Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) has confirmed that the Star Wars: Battlefront reboot will ship with approximately 12 maps when it launches this November across PS4, Xbox One and PC.
The publisher broke the news in a new official blog entry focused on Sullust, one of the game’s playable planets, which will host its own fraction of multiplayer battlegrounds.
“Of the 12 multiplayer maps in Star Wars Battlefront (there are even more locations when you include the Star Wars Battlefront Missions), some feel immediately familiar — such as the lush forests of Endor or the tundra of Hoth that allow you to re-live your favorite moments from the films.”
The four planets announced thus far are the frozen blizzard-world of Hoth, the craggy lava-filled chaos that is Sullust, the forest moon of Endor, and the sandy dunes of Tattooine.
DICE’s Nikla Fegraeus has said that there will be “many maps on each planet”, but doing a bit of simple math it looks like there might only be three maps per planet.
But some gamers aren’t so happy only having four planets. Speculation has arisen that EA and DICE are specifically with-holding maps and planets just to sell them off in expensive season passes or premium priced DLC.
Jesper Nielsen, an assistant producer at the studio says that these claims are “100% wrong“: “If you think there’s anything we’re not including in the game to save it for DLC, I can tell you you’re 100% wrong. In this project, I’ve never heard anyone say ‘Let’s not do this for launch so we can do it as DLC instead’. