Producer clarifies comments about a campaign and Battlefront 2

A campaign and Battlefront are the perfect match.

That perfect match, however, has yet to be confirmed despite some rumor swirling about.

The confusion on this topic was clarified earlier today by Battlefront producer Paul Keslin via Twitter:

@SWBFUpdates @IGN Yeah – I didn't confirm anything. Said we are listening/learning and we have a partner. Nothing new.

— Paul Keslin (@TheVestalViking) December 9, 2016

That exchange on Twitter was in response to a now-removed article by IGN titled “DICE confirms that Star Wars Battlefront 2 will have a single-player campaign”. That article was written after Eurogamer published an interview with Keslin yesterday.

In yesterday’s article, Eurogamer claimed that a campaign has “been locked in for Battlefront 2”, despite no one at EA/DICE/Motive Studios (including Keslin) confirming the existence of such a campaign. It is possible that Keslin said something to the journalist that didn’t get quoted in the article. Considering Keslin’s tweet above, however, seems to indicate that wasn’t the case.

Work in-progress image of Battlefront 2 from Motive Studios.

Officially, there have only been hints that Battlefront 2 will indeed receive a more substantial single-player portion. However, these are merely clues that something is in the works, not confirmation.

These clues so far are:

• Motive Studios, the newcomer to the franchise, is “building out a significant new addition to the game.”
• At EA Play in June, Motive’s general manager Jade Raymond said: “Next year, you’re going to get a new installment of Star Wars Battlefront. Led by DICE in collaboration with Motive, we’re building on the foundation of the first game. We’re listening to our players and adding more of what you want, including content from the new movies.”
• Motive’s game director Mark Thompson expanded on the studio’s role in EA Star War’s “Look Ahead” trailer: “There’s no point in making something in the Star Wars IP if you’re just going to do what’s been done before.”
• In July, Battlefront’s game director Niklas Fegraeus told PC Gamer: “Well, we don’t have anything on the next Battlefront to share […] Obviously, though, with everything you do, there are learnings. We’ve done a lot of stuff with Skirmish mode, with expansion packs, and a bunch of other things, and all of the stuff we’ve learned there we’ll of course bring with us going into the next one.”
• More recently, Keslin (in the linked-above Eurogamer article) said: “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.”
• Finally, EA’s vice president of investor relations, Chris Evenden, said earlier this week: “There were some comments around depth and single-player campaigns. So we were aware of that feedback as we developed the new game.”

All these comments seem to point towards some sort of boosted single-player content in the sequel. But again, most of these statements are rather vague. This means we don’t know yet if there will actually be an improved single-player offering or if a campaign will indeed be included.

Personally, I do think Motive is working on a campaign and I certainly hope EA/DICE/Motive expand Battlefront’s Skirmish mode for the sequel. Of course, that’s just me speculating and conjecturing beyond the facts posted above.

Do you think Battlefront 2 will have an improved single-player portion? Let us know down in the comments, or head on over to Twitter or Facebook to share your thoughts.

(Top image taken in-game. Second image source.)