Nearly ten years after the series fell asleep Star Wars: Battlefront 2a new shooter set in the Star Wars universe game series is coming to PC, Xbox One and PS4 on November 17.
At the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, members of the DICE development team showed off a pre-alpha trailer for the Frostbite engine-powered game, which is simply called Star Wars: Battlefront. While the footage didn’t show much direct gameplay, the whole thing was reportedly rendered in real time on a PS4.
The in-game footage showed the team’s use of photogrammetry to render models directly from photographs of the actual models used in the films rather than 3D figures created entirely by digital artists. The development team said they made trips to shooting locations for the original Star Wars movies and material referenced from the Skywalker Ranch libraries to further enhance the authenticity of the source material. Skywalker Sound will provide the audio for the game.
In terms of gameplay, players can take part in story missions, alone or with a co-op partner, and online multiplayer shootouts with up to 40 people, all from a first or third person perspective. On-field power-ups let players transform into familiar characters such as Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Boba Fett. Vehicles such as speeder bikes, snowspeeders, X-wings, TIE Fighters, AT-ATs and even the Millennium Falcon will be controllable, but unfortunately those vehicles cannot be taken into space – this is a strictly planet based affair.
The new Front is set in the time of the original film trilogy, in familiar locations such as Hoth, Endor and Tatooine, as well as the newly explorable planet of Sullust (which is based on the Icelandic countryside). As a tie-in with the upcoming Power awakens movie, players will also have access to a free piece of DLC detailing the “Battle of Jakku,” which takes place decades before the events of the movie’s new trailer. Players who pre-order the game will get that DLC mission on December 1, while everyone else will get it on December 8.
The new Battlefield was originally announced at E3 2013 and was shown off in a bit more detail at last year’s show, but EA and developer DICE have been relatively quiet on the details of the game so far. In December, DICE said it was “not working on future projects,” including Front, until it fixed nagging server problems Battlefield 4.
Front is the first game in a previously announced ten-year deal that gives Electronic Arts exclusive rights for everyone Star Wars-based games.