EA has “heard the feedback” for Battlefront; look to improve with sequel
More and more small tidbits keep arriving for Battlefront 2.
This time the new information came via EA’s Vice President of Investor Relations, Chris Evenden. Speaking at the Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Evenden touched on some criticism regarding the current Battlefront.
“We heard the feedback,” he said. “We obviously had a very successful game last time. There were some comments around depth and single-player campaigns. So we were aware of that feedback as we developed the new game.”
However, Evenden played coy on how exactly EA/DICE/Motive Studios have improved upon those criticisms for the next game.
“I like it when our marketing department announces new features in our products because if they do a good job marketing products and they sell loads of copies, then my job is really easy,” he said. “I just sit here and tell you about how many millions of copies are sold. So I don’t want to talk about specific features that’ll be in the new Star Wars game […] I wouldn’t want to announce how exactly we acted on that [feedback].”
Possible concept art from Motive Studios for Battlefront 2.
These comments from Evenden come after Battlefront producer Paul Keslin recently spoke with Eurogamer about next year’s sequel. In that interview, Keslin provided some insight on how Motive, which is a newcomer to the Battlefront franchise, fits within the brand’s mold.
“That’s a lot of what we’ve talked about in terms of DICE’s identity and how we approach games,” Keslin said about how single-player content relates to DICE’s role within Battlefront. “We’re partnering up with some folks from Motive – they have their own take on how things are – but we have a very close relationship with them, and we want everything to feel like a coherent experience. We don’t want it where single player isn’t that great but multiplayer has this great thing and isn’t connected.”
Officially, Motive has only been announced to be “building out a significant new addition to the game”, although EA has yet to say what exactly that significant addition is. Reading between the lines of both Evenden and Keslin’s comments certainly lends credence to the idea that the Montreal-based studio is working on beefing up Battlefront’s single-player offerings.
Possible Battlefront 2 concept art from Motive Studios.
We’ll have to wait to learn just what those single-player offerings might be, but we probably won’t have to wait long. EA’s chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen recently stated that the game will likely launch in late-2017, but a specific release date has yet to be announced.
Not much else is known about the sequel, but Jorgensen has provided some clues over the past year.
First, he said that the game will feature “bigger and better worlds” and utilize content from “the new movies”. Jorgensen then later iterated on this topic by saying:
The other thing is that we were really working with the old canvas of Star Wars, the old trilogy. We weren’t using any of the new materials that came out of the movie last year because our game actually came out slightly before the movie. Next year, we’ll have the opportunity to start to leverage more of that content from the new movies. We think that’ll even make the opportunity much larger.
Jorgensen has also promised that the sequel will be “a much bigger, a much more exciting Battlefront” although he failed to say precisely how EA will deliver on that promise.
All told, I think these statements bolster the idea that Battlefront 2 will feature a single-player campaign. Regardless, it will definitely be interesting to see how the next year unfolds for those interested in Battlefront!
(H/T GameSpot)
(Top image taken in-game. Other images source.)
