Battlefront II: All the recent dev comments from interviews and Twitter

Since the Battlefront II reveal on Satuday, we’ve gotten a fair amount of new details thanks to developers answering questions via interviews and Twitter.

I’ve outlined as many of the new details I could dig up below:

BattlefrontUpdates’ stream

Associate designer director Dennis Brannvall answered a slew of questions during BattlefrontUpdate’s livestream on Sunday.

• Special characters (officially known as Reinforcements) will vary in count and Battle Point cost depending on the map. They are era-locked, but they won’t be restricted to a single planet.
• The development team is still undecided on how to implement cross-era heroes.
• Droidekas may not be in the game for launch.
• There will be an equal amount of content from each era.
• EA PLAY build does not have the game’s final third-person camera. There will be a field-of-view slider on PC, but unknown about consoles currently.
• Boba Fett’s melee is his flamethrower this time around.
• You’ll be able to control where you throw enemies with Darth Maul’s force choke.
• The dev team is currently playing around with Darth Maul sidestepping instead of blocking enemy blaster bolts with his lightsaber. However, they aren’t ruling out the ability to parry bolts.
• Normal infantry can usually survive two lightsaber attacks.
• The defined HP scales exactly. So Darth Maul’s 700 HP is two-and-half times higher than the Heavy class’ 200 HP.
• No info yet on in-game voice chat or the party system.

• There will be more Rogue One content outside the death trooper.
• Anti-cheat is constantly being improved.
• You can’t fire your weapon while rolling.
• The Hutt Contract system or Jabba won’t return in the exact same way as the first game. There will be challenges and quests, however.
• Zooming in, standing still and crouching improve accuracy.
• They want to add the “Watch those wrist rockets!” line from the first Battlefront II. Brannvall “totally wants it be” in the game.
• Brannvall feels two abilities for Reinforcements (i.e. super battle droids and clone jump troopers) are fine, but he doesn’t “want to rule anything out.”
• Different characters and classes have different health regeneration speeds.
• Emotes will be for both normal infantry and heroes.
• Fighter Squadron was one of the most popular modes in EA’s first Battlefront, although not as popular as Walker Assault or Heroes vs Villains.
• In Galactic Assault, you’ll be able to have more than two active heroes on each team at any given point. The exact cap is undecided currently.
• The bacta bomb won’t return in the same form as it was in EA’s first Battlefront.

IGN interview demo

This interview featured producers Craig McLeod and Paul Keslin. I previously covered some of McLeod’s comments on Vardos and Galactic Assault. The rest of the new bits are below:

• There’s a “whole host of collectibles and unlockables”, from vanity items to Star Cards to weapons. McLeod specifically mentioned this when asked about a diorama mode like in EA’s first Battlefront, so I’m unsure if a that same diorama mode will return. However, there will be plenty of stuff for you to unlock and collect regardless.
• Cosmetic skins won’t be “over-the-top” in order to keep Battlefront II an “authentic experience”.
• Vulture Droids won’t have a walking mode like they do in the movies.
• Tauntauns will be similar to horses in Battlefield 1 and can be killed.
• The creatures on Yavin IV in the gameplay trailer is confirmed to be runyips.
• EA’s first Battlefront’s season pass was planned out early on, the DLC plans for Battlefront II will be more “organic”, allowing EA/DICE to better react to fan feedback.

Twitter

Developers have answered several questions since the gameplay reveal on Saturday:

• Rey using Luke’s lightsaber in a promo video of the spawn screen was a bug, as confirmed by hero designer Guillaume Mroz.
• Brannvall confirmed that non-cosmetic items won’t be locked behind a paywall.
• Brannvall also noted that death troopers will be Reinforcement characters like the B2 super battle droids or clone jump troopers.
• The Z6 rotary blaster cannon, which can be used by the Heavy class, had red lasers in the EA PLAY build. Weapons designer Christian Johannesen stated that the weapon will have blue bolts for clone troopers at final release.

Battlefront II arrives on November 17 to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Find SWGO on Facebook and Twitter to stay up-to-date on all things Battlefront II.