Hope for the Battlefront
Michael Scott
Note: The majority of this article was written in 2017, but was held for several years because I forgot to publish it. Some of this information may be outdated. The developers of Battlefront II did eventually do things like adding the Destroyer Droid, and tons of other free, and very cool updates, but at the end of the day the base game is flawed in a way that is not likely to be fixable.
Additionally the language used in this post has not been edited and may contain typos and formatting errors. This exists purely for the sake of completion.
Star Wars Battlefront is great.
Conceptually, fighting in the armies that make up the “war” part of Star Wars is a stroke of genius and it was only a matter of time before such an idea was done. Pandemic, the creators of the phenomenal Destroy All Humans and the less interesting but still loved Mercenaries effectively ripped off Battlefield and brought it into the Star Wars universe.
But times have changed. Pandemic is dead and gone (RIP), as is Gamespy, the service that hosted the online battle for years. EA took a crack at the franchise in 2015 to coinside with the release of The Force Awakens. It sold well, but reviews were unkind. DICE’s new battlefront was a shell of what it had been. While map size had increased, sometimes dramatically, map variety shrunk. Classes were gone and in their place were a poor man’s create a character feature that gave each player three slots to attach perks, as this was still in the time when Call of Duty reigned supreme.
Battlefront II (DICE) released 2 years later. With a story mode, class system, and three eras of star wars conflict, not just one. And it has been about two years since then. Fans of the sequel, will tell you that those two years have been filled with free DLC, fan favorite characters, and new maps and modes. But having skipped it after being burned by the lack of content in the first game, I have to say I’m not impressed.
I purchased the game a few days ago for about $6 on sale and I still feel ripped off.
Before I begin, here’s what I have to say.
What the original Battlefront lacks in graphical detail it more than makes up for in sheer fun. It’s one of the best action games ever made.
Battlefront II is only a minor improvement on its predecessor, doing nearly as many things wrong as it corrects.
2. I don’t think it’s (entirely) EA’s fault.
3. And Battlefront is still conceptually amazing, and worth a third attempt.
Here are the things the original Battlefront (2015) had going for it. Let’s start positive.
Incredible production design. Ships, blasters, and environments all look and feel exactly like the movies.
20 on 20 multiplayer games are still relatively uncommon.
Vehicles have been largely fixed from Pandemic’s games.
Large variety of weapons
New planets not yet explored by Star Wars games (Jakku, Sullust)
Now I’ll be addressing each of these as we move forward, but before that we need to get down in the mud and talk about all of Battlefront’s shortcomings.
Dang this game was cool.
Removal of the class system severely weakens tactical play.
On-Team Spawning creates balance issues.
Lack of the standard “Domination” gameplay from the original makes many matches blur together.
No NPCs.
No Splitscreen Multiplayer.
No Story mode.
Vehicles have been reduced to power-ups.
Despite being easier to pilot, vehicles rarely serve a tactical function with the exception of the AT-ST.
There are no long-range/marksman weapons.
No Clone Wars content (maps, characters, units, etc)
Very limited planet selection: 4 at launch with 4 added post-launch compared to the original’s 10 and the sequel’s 15
No ship-to-ship conflict.
Hero units no longer have time limits and therefore tend to camp.
50% of content is locked behind paywalls, full retail price would be $90 instead of $60.
Can you believe this was one of the only 4-player splitscreen screenshots for BF2 I could find? That’s unacceptable.
From this list it’s pretty clear that there was room for improvement for DICE and EA’s new Battlefront II. By far the biggest demand of the community was for a greater variety of maps. While the maps provided were beautifully detailed, incredibly authentic, and mostly fun to play, the sheer lack of content was frustrating. Second to this was likely the demand for Clone Wars, and the Sequel time-lines to be brought into the game. Not only would this increase replayability, but it would allow for new characters and new locations to be included. Lastly, classes and of course, split-screen. Classes added roles to combat it made players feel as though they had a job, as opposed to the poorly defined characters that were just jet-packing all over the battlefield. Combined with the lack of long-range weapons, the fact that weapons/abilities had cooldowns, and that characters were not identifiable from range makes combat a chore at worst, and chaos at best.
