You remember that scene in Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke Skywalker flew in with a squadron of Rebels and blew up the Death Star? Well, hold onto that memory fondly, because it looks like you won’t be reliving it in Star Wars: Battlefront.
According to a recent post over on the Battlefront reddit page, the Death Star won’t be making an appearance in the upcoming shooter from EA and DICE.
According to EA community manager/user Sledgehammer70, the iconic warship of the Empire is simply sitting this one out.
“We will not offer a Death Star-based map,” reads the post. “But stay tuned for details around the maps we will offer.”
The post goes on to clarify how vehicles will work in Battlefront, saying “all vehicles are obtained via power-ups across the battlefront. If you choose to use that power-up, you spawn into the battle inside that vehicle.”
Needless to say, some folks were a bit upset on both counts.
For starters, the Death Star is probably the most iconic location from the Star Wars trilogy, not to mention the landmark for one of the most epic battles in the original trilogy (that didn’t involve Ewoks.) To DICE’s credit, though, the team stated long ago that space battles were not planned content for this reboot of Battlefront, and that’s pretty much exactly what a Death Star showdown would have to be.
I sympathize with folks who are disappointed by this news, but I’m trying to look on the positive side. For starters, if Battlefront does well, I’m pretty sure EA and the dev crew will be giddy about the opportunity to make a sequel, and they should probably save some big locales for that next game. Secondly, this is an EA shooter we’re talking about, so we’ve got to assume that a year’s worth of DLC is coming down the pipeline. I wouldn’t be surprised if a space battles pack starring the Death Star is still in the cards for Battlefront.
As for the ability to load directly into vehicles, I’m not entirely sure what anyone’s gripe is. Vehicles are flying/stomping by constantly in the gameplay footage we’ve seen so far, and the ability to warp into one of them and just instantly take control makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, you’d end up with what you get in many vehicle-heavy war games like Battlefield, with some jerk hovering over the enemy base, blowing up vehicles left and right as they spawn.
More than anything, though, I think it’s important that we remember we still only know so much about what Battlefront will offer when it launches on Nov. 17, so fretting over what we’ve been told won’t be included in the final game seems a bit silly. If nothing else, Alpha tests start soon, so let’s wait and see what folks say after actually playing the game.
