Battlefront won’t let you aim down the sights

It’s the running joke of the Star Wars franchise, but come later this year you too will know how it feels to be an inaccurate, inadequate Stormtrooper. DICE’s Battlefront reboot is checking a lot of the right boxes (and missing a few), but the inclusion of a first-person view has had many worried about how combat will work in the multiplayer shooter. Fear not recruits, because it’s not changing at all.

Battlefront will not feature the grace of modern first-person shooters, allowing you to only shoot from the hip or not at all. There’s going to be no aiming down the sights with most weapons in the online shooter, unless said weapon features a long range scope. For the most part though, it’s traditional battlefront warfare as you remember it, and it’s one of the things DICE really wanted to get right.

Executive producer Patrick Bach confirmed that iron sights are non existent in Battlefront – with the game lending elements from a game far, far away.

“There are no ironsights in Star Wars, on the ordinary blasters. You have scopes on some rifles, but there are no ironsights.”

That’s exactly like every other Battlefront game from the past, which lends some credence to DICE’s claims that this isn’t merely a Battlefield skinning job. It’s evident that they truly want to preserve the feeling that fans have been craving for years – which is something reboots tend to toss aside at the first chance.

“A lot of the things you saw in the game have nothing to do with anything we’ve done before. Some features of course resemble [our other shooters], because we want to make the best possible shooter, but in general we’ve tried to do something completely unique.”

I like that approach, but I’m still a bit bummed that some elements from earlier titles are still missing. Space battles would’ve been great – even if completely departed from combat taking place on the ground. Battlefront will feature vehicles (and heroes) for you to command, but don’t expect to break the atmosphere this time around.

Still, after all these years of waiting, I’m pretty much on-board with what DICE is doing with the franchise. Hopefully we’ll get to see a lot more at E3 next month.

Last Updated: May 7, 2015