Probably one of my personal most anticipated games of this E3 season is the follow up to last years EA announcement of a new Star Wars Battlefront game. Star Wars Battlefront is a childhood favorite of mine and I am elated to see it coming back stronger than ever. The last legitimate Star Wars Battlefront game was released in 2005, not even making it to the Playstation 3 which debuted at E3 that very year. The Battlefront series was then buried and very well considered dead until EA revived the series quite recently.
The general concept of the Star Wars Battlefront games is that you are a soldier in the Star Wars franchise fighting all the battles and wars that are depicted in Star Wars. You travel the galaxy fighting on worlds that can only exist in the Star Wars world. The game was best in its instant action mode where you could either play co-op with the friend sitting beside you on your couch or against the computer, either way it was great.
At last year’s E3, EA showed off a fancy-pants teaser trailer that made me fangasm. This year, EA opened their pre-E3 press conference with an update on Star Wars Battlefront. Although there wasn’t an actual gameplay trailer, EA created a nice behind-the-scenes featurette that featured both the DICE team actively working on the game as well as early in-engine footage.
In-engine footage shown at E3 2014
I have to say that the in-engine footage looked far better than any of the polished Star Wars Battlefront games that I’ve played.
EA also showed the DICE team traveling to the Star Wars set locations used for the movies and playing with models built by Lucas Arts way back in the beginning days of the Star Wars franchise. DICE and EA are sparing no expense to make sure that this game is foremost successful and true to the series. Even though the featurette wasn’t much, it was more than we got last year at E3.
It should be noted that this game is still very much in active production and is still being worked on by DICE. That being said, EA did not specify a release date but rather a “see more in Spring 2015.” Hopefully, this game won’t go through massive delays but the most likely case is that EA is conspiring with Disney to release the game around the same time as the new Star Wars movie.
As a long-time fan of the series I have high expectations for this game. Hopefully, EA can deliver.
