If you’ve been keeping tabs on Star Wars Battlfront news, then there’s a good chance that you already know that the game is being made by DICE — the developers behind the highly successful Battlefield franchise.
In saying that, some people have expressed concern that Battlefront will be nothing more than a re-skin of Battlefield, but with a Star Wars theme. However, this isn’t the case according to DICE Producer Jesper Nielsen who goes by the name of “TheBikingViking” over on Reddit.
Responding to fans on Reddit over this re-skin concern, Nielsen assured fans that while the two might share some similarities, it will play quite differently from each other. In the same statement, Nielsen addresses a concern from a gamer who feels he got “robbed” by buying Battlefield Hardline.
I simply don’t get the Battlefield re-skin comment; from what we’ve shown, in what way does it look like Battlefield? Are you seeing tanks, lots of destruction, etc?
This will not feel like or play like Battlefield. That’s never been our intention.
It’s fine you’re disappointed. Ok, so from what you’ve heard and seen, the game is not what you want. I can’t do anything now to change your mind on that. We’ll see if you change your mind once the game is out.
Sorry if you feel robbed on Hardline, but… why did you buy it (and buy Premium?) if you felt like it was a re-skin? Also, you do know that if you buy it on PC/Origin, we have the “Great Games Guarantee”, so you can get a full refund if you’re not happy with the game?
We don’t want you to feel robbed either. We don’t want your money if you don’t want our game. So if you don’t want our game, don’t buy it!
Nielsen also commented on how most shooters are relatively the same, and tells people to not jump to conclusions as to stuff not revealed just yet.
Look, I agree. To some extent, all shooters are similar. Heck, to some extent, all games are similar. To my mom, all games are probably more or less the same, right? So it always depends on the person looking at it. I’m pretty sure a hardcore CS player would say the differences between CS and Battlefield or Halo or COD are like day and night. It’s always about the lens you use, how far you zoom in. To some people, the details matter less – to others they matter more.
No matter what, these tiny details can still have a big impact on the game and be the recipe for success. This is what great game design is really about. There’s been tons of Mario clones or CS clones, etc., but only few games get it right, even though they on the surface look the same. The details in the execution matters – there can be no doubt about that (otherwise, that’s naive).
As for what is or isn’t revealed yet; don’t jump to conclusions. Any marketing campaign wants to spread out the information flow up until game release to keep excitement strong. If we told everything about the game now and showed everything, most people would forget about it a few weeks from now.
In another Reddit conversation, Nielsen talks about space battles and why their version doesn’t feature it…at least not yet. While space battles won’t be included in the game at launch, Nielsen admits that it has some “exciting prospects.”
We have and are still discussing space every now and again. We know it has some very exciting prospects. So of course that would be fun to explore! When and if that will happen is impossible for me to say, but no, we’re not saying that space battles are evil and that we will never, ever touch them with a ten-foot pole.
Finally, Nielsen offered a brief explanation as to why the AT-AT vehicles/bots you see in the trailer won’t be be player-manned.
There’s a lot of things going into a decision like this. Again, this wasn’t my decision and I wasn’t involved in it, so I don’t want to make statements, but rest assured that these things are often not obvious yes/no decisions, but have a lot of pros and cons and have included lots of experimentation.
Let’s hope actual gameplay footage is revealed soon, so we’ll have less questions to ask, and more facts to digest.
Star Wars Battlefront will be out on November 17 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
