From Skrimish to space battles, here’s 5 Battlefront II tidbits you may have missed

There has been a ton revealed about Battlefront II this weekend.

With such a decent amount of info to sift through, I haven’t caught it all. With this in mind, I figured it would be neat to go over a few news bits I found interesting, but haven’t covered yet.

I plan on going further into my coverage once I get home and can use a computer that’s not a laptop (and also not be writing/researching stuff in the middle of an airport!). I’m hoping to share my gameplay thoughts, cover the BattlefrontUpdates livestream with Battlefront II design director Dennis Brannvall and also go into full breakdowns on classes, weapons, Star Cards, heroes and vehicles throughout the rest of the week. But for now, here’s five little tidbits to mull over:

Skirmish returns for offline action

Janina Gavankar, the voice actor behind Battlefront II campaign protagonist Iden Versio, revealed in yesterday’s livestream that Skirmish will return in order to satisfy players’ offline cravings. Skirmish was added into EA’s first Battlefront last July after the game received criticism for lacking in offline content.

Brannvall went into further details today saying, “Skirmish will have more ways of customizing your experience that you want to play; however, it will not be a full-on mirror of multiplayer.”

This is because the development team didn’t want to limit multiplayer gameplay in order to make it work with the game’s AI.

“At least not for launch—we’ll see—it doesn’t make sense to us that we need to limit the type of multiplayer experience that we want to create based on what we can get the AI to do,” he said. “There are things we can do to improve Skirmish in general [from the version in the last game] and not just by making it a full-on mirror of multiplayer […] We want to get something where this functions as good bridge between the campaign and then preparing for multiplayer.”

Brannvall further confirmed you will be able to bring your multiplayer customizations and Star Cards over to Skirmish and that the mode will primarily be for couch co-op.

Personally, it’s great news that Skirmish will return and be expanded upon for Battlefront II. I definitely like that it’ll be more customizable than the version we got last year. Hopefully—even though it won’t be a one-to-one recreation of multiplayer—the mode will ultimately offer a satisfying replay experience.

DICE remains undecided on cross-era heroes

As I wrote earlier, one of EA PLAY’s hot topics for Battlefront was the fact that Assault on Theed featured cross-era heroes. While this alarmed some people into thinking that the final game will act like this, DICE is ultimately undecided how they’ll handle cross-era heroes.

Per hero designer Guillaume Mroz:

We're not set on anything yet. It's an easy change to do, but the final decision has not been taken yet. For now we needed to show all eras

— Guillaume Mroz (@guillaume_mroz) June 11, 2017

Mroz’s tweet certainly seems to imply that the decision to include cross-heroes in EA PLAY’s Assault on Theed was more of a marketing choice. EA has previously stated that “some modes” will include cross-era heroes, but nothing specific for the game’s launch. I hope that cross-era heroes make their way into hero-specific modes (i.e. Heroes vs. Villains-type modes), but avoid the larger, more cinematic modes like Galactic Assault.

Space combat’s marquee mode is called Starfighter Assault

Little has been revealed about Battlefront II’s space combat, other than it’s being made by the folks over at Criteron Games in the U.K. (Battlefront VR, the Burnout racing series). However, the multiplayer page on the official Battlefront II website teases “Starfighter Assault” mode.

Criterion’s general manager Matt Webster recently discussed the revamped space combat system with Polygon:

The camera is probably responsible for more than half of the feel. It’s about how the camera moves around the ship. This is something that is our bread and butter. It just so happens that it also manifests itself around a car.

[…]

It’s not just roll rates, pitch rates and this sort of thing in the simulation part. It’s actually how the camera feels that helps derive the pleasure of that experience.

Webster also teased that starfighters will appear larger on-screen when in third-person (compared to the 2015 Battlefront). However, if first-person is more your thing, that will continue to be an option.

The article further noted that we’ll find out more about space combat at this year’s Gamescom. The German gaming conference is set for August 22 to 26, so mark your calendars!

Microtransactions are promised to not be pay-to-win

EA revealed yesterday that microtransactions will help pay for Battlefront II’s free post-launch content. As with any microtransaction system, there are fears that it could become pay-to-win.

Design director Niklas Fegraeus spoke with GameSpot and touched on how the system will work:

When you want to progress and get stuff, you can either play the game and when you play you earn the in-game currency, and with that you can spend towards whatever you want. If you want to accelerate that, if you can’t play for a week, you can purchase that. The important thing is everything can be earned [through gameplay]. If you’re someone who spends time on the game, we love you, do your thing, do what you want to do. If you don’t have the time, you can spend money and we love you as well. It’s your choice.

[…]

No, it’s not about buying the winning item. That’s not how it works. No one can say, ‘I’m going to spend my zillion dollars and then I’m going to dominate.’ That’s not how it works.

This is actually very similar to EA’s first Battlefront microtransactions—which came in the form of “Ultimate Upgrade Packs” that unlocked weapons and upgraded Star Cards. Personally, I would prefer it if microtransactions were cosmetic-only, but hopefully this system pans out the way Fegraeus outlined and it won’t result in a pay-to-win system.

Clone commandos may be making an appearance

First spotted by Redditor JakeGreen163, battle droids occasionally yell out “clone commando!” in the EA PLAY build of Battlefront II. As the only special Republic unit in this build is the clone jump trooper, it’s possible that this is dialogue meant for actual clone commandos. I certainly hope that it is—commandos have some of the coolest clone armor—but it’s also possible this dialogue isn’t meant for anything in particular.

Even if clone commandos don’t make their way into the game at launch, I’d definitely enjoy seeing them added as part of EA’s free post-launch content. They would fit perfectly with the special character system DICE has created for the game.

Battlefront II will launch November 17 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Check out SWGO on Facebook or Twitter to get all the latest news.