EA DICE insists Star Wars Battlefront has longevity

Despite a truly impressive performance at this year's E3 trade fair, many fans and gamers are still voicing their concerns surrounding Star Wars Battlefront. Today, EA Dice has addressed fan fears and provided their very own take on the upcoming title, with speaking exclusively to The Guardian newspaper.

Since the announcement that EA Dice would be producing the latest Star Wars game, it has been suggested that gamers might see elements of the Battlefield gaming experience within the new title. However, Dice has insisted that deeper features associated with Battlefield such as squads, classes and highly customizable load-outs will not feature in the upcoming game.

“We have a strong legacy with Battlefield, but we did not want this to be a battlefield game – we wanted it to have a heart and soul of its own. We came at it from a very different angle. We know that the core audience of a game like this is different to the Battlefield audience. There’s a crossover, but Star Wars fans expect a Star Wars game, not a Battlefield game. We looked at what Star Wars stands for, rather than asking how can we tweak Battlefield to be something else.

“And, actually, we’ve received criticism both for not being enough like Battlefield and for being too much like Battlefield. We’ve had to accept the fact that people will be upset with us until they get to play it. And when people did play it at E3 almost all the negativity went away. We stayed true to what we believed in, and when people saw it, they got it, they agreed that this is a game on its own, it is not Battlefield, and they liked it" said EA Dice's general manager, Patrick Bach.

The Guardian pressed Patrick Bach specifically on game depth and longevity. They asked: "If the single-player component is just a series of co-op and multiplayer maps filled with AI opponents, isn’t it going to lack depth and longevity?"

With the emphasis clearly on variation, the game's general manager seemingly dismissed the suggestion that the game wouldn't keep gamers interested.

He said: "I don’t want to say, you just have to trust us, we need to prove it of course, but we’re using all the knowledge about depth and longevity that we’ve accumulated over years of making the Battlefield games. Also the missions we have in the game have more longevity than most single-player campaigns. They tend to have a length of between 6-10 hours and that’s it – most people don’t replay them, most don’t go through the secondary objectives, they run through the story and they’re done."

Bach explained that Star Wars Battlefront would be more "replayable" than other games that are driven on a narrative.

"In Battlefront, it’s very different, it has more to do with replayability than most narrative-driven single-player experiences. It gives you something else, something you may not be used to seeing. We have done a lot with this game that keeps it attractive for a longer period of time. There’s a lot of persistence work going into it – how you unlock things, how you explore new ways of playing, how you collect things and rank up, and also how you compare yourself with your friends. There are a lot of different ways to play the game. There’s a lot of variation" Bach told Guardian.

If you would like to read more of this interview, visit The Guardian's website by clicking here.

[The Guardian]