‘Star Wars Battlefront 2’ To Play Across Eras, Feature Single-Player Campaign

The sequel to Star Wars Battlefront is due out later this year and is already promising to be bigger than the original. Electronic Arts discussed the Battlefront 2 during an earnings call Tuesday and the mega-publisher expects huge things out of DICE’s follow-up.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 will release during the 2017 holiday season. If the pattern follows the same as the original release, this should be around mid-November to take advantage of the release of the theatrical release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi at the beginning of December.

While a full reveal is still coming, EA CEO Andrew Wilson helpfully started building hype by revealing play across era and a single-player campaign.

“We’ve listened closely to our passionate Star Wars Battlefront community and have expanded our existing game with more great content and experiences since its launch. As that game continues to thrive, we have also heard our players’ desire for even more depth and progression,” Wilson stated in a transcript via Seeking Alpha.

“Our next Star Wars Battlefront will be even bigger, taking players into more locations and allowing them to play with more heroes and characters across multiple Star Wars eras. There will be new ways to play, including an all-new single-player campaign and much, much more that we are excited to share with our players in the months ahead.”

Bigger also means much more work to take on. Wilson and DICE both confirmed EA studios Criterion and Motive will also collaborate on the sequel.

Battlefront 2 will have the benefit of more films to draw content from. Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One have both hit theaters since the launch of the original game. So, DICE and EA will have those available along with the original trilogy and the prequels. Whether the game will use heroes, settings, and weapons from all three eras or just two remains to be seen.

Wilson and Electronic Arts are banking on the recent movies and the upcoming Last Jedi to help drive interest and sales in Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

“They’ve also had another movie since we launched the last one, and another one coming later this year, and we would expect that the global fan base for Star Wars will continue to grow,” Wilson explained. “So, we feel great about the game, we feel great about the overall community, and we feel great about the energy that the movie will generate in and around the launch of the game.”

Star Wars Battlefront 2 will also benefit from the extra development time. The first was announced in May 2013 when Electronic Arts first announced it obtained the exclusive rights to developer Star Wars games on consoles and PC. DICE raced to build all the content and gameplay for the title in time for a holiday 2015 release.

The developer made it in under the wire, but this clearly came at the cost of some content. The game came up short on fan-requested features like a single-player campaign and space battles despite nailing the look and sound of Star Wars.

Some of these issues were addressed via new modes in the DLC expansion packs. The last two packs, Death Star and Rogue One: Scarif introduced the desired space battles, but nothing could be done about the lack of a campaign.

Now that the base of content and gameplay has been established for Star Wars Battlefront, DICE has the opportunity to deliver a fully fleshed out sequel capable of meeting and exceeding the standard set by the first Battlefront games released by LucasArts and Pandemic Studios in the mid-2000s.

What do you think of the direction DICE and Electronic Arts has planned for Star Wars: Battlefront 2? Sound off in the comments below.

[Featured Image by DICE/Electronic Arts]