Here are some of Saturday’s biggest Battlefront II news highlights

We got a lot of Battlefront II news today.

As there’s so much to sort through, I thought I’d pick out some of my favorite highlights. I’m sure I’ll go into more depth over the next week or so on all the little things that have come out, but hopefully this acts as a basic guide to what we know about the upcoming game.

The game’s release date details

We finally got a release date for Battlefront II. There are actually three separate dates for its release:

• November 17 (worldwide release)
• November 14 (those who purchase the Elite Trooper Deluxe Edition)
• November 9 (EA and Origin Access members)

Additionally, the game is due to come out on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and EA’s Origin client on PC. PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio support hasn’t been announced at this time.

Development studio roles outlined

While Motive Studios was speculated to be crafting the campaign, today’s panel at Star Wars Celebration confirmed that fact. DICE’s focus is on the multiplayer aspect, while Criterion Games is tackling space battles.

DICE built EA’s first Battlefront mostly alone, although Criterion offered help on the speeder bike training mission and the PlayStation VR mission.

Campaign details shared

While clues dropped here and there earlier this week, Battlefront II’s campaign was confirmed to focus on the Empire’s elite soldiers of the Inferno Squad. This group is led by Commander Iden Versio (who’s played by Janina Gavankar from True Blood and Far Cry 4). According to EA the campaign is “an extraordinary odyssey of revenge, betrayal, and redemption”.

Throughout this campaign—which spans the 30 years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens—players will be able to play both on the ground and in space. Several missions will also include the ability to play as hero characters. Note that only Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren have been confirmed as playable so far.

The campaign is confirmed to be canon and will introduce a new planet to the Star Wars universe: Vardos, an Imperial loyalist planet.

Additionally, the novel about this squad was officially confirmed to tie-in with Battlefront. Taking place four years before the events of Battlefront II’s campaign, the novel will be called “Battlefront II: Inferno Squad”. It’ll be available on July 25.

Prequel Era planet teases

While certain environments have been confirmed, like Mos Eisley on Tatooine or Endor, a couple of prequel era planets received teases. EA confirmed that the Naboo capital of Theed will be playable (it also featured in the leaked teaser trailer).

Additionally, Kamino, which is the home of the Republic’s clone army, has been featured in concept art (as shown above). I think this likely confirms the planet to be in the game (especially because the concept art is included on the Battlefront II page on the Xbox store), but we don’t have it in writing from EA just yet.

New hero teases

The teaser trailer from earlier this week confirmed Rey, Kylo Ren, Yoda and Darth Maul as playable heroes. However, new concept art of Kamino teased that we might also see Jango Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the game. Even if Jango and Obi-Wan aren’t playable on the ground, they may be available in aerial/space combat as the concept art features Jango’s Slave I and Obi-Wan’s Jedi Starfighter from Attack of the Clones.

The Millennium Falcon was also be present in the trailer, likely confirming Han Solo’s presence.

Finally, Luke Skywalker was confirmed and will be playable in the campaign. His X-wing will be pilotable in space battles.

Classes will make an appearance

Four classes were announced for the game:

• Officer
• Heavy
• Assault
• Specialist

These classes will will allow for upgradable abilities specific to each class. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that vehicles and heroes will share a similar progression system with classes. Heroes have also been promised to have more depth; I’ve frequently heard developers on the game say that the heroes will be more “physical” in Battlefront II.

Hopefully this system provides rich progression while increasing the player’s tactical role during actual gameplay.

Some of the new “epic abilities”

The pre-order page for the game’s Deluxe Edition teases “epic abilities” for the various classes and a couple of heroes. While the official site doesn’t share what those “epic abilities” are, the Deluxe Edition at GameStop does:

• Officer: Battle Command
• Heavy: Personal Shield
• Assault: Grenade
• Specialist: Laser Trip Mine
• Millennium Falcon: “[U]pdated sounds and look” modifier for The Last Jedi
• Rey: Mind control and ability to create confusion
• Kylo Ren: Force freeze and force pull

By the look of things, abilities will replace Star and Charge Cards from EA’s first Battlefront. Several of the ones reveled above actually share counterparts from the last game (like the Personal Shield and the Laser Trip Mine). What’s not quite clear yet is if there are other abilities that aren’t “epic”. However, I assume we’ll find out more in time.

Split-screen co-op to return

While EA’s first Battlefront lacked offline depth, it still provided an enjoyable co-op experience. Battlefront II will continue that trend by offering a local cooperative offline mode.

However, EA has been keeping rather quiet on the split-screen details. You’ll only be able to play split-screen on consoles and not PC, but we don’t know yet if this mode will be available to play alone on all three platforms. Additionally, we don’t know precisely what this offline option is. It could be a more robust form of Skirmish, and allow offline play against bots throughout all multiplayer modes and maps. Or it could instead be a sort of survival mode.

Here’s what we do know about co-op: You’ll be able to “[e]arn rewards, customize troopers and heroes, then take your skills and upgrades to the online battleground.” This co-op mode will also be “against AI foes in skirmishes that span the cinematic eras, and engage enemies in entirely new modes.” Beyond that, any speculation’s fair game for now.

No more token pickups

This comes from the game’s creative director Bernd Diemer by way of the PlayStation blog. The PS blog post reveals that “instead of collecting a power-up [for heroes], players can earn a resource and choose when to spend it.”

IGN further confirmed that this system will similarly work for vehicles: While the developers “won’t delve deep into exactly how the system will work, we’re told that both heroes and vehicles will now work on what the team calls ‘a resource-based system’.”

The goal behind this system is to make heroes more common on the battlefield. Via the same IGN article: “[T]he devs openly admit that they want more heroes on the field at once, but that comes at the cost of making them easier to dispatch for regular troopers.”

No season pass?

The confirmation of no season pass for Battlefront II is still a little iffy. However, according to Mashable, Battlefront II won’t continue with the season pass model the 2015 edition used. This again comes from Diemer, who said:

We don’t have a season pass.

We decided on that, and it’s one of those difficult decisions because it has so many implications all around. When we looked at the way Battlefront had evolved over its lifetime, with the DLC and everything, we decided, ‘You know what? For this type of game, season passes are not the best thing. We need to [take it apart] and come up with something better.

We don’t want to segment our community. I cannot talk about the specifics of this, but we have something different in mind that will allow you to play longer, be [more] invested in the game without having a fragmented community.

However, EA later sent these clarifying remarks to Mashable:

While we’re not ready to confirm any live service plans just yet, what we can say is this we heard the feedback from our Battlefront community loud and clear. We know they want more depth, more progression, and more content. So we’re focused on delivering that in every dimension of Star Wars Battlefront II. We’ll have more to share about our plans soon.

Personally, I expect that we won’t see a season pass in Battlefront II. Instead, I could see the game utilizing micro-transactions to support post-launch content. Plenty of games use this model successfully—such as Overwatch—to help fund the creation of content after a game’s launch. This helps minimize community split while allowing developers to continue crafting new content for players.

One thing I do want to add is that it really seems like EA is listening to the community. Obviously the upcoming game won’t please everyone, but a lot of what we found out today does an excellent job at addressing numerous community qualms about EA’s first Battlefront.

Did I miss anything? There’s an awful lot of content to go over, so hopefully I can fill in gaps in upcoming articles. If there’s something you’d like covered, let me know in the comments below, or ping SWGO on Facebook or Twitter.