17th of November 2017.