In just over a weeks time Star Wars: Battlefront will be released for the PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4. Officially considered a reboot of the Battlefront series the game aims to bring iconic battles from the Star Wars movies to the latest generation of PC's and Consoles in glorious detail and definition, realising for many fans their dreams of being able to control rebels and stormtroopers and wage war in legendary locations such as Hoth an Endor. Yet the game, which builds upon the success of previous incarnations and similar titles such as Battleifield may have become something entirely different.
Star Wars: Battlefront is, like its predecessors, an "Open World" MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) shooting game, in which players compete against each other within a large, open battlefield. The size of the "levels" or "Maps" used encourages a variety of strategies and techniques including the use of vechular combat, such as AT-ST's and TIE Fighters. This style of game suits fans of the previous Battlefront games and older Star Wars games such as Rogue Squadron, as can be seen by the livestream of the games Beta, courtesy of MassiveG.
In 2013, when Disney acquired Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars universe two games in development by Lucasarts were cancelled; Star Wars: 1313 and Star Wars: First Assault. The former was to be an action adventure game focusing on Boba Fetts story between Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode IV: A New Hope, presumably continuing on to show the legendary bounty hunter leaving the Sarlacc pit. The latter however was intended to be a multiplayer arena based shooting game similar to games such as Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament and Halo's multiplayer.
Developed using the Unreal Engine, the game may not look as impressive as the new Battlefront, but compared to its aformentioned graphical contemparies and taking into account the game was developed to run on the Playstation 4 and Xbox 360 the game showed promise, both graphical and in terms of core mechanics, as can be seen in the video above. But with Disney developing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which will be released next month, developing a game to tie in with the movie that takes advantage of the current generation of consoles, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One and builds upon the success of the Battlefront series made more sense to all concerned.
However, Star Wars: First Assaults more claustrophobic arena based gameplay need not be resigned to the history books, as with Disney and Lucasfilm keen to release a Star Wars movie every year between now and 2020, and with EA granted an exclusive license to produce all Star Wars themed videogames for the immediate future it is possible that echoes of Star Wars: First Assault could be seen in a future videogame title, most likely one driven by a story driven campaign.
