After going on a hiatus due to a developer shutdown and franchise uncertainty, the “Star Wars Battlefront” series is back. Produced by respected studio DICE and published by Electronic Arts, the game is a tour de force of graphical and audio engineering, and it blends its stunning spectacle with fun and engaging gameplay. Still, the game is not without flaws: it possesses a few mechanics that disrupt the immersive experience, as well as a limited quantity of content.
It seems “Battlefront” was designed to appeal largely to “Star Wars” fans. In many ways, the game can be seen as a “Star Wars” simulator, one that allows players to fulfill their wildest fantasies, which DICE successfully incorporates into the core design of the game.
DICE artfully simulates the “Star Wars” universe in the graphical and audio design of the game. Utilizing a technology called photogrammetry, which allows for high-resolution images to be scanned directly into the engine of the game, studio artists and engineers travelled to actual filming locations and gained access to items used in the movies. Clearly, the audio design was handled with the same level of care, because the sound effects and musical score appear to be ripped from the films as well. Ultimately, this high level of attention to detail has yielded one of the most aesthetically impressive games in the history of the industry, a feat deserving of great praise.
The template for gameplay itself is not as clean cut as that for audio and visual design, yet “Battlefront” manages to make gameplay exciting. A host of weapons and devices are available to the player and can be unlocked by gaining experience points. The game can be played from both first-person and third-person perspectives, and a variety of classic vehicles are available to control. Also, the player can assume the role of a wealth of protagonists and antagonists from the film franchise, including Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. However, accessing such things — vehicles, special weapons, hero characters — requires players to merely stumble upon glowing tokens in the field of battle, and this can break the immersion of the overall experience. This function causes quick shifts in perspective and is responsible for the inability to customize one’s personal adventures in certain ways.
Fortunately, the game’s maps are of high quality and are capable of hosting some truly epic fights. However, while each environment is uniquely distinct from its counterparts and the game is not severely lacking in content, “Battlefront” is sometimes scarce in terms of maps. With detailed plans for expensive future downloadable content (DLC), one must wonder if Electronic Arts is merely compensating for the higher production costs inherent in modern game development, or if it is using the incredible demand for “Star Wars” content of any kind in order to hold DLC for ransom.
It may seem uneducated to state “Star Wars Battlefront” looks and feels just like a “Star Wars” movie, but that is certainly the most accurate way to describe it. With groundbreaking and faithful aesthetic design and engaging gameplay, the game overpowers its flaws and realizes the dream of recreating a galaxy far, far away.
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