Star Wars Battlefront Isn't Battlefield Game, DICE Says

Ever since it was announced that DICE would be in charge of developing Star Wars: Battlefront and that the game would be running on the very prestigious Frostbite 3 game engine, many fans instantly began questioning if that meant that Star Wars: Battlefront would turn into Star Wars: Battlefield. Well, DICE assures gamers that the two will stay very separate.

In an interview with The Guardian, DICE's general manager Patrick Bach addressed the concerns about the Battlefield comparisons, explaining...

We have a strong legacy with Battlefield, but we did not want this to be a battlefield game – we wanted it to have a heart and soul of its own. We came at it from a very different angle. We know that the core audience of a game like this is different to the Battlefield audience. There’s a crossover, but Star Wars fans expect a Star Wars game, not a Battlefield game. We looked at what Star Wars stands for, rather than asking how can we tweak Battlefield to be something else.

If you were able to see the game in action, it's actually very far removed from the gameplay experience offered by Battlefield. In fact, you can check out the E3 gameplay snippets below.

While yes, there are similarities between both games insofar that there is a first-person option, vehicles and a two-sided conflict in a massive map, the similarities tend to end there.

DICE actually appears to have channeled more of Pandemic's approach to the gameplay as opposed to their own FPS-style featured in the recent Battlefield outings. For instance, there is no suppression indicators, no iron-sights, no unlockable weapon attachments and no modern military weapon handling.

Interestingly enough, Bach admits that the team has been dealing with criticisms from both sides of the camp who feel the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront is too much and not enough like Battlefield....

[...] we’ve received criticism both for not being enough like Battlefield and for being too much like Battlefield. We’ve had to accept the fact that people will be upset with us until they get to play it. And when people did play it at E3 almost all the negativity went away. We stayed true to what we believed in, and when people saw it, they got it, they agreed that this is a game on its own, it is not Battlefield, and they liked it.

I think Star Wars: Battlefront will always have a tug-o-war quality about it in the community because a decade ago many gamers loved Battlefront 2 but Battlefield wasn't quite as big back then. Gamers now are more familiar with Battlefield than Battlefront and there will be a lot of new-school gamers pining for the newer qualities and gameplay mechanics DICE has implemented into their military war series since Battlefield 3.

Thankfully, Bach and the rest of the DICE crew understand that they can't win them all and will just have to roll with the punches. My biggest issue is mostly my unsubstantiated fear that the game will be loaded with DLC from top to bottom and a lot of cool features from Battlefront 2 will return in the form of DLC.

Star Wars: Battlefront will launch this December for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.