Star Wars Battlefront

I remember reading that on Wookieepedia at some point, but it seems I was mistaken (and/or it was edited out, no longer on his article).

Maybe they meant first Jedi on TCW or first named on-screen Jedi to die on-screen? I don't know.

Still, relatively rare to have a story focused on a Jedi going out in a blaze of glory against Droids.

Holy shit, I'm sold on the starfighter mode alone. I really enjoyed the little bit of the first game's starfighter gametype that I played, and this shit is precisely what I want.

It's no Ace Combat Star Wars, but I'll take it as a close substitute in the meantime.

Some more footage of the starfighter combat in actual gameplay is starting to be released from Gamescom, and it seems to be very arcade-ish; don't expect X-Wing vs Tie Fighter levels of nuance here. Still, the combat has the hectic 'sky's full of chaos' vibe, and DICE went with the whole "defenders vs attackers w/ objectives". For example, Phase 1 has you destroying orbital defense platforms, Phase 2 has you destroying shield generators, and Phase 3 is the final attack run on the space stations reactor core.

Yeah, it looked really fun. Damm sight more fun than Fighter Squadron or the space phases of Scarif and the Death Star. Less ganging up on certain ships and more combat.

Any word on system requirements?

It looks like old Rogue Squadron auto-roll/turn mechanics instead of real worldy pitch, roll and yaw flight controls. No real world air combat tactics allowed with that control scheme. (Or at least not many.)

Also, no sign of landing, getting out and then getting stuck in for ground combat, like BF 2 of old.

Still, looks fun.

Yeah, they said that you won't be able to exit your fighters in this mode.

In the whole game or just starfighter mode? Found the new BF a pain with the whole vehicle token gimmick.

As far as I know the ground battles are mostly the same although apparently less random on the power ups. Starfighter Assault and such are its own game modes with no get out and shoot ability.

The upgrades aren't random at all. Everyone has access to them, you just have to earn enough score on the field to use them, similar to Halo's Warzone REQ system. And presumably two people can't use a hero at the same time, obv.

My favorite thing is playing CIS on Kamino, standing on that middle platform between the two outdoors Command points, occupying the space in front of the ammo spawn droid, and introducing the concept of artillery to the game using only my grenades. Ah, good times.

I don't think anybody else made an announcement about this, but you can now grab the Season Pass of EA DICE's Star Wars: Battlefront on Origin's On the House monthly promo. And since Origin is also offering a free 4 hour trial of Battlefront, that means you can try out pretty much the whole game plus all of it's DLC if you like.

Oh, and I'm not too sure if this is the result of one of those "one time user promos" or not, but right now Battlefront is being sold at a whopping 83% off... meaning, for roughly 5 US dollars, you can potentially own the game plus it's DLC at no extra cost. Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.

edited 13th Sep '17 9:20:24 AM by SgtRicko

EDIT: Oh, since I managed to try out the game, figured I'd give some input...

• Console controllers seem to work surprisingly well for aiming. Sure, the PC still has the superior overall accuracy and precision, but given how much better the starfighters handle with a joystick versus the keyboard, plus how often the hero units require you to dodge and jump around like crazy, I found it practical to keep my PS 4 controller plugged in while playing. Worked out so well for me that I managed SEVERAL starfighter kills on the first time ever in a TIE fighter on the Hoth map!
• On that note... why, oh why did they decide to tie the starfighters, and by extension all of the other vehicles, to the random pickups on the field? I understand that it helps prevent certain players from hogging up the vehicles, but it prevents players from using what they want and sometimes leaves us starving for actually decent air support!
• DICE dun F'ed up royally when designing the draw distance and pop-up. It's resulted in several enemies attacking outside of an absurdly short visual range, or a horde of green blaster bolts raining down from nowhere on me... only to realize a second or two later that it was actually a TIE fighter that just wasn't rendered yet. At least this doesn't seem to happen often while playing as the ground infantry.

Dice fucked up starfighter controls in general. I came into this game fresh from Pandemicfront II, where starfighter controls were smooth, graceful, and natural. In this game, they feel like riding a rowboat after having been using a motorized yacht.

Why can't we freely control our own rotational yaw, DICE? Why can't we aim the lasers without having that bizarro manual auto-aim? You can't hit SHIT in this game, not unless you spend a whole freaking two seconds targeting, not by using reflexes and hand-eye coordination, but by pressing a damned button, and they bound the dodge rolls directly to their own keys, instead of allowing you to doubletap the wsad keys to do the rolls. What if I can't always hit the exact F1 F2 or F3 keys in the middle of a heated battle, DICE? What was wrong with Pandemic's BF system?

You clearly didn't care about artistic contributions, since you used the same AI names as Pandemic, and you used the same IP to make this game. Why fuck up the best part of the Pandemic game? Starfighter battles were the shit because they were fun, they let you feel in total control of the ship, and if you died, it was actually your own fault, not because the ship misinterpreted your desire to pull up by pulling RIGHT because the controls are arbitrarily mapped to the direction of gravity and not YOUR SHIP. When I'm in a ship, I kind of expect the direction my ship turns to be based on the direction my ship is already facing, DICE, not the direction gravity is in. TLDR, starships suck. Honestly, I want to find that illegally fanmade battlefront 3 game and donate the full price of one game to them instead, just to be a spiteful little shit, because this game's starship piloting is shit.

That's a big NOPE. If you died, it was because you fired your weapons in range of the enemy capital ship's autoturrets.

So fly under the ship. And into the hangar. And disable those guns.

Or use a bomber instead.

I do confess having played to the point where on legendary difficulty I basically don't get shot down anymore.

The AI in the original Battlefront 2 was in this amusing place where they legitimately did Gang Up on the Human, but were so incompetent that it often didn't really matter. Especially in space battles.

edited 14th Sep '17 11:03:03 AM by KnownUnknown

That was my favorite thing. The commentary by friendly AI was the icing on the cake too.

"Line 'em up and knock 'em down!"

It seems in this new Battlefront that some of the rebels have defected to the empire. What happened, Aran Gunnar, Kyp Astar, Ben Ulran?

Best thing is sniping on Kashyyk. Huge open map, lots of vertical traversal.

edited 14th Sep '17 11:06:22 AM by blkwhtrbbt

>.< I must politely ask that you both flock off because I remember fighting the Ewoks on the Imperial side and defending against the Droids on Kashykk being an excruciating experience, and your claims that the AI was a cakewalk fills me with an incomprehensible rage.

I recall the AI being like the multiplayer gamer's Murphy's Law - their team is a team, your team is a collection of individuals.

Enemy AI still wasn't GREAT, but at least they didn't seem blind, deaf and drunk like your AI.

edited 14th Sep '17 12:26:42 PM by VutherA

You get free wookies as the Republic...

Read the scores at the end. You get about forty kills, 160 points. Each Ally gets maybe 2 or three kills, with a quarter getting negative kills, hilariously. Enemies can get up to a dozen kills. In single player you single handedly carry the round.

edited 14th Sep '17 12:31:02 PM by blkwhtrbbt

In-comprehensible-raaaaayge.

A Lso, didn't the Sepratists have giant spider tanks on Kashykk, or am I thinking Geonosis?

I also swear it felt like allied AI dumbness scaled with the amount of AI on the field, did you find that too?

Well the spider tanks were used everywhere.