Rumour – The Force Awakens in Star Wars Battlefront

I’m kind of excited for a decent Star Wars multiplayer game again. A couple of years back, my favourite such game to go online with was Jedi Outcast, a Quake 3 Arena powered deathmatch that combined the Force with laser, lightsabers and thermal grenades. It was of course, absolutely sublime to play. What was also just as damn good, especially on console, was Star Wars Battlefront. Even bigger, and packed with tons of players, the game was pure anarchy. A new Star Wars Battlefront is on the way, and it sounds like it might just be the biggest Star Wars game ever made.

That’s according to MakingStarWars.net via NeoGAF, who claim that EA and DICE’s Battlefront game will take place across the original trilogy, prequel movies and the latest sequel, The Force Awakens. Take it with a punch of salt (I hate salt, that’s not a typo), but here’s a list of of points from the apparent leak, which reveals that the old trilogy of Star Wars will form the backbone for this game:

The story of Star Wars: Battlefront’s campaign will span pretty much the entire Star Wars saga.

Star Wars Battlefront will feature segments in which you play as both the good guys (Old Republic, Rebellion and Republic) and bad guys (Separatists and the Empire). It was specifically stated that there will be a small portion of prequel trilogy content. You will participate in a couple of battles from the

Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the space battle above Corsucant from the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.

The majority of the campaign will take place during the original trilogy era. All of the battles and settings that you would expect to be there will be playable. It was said that the campaign itself is pretty long when compared to other first person shooters.

There will be some segments of the campaign which take place between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. There won’t be a lot because in their words “Lucasfilm has a lot of plans for that era.”

The last section of the campaign takes place before and during the opening segments of The Force Awakens. Don’t expect anything too revealing, because the game is expected to ship about a month before the movie releases.

For both the Republic (that’s what the good guys are being called in the production here) and Empire sections you will be playing characters that actually appear in The Force Awakens.

EA/DICE was allowed into Pinewood Studios for a few days to scan and capture props, sets, etc for recreation in the game.

At one point either during either the portion between episodes 6 and 7 or the portion from the beginning of The Force Awakens a character with the last name Tarkin appears.

The scale of the multiplayer is going to be absolutely massive with up 64 players participating on each side (note: actually meant 64 total, see update at bottom).

Space to land battles are absolutely happening, but will only be available in certain game modes.

There will be a “hero” system in place, where as you play you accumulate points that you can eventually cash in to play as a “hero” character. These characters are extremely powerful and have abilities that are not available to the normal characters that you play for most of the matches. The system is

constantly in flux, but as it is now, pretty much everyone have a chance to play as a hero at least once per match.

The Downloadable Content plan for the game is “extremely aggressive”. Expect up to five DLC packs for the game, with the first coming out before the end of 2015. Each pack will be themed, with the first two or three being exclusively based around content from The Force Awakens.

The game will ship with several The Force Awakens characters already, but some won’t be added until DLC. Specifically all of the characters in the trailers will be available at launch, as will new versions of the X-wing an TIE fighter.

Tons of new ships and vehicles.

The contents of each DLC will contain at least three new maps, new hero characters, and new vehicles/ships.

I saw a character model for the new Stormtroopers, the model for the new X-wings, and some random models of guns, grenades, and other things like that. However, the most interesting thing was a picture of a screen from one of the employee databases.
It was as a checklist that the department heads can go through to see whats been complete, whats been bug tested, etc. It was basically just a black screen with lines and lines of text posts, with comments and suggestions under each post. What was most interesting about this is what was listed. This particular screen I saw was for a listing of maps for the multiplayer mode. There was a lot of stuff that you’d expect to see in a game like this like:

• Hoth: EP5
• Endor: EP6
• Alderaan
• Corscucant
• Yavin: EP4

Like I said, nothing major. EXCEPT for this listing that I saw

• Tatooine: EP1
• Tatooine; EP4
• Tatooine: EP7

Now, I know that’s not concrete evidence that the desert planet from The Force Awakens is Tatooine, but I thought it was interesting because I know there was been some debate about that subject. That is a lot to take in and if the information is accurate, it sounds like a really great experience for Star Wars fans and the links to the new movie sounds pretty good considering how paltry it could be.

That’s a lot of content. A ludicrous amount to be precise. And even if the new Battlefront does feature all of it, I can easily see half of that content being locked away behind a season pass. Truly the Season Pass is now the ultimate power in this universe. What do you think? Bantha poodoo rumours, or is the Force strong here?

Last Updated: February 12, 2015