When it was first announced that DICE was handling developing of the new Star Wars Battlefront, the initial thought was Battlefield with a Star Wars reskin.
Following last week's official reveal of the game, DICE Senior Producer Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir has come out to talk what makes Battlefront different from DICE's past multiplayer experiences.
"DICE is bringing, of course, many years of creating first-person multiplayer games, and that is an incredibly big part of the DNA of the studio. I think there are lots of elements from DICE games that you will recognize that have to do with quality of execution, depth of gameplay, and engaging experiences," Ingvarsdottir told Microsoft.
"However, we are rebooting Battlefront and making it our own. It's important to us that people feel like we are bringing them a fresh experience, and that they don’t immediately feel like “Oh, they have just taken Battlefield and put a Star Wars game on it.” I would say we have a good mix of people to be able to do that… to be able to approach it and look at it with fresh eyes and think about how we designed it from the ground up to be this franchise, with its own type of DNA and its own identity. So while we have this heritage of Battlefield, we have approached Battlefront from the get-go from the perspective of creating a fresh, new take."
That being said, Battlefront will be powered by Frostbite, the graphics engine used for the Battlefield games. Battlefront, of course, will run on the latest edition of it, according to Ingvarsdottir.
"Frostbite, coupled with the technology, like the photogrammetry that we use to capture both the environments and the assets, as well as the physically-based rendering capabilities that have been added to the engine… it really gives us the ability to create these very authentic, immersive environments and assets," Ingvarsdottir, adding that players will be able to see "the leap in capabilities of the hardware – as well as what the engine can really do, given that increased power."
While Ingvarsdottir couldn't say in detail if we can expect the same dynamic destruction effects experienced in Battlefield, I think just bringing the environments of Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, and Sullust to life with plenty of detail will be exciting enough. With months remaining until the game's release, there's still plenty of time for EA to show off what makes Battlefront different from anything you've played before; guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Star Wars Battlefront will release on November 17, 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. (November 19 in Europe). Its launch will coincide with the December 18th release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the latest film in the core Star Wars film saga.
