Hey guys! It’s time for us to start our final preparations for E3 2017 in Los Angeles and as such, we thought it would be a cool idea to start up a new article and (possibly) video series for you all to enjoy our path to E3 2017. We then took it a step further, and decided to look at some of the games coming to E3 this year and highlight their path to E3 and our hopes for them beyond the largest gaming convention on the planet.
After E3 is over, we’ll post a few wrap-up articles as well, which we’re calling The Path from E3, which will follow the games previously highlighted as well as our journey with them once they finally release. Its an ambitious project, and we hope you welcome it with open arms as we have.
We first brought you The Path to E3: Destiny 2 and the response to the article has been great. So we figured why not kick this second edition off with another game that has a “2” in the title, Star Wars Battlefront 2.
The Star Wars Battlefront series got its start all the way back in 2004, when Pandemic Studios developed Star Wars Battlefront was released on the original Xbox, PS2, and PC. It was a smash hit, and brought the look and feel of the Battlefield series to consoles for the first time, albeit with a Star Wars flare. The game was so successful that a sequel, Star Wars Battlefront II, was announced and released just over a year later. While Star Wars Battlefront focused on ground combat by putting players in the shoes of their favorite characters, Battlefront II brought with it a brand-new space battle mode which opened only added to the success of the series. Characters and classes were fun, the maps were incredibly well designed, and all seemed like things were finally going well for the Star Wars video game world once more.
The success was short lived, as the third game in the series, Star Wars Battlefront III was canceled with little reason after being in development hell for several years. Some leaked footage has swarmed the internet in the years since its cancellation and the game looks incredible from what we can see. Its cancellation was a massive disturbance in the force, as if many fans cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Fast forward to E3 2013, EA has been given the exclusive publishing rights to Star Wars titles for 10 years and is hot off the success of yet another entry in the Battlefield series. It came as a bit of a surprise then, that EA and DICE announced Star Wars Battlefront for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. The trailers all looked wonderful and they showed off impressive feats of visual effects in a game, something we hadn’t seen in a Star Wars game in a long time. The teaser showed us a first-person view of the Battle of Hoth, which kept everyone on their toes and practically begging for more. E3 2014 saw little information about the game besides some development footage and a trailer showcasing the work being put into the game. In April 2015 fans finally got the news they’d waited almost 10 years to hear, the new Star Wars Battlefront would release November 17th, 2015, a month before the first new Star Wars film in a decade, Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Much to the ire of fans, EA and DICE made the decision not to include a single player campaign in Star Wars Battlefront, choosing instead to focus their development solely on multiplayer based content. When I previewed the game at E3 2015, I said that it will need a wealth of content to make up for the lack of the single player experience, and boy…was I right.
Upon launch on November 17th, 2015, Star Wars Battlefront was beautiful. It was not only the best-looking Star Wars title of all time, but the best-looking shooter of all time. It’s a shame then, that my exact worries about the game were confirmed after just a few hours of playing. A handful of maps, only one or two game modes that anyone bothered to play, and an overall feeling of “Well that was fun... now what?” lead to many fans being disappointed after years of buildup. Understandably so. This was supposed to be the Star Wars game we’d been dreaming about since Battlefront III was cancelled years before.
Looking back on the game in its current state, Star Wars Battlefront finally feels like a full retail title. It’s a shame that it took 6 expansions (4 paid, 2 free) and just over a year and a half of release to make it there. DICE heard the criticisms of fans and took them to heart, promising to do better in the inevitable sequel.
Star Wars Celebration 2017 in Orlando Florida brought the news we’d all been waiting for; Star Wars Battlefront 2 is happening and its bigger and better than anything they’ve done before. A wealth of information was thrown at us during a Battlefront 2 panel at the convention. We learned that the game will have an empire focused single player campaign that will span 30 years between Return of the Jedi and The Last Jedi. We also learned that the multiplayer will be bigger and new features like classes and character upgrades will make their way into the game. Multiplayer will allow fans to play as characters from any Star Wars film era from the prequels to the sequels. Oh yeah, and we got an amazing teaser trailer.
EA promised a public beta this summer across all platforms (PC, Xbox One, PS4) and also promised to reveal more at EA Play in Los Angeles. Very little is currently known about how the game will run on all platforms. We presume it will shoot for 1080P 60FPS on all platforms at a minimum, but nothing has been confirmed. EA has also revealed that Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of the titles they’re bringing to EA Play for hands on access this year and we cannot wait to bring you our impressions after our visit to EA Play in the coming weeks.
While the path to E3 2017 has not been the smoothest, Star Wars Battlefront II remains near the top of our list to check out. We’re hoping that they have learned from the fans and critics reactions to Star Wars Battlefront and that they are truly committed to making Battlefront 2 as incredible as it sounds. Give us a reason to play more than a few matches this time around, DICE! We’re all waiting on you. The ball is in your court. Here’s hoping the force is strong with you once more.