So, how does DICE’s second take work out? Well, let’s see how the sequel stacks up against the original and the Pandemic games. Here are the positives.
Classes have returned, however Pilot/Engineer class has been removed.
Clone Wars era, and First Order era conflicts are now playable complete with unique maps and units.
Vehicles are now Point-Buy instead of power-ups, meaning their use on the battlefield is more consistent.
There is a Story Mode featuring a new protagonist.
Weapons are now class locked, a side-effect of the reintroduction of classes, meaning that weaponry and abilities are predictable making the outcome of ecounters less random.
All DLC (so far) has been free, though this was entirely due to the overwhelmingly negative reaction at the game’s launch.
There are a greater variety of vehicles and starships to pilot.
Jetpacks are much easier to control and much more tactically viable.
Dodge-rolling and dashing are now standard movement functions and are a better defensive option.
There are more planets (maps) at 15 including the DLC maps (however one of these is only available in special game types) though Endor, Hoth, and Tatooine appear to be reused assets.
However, despite these improvements the game still suffers. As I said above for nearly every improvement the game has also suffered an additive issue, usually this is due to the game’s improvements being half-measures instead of full fixes.
Hero Characters are unlocked by era means the effort put into ensuring the attention to detail is lost when Anakin Skywalker fights Darth Vader along side Rey. Or Han Solo fighting along the Clone army.
The game has suffered a distinct downgrade in graphical quality. All the maps and character models in battlefront 1 look significantly better. There are less pronounced and less frequent particle effects.
The Story mode suffers from poor controls, and follows a single character as opposed to an army, such as in Pandemic’s BFII. Meaning death results in instant game over.
The game is far buggier than it’s predecessor, I experienced multiple crashes. and clipping issues.
The “Out-of-Bounds” penalty is incredibly strict and somewhat fickle, tending to adjust its boundaries at random. It has habit of not letting the attacking team push objectives for up to 30-40 seconds after the previous objective has been cleared.
Many vehicles are tactically useless such as the AT-RT and the STAP.
Starfighters are again, generally useless as their weapons do not produce enough splash damage to reliably kill infantry, and they do not have airborne objectives to complete.
Certain maps have ludicrously long-sightlines with no cover making matches very snipe heavy, Crait is the worst offender.
Spawning on Teammates is still broken.
Several maps have objectives that are not intuitive in design. (Crait’s first objecive, Yavin 4’s first objective, Takodana’s final objective)
Point-Buy classes, such at Rocket Troopers, and Super Battledroids have limited unit counts meaning it’s possible to get locked out of a class simply because another player is using it.
The excision of the cosmetic paid DLC has left a significant hole in the unlocks, making the game feel even more empty than it already does.
Phase 1 and phase 2 clone troopers are not map locked. (more of an RP issue than a true gameplay one, but it does hurt the experience)
The first is bare bones, but it's fun nonetheless. It laid the ground work for what was to come. I remember years ago, before SWBF came out a friend and I stayed up until 3 in the morning replaying the Empire VS Rebels Endor level over and over and over. It was on one of those sony Jampack discs that came with a load of game demos. When it did finally come out, my other friend and I would spend hours taking turns fighting the droid army, or shooting rockets at Darth Vader so he'd fly off the level (you couldn't actually kill the hero characters but you could knock them off the level)
Battlefront II was a substantial upgrade. Newer units, more classes, more levels, and you could dogfight IN SPACE! Plus the heroes vs villains mode which while fun, was kind of a detractor in the long run.
Be Honest: Which one of these is a better advertisement for the game?
With Star Wars finally leaving the iron-grasp of EA, maybe we’ll get a chance to get some new and improved Star Wars action games. Maybe even a NEW new Battlefront. A man can only dream.
Note: The majority of this article was written in 2017, but was held for several years because I forgot to publish it. Some of this information may be outdated. The developers of Battlefront II did eventually do things like adding the Destroyer Droid, and tons of other free, and very cool updates, but at the end of the day the base game is flawed in a way that is not likely to be fixable.
pew pew pew