Battlefront: EA/DICE talk feedback & server woes, plus Dennis Brannvall on the Death Star DLC
While Battlefront’s Death Star included new features in last week’s launch, it also bought some issues.
The community manager for Battlefront, Mat Everett, recently responded on the game’s official forums to the community’s feedback on the update, saying, “Thanks for the continued feedback, I will be working to outline the full list of items our team is looking into in the coming days, but keep the feedback coming.”
To give your thoughts on the Death Star update, head on over to the feedback thread on the official forums.
There have also been reported issues with servers booting players since last week’s update.
“We’ve been looking into the issue and thus far haven’t see anything jump out at us as a clear cause,” wrote producer Paul Keslin on Battlefront’s forums. “Early tests with the server patch looked to have some improvement when we tried them internally but that didn’t carry over into the live environment as much as we had hoped.”
He added: “We’ve been able to narrow it down to the big game modes – more specifically Supremacy. Initial reports weren’t clear so we were looking everywhere. The last few days have been helpful. We’re still digging. We appreciate your patience and hope to have more info soon.”
In other news, Battlefront’s lead designer Dennis Brannvall recently went on the Battlefront Podcast to discuss the Death Star DLC, as well as Battlefront in general. I recommend listening to the 28-minute podcast embedded below (or by going to Battlefront Podcast’s SoundCloud page), but I figured I’d share a couple of the highlights and my thoughts on what Brannvall said.
On inspiration from Star Wars TV shows:
I actually find myself looking the TV shows for inspiration far more often than the films at this point.
We keep piecing little things—weapons, Star Cards, things like that—from [Rebels]. […] I love that TV show so much; I’m a huge fan.
I think this is great to hear. I really enjoy both the Clone Wars and Rebels. They also do excellent jobs at expanded the lore in Star Wars. Rebels has definitely got some love in the game (and it’s about to get some more), so hopefully they can expand upon the TV shows both in this Battlefront and the next one.
Regarding crafting a Star Wars world for fans:
As Star Wars fans you don’t want excuses, you want to see results. That can be a little bit disheartening. You can’t argue against their feedback sometimes: “No that would’ve been awesome, we can’t build that yet. We don’t have the technology.” […] We’re cramming out every single bit of the hardware. Sometimes I feel like we’re pushing the hardware too much to the point where maybe some slow-running PCs might have trouble running this game now. If we want to stick to that quality, it can be really tricky to do all the things that a less graphically challenged game would have an easier time accomplishing.
Star Wars fans are a passionate bunch, so it must be difficult any time DICE lets them down. However, technological hurdles aren’t too shocking, especially because Battlefront already pushes the graphical boundaries.
Comparing Battlefront’s Death Star to the battle station in the movies:
Some of the locales [you see] as you run through the Death Star are sort of like “The Greatest Hits of the Death Star”. You move from one iconic room to another iconic room to a third iconic room. When we spoke to LucasFilm, they were like, “Yeah, isn’t necessarily how the Death Star would be.” But it is a video game and it’s more important for us that you guys actually hit all those cool scenes rather than building as the blueprint of the Death Star would look like. If that was the case, you’d be looking at so many dark, boring corridors. We just wanted to get all the rooms in!
Not too surprising, but interesting nonetheless. I’ve always figured that Battlefront’s goal is to evoke similar feelings to moments in the film—and I think it does that very well.
On including both Chewbacca and Bossk:
[Chewbacca and Bossk] actually go hand in hand quite well, I feel. Especially since Bossk, and Trandoshans in general, are known as Wookie hunters. We always felt like when we were able to bring Chewie in, then we should definitely bring Bossk along with him. That was always the plan.
I’m really happy to see them include both Chewbacca and Bossk. While Bossk was a background character in Empire Strikes Back, I really enjoyed his appearance on The Clone Wars TV show.
Getting Chewbacca’s hair just right:
Chewie, from an art standpoint, took a long time to get him looking right. Our artists will never be happy. […] They worked hard day and night to get him to look as good as possible. It’s super challenging to make a character who’s completely covered in fur and make him look and feel and behave naturally in a video game. That was a challenge. The artists would have loved to continue working on the hair shaders forever.
Ultimately, I’m okay with how Chewbacca turned out. After the trailer, there was some outlash at how Chewie looked. However, similar to Brannvall’s point earlier about technological limits, DICE got Chewbacca looking the best they could with the technology they have available.
Regarding the creation process of Chewbacca’s mechanics:
Chewbacca was fun. We tried out a bunch of different concepts with him, trying to find that key component, the theme of Chewbacca. We’re always trying to find a theme of each hero, a gameplay theme that we rally around.
We started out having him be very ferral, with roars and smashes. While that was cool, we were like, ‘[…] he feels more like a monster than Chewbacca.’ So then we tried out having him be more of a mechanic or engineer, like when he fixes up C-3PO and just has that knack for engineering work. But that made him feel very stationary, almost like Nien Nunb in some cases.
So eventually we were like, “Okay, let’s settle on the bowcaster.” That’s the most iconic thing from a gameplay mechanic’s perspective of Chewbacca. Then we made his trait around his bowcaster and gave him a special ability related to his bowcaster. We still kept those other components in some shape or form, but then we felt like, “Okay, now it actually feels like Chewie.” He’s lumbering around, he’s larger everyone, he’s slower than everyone, but he can take a lot of punishment and he has a very, very powerful bowcaster.
I found this very interesting. When they first announced Chewbacca, I immediately thought of his engineering skills. However, I’m still glad to see that they focused on his bowcaster, especially because it’s just an iconic weapon for the Wookie.
On creating Bossk:
For Bossk, it was a little bit easier. Especially since you don’t have as much emotional connection to him from the films. He didn’t have a huge part in the original trilogy, but he has been featured quite a lot in the comics and the TV show.
For him, it was more about capturing that feral, bounty hunter gameplay style, but at the same time, to pay homage to the legends that came before us by reintroducing the regenerating health upon killing enemies as a hero. So this feels like Trandoshan regeneration, but at the same time, its a throwback to the previous Battlefronts.
Bossk’s regenerative health definitely echoes Battlefront II’s hero health mechanic, so it’s neat to see this Battlefront respect that history. The heroes in the beta last October also had regenerative health, but that mechanic was ultimately cut from the final game.
Those are just a few snippets of what Brannvall talked about on the podcast. He also covered artwork and photogrammetry on the Death Star (and, apparently, the weapons in-game are hand-built 3D digital models, not scanned props!), plus some thoughts on Nien Nunb and Dengar. It’s definitely worth a listen to if you have a half-hour:
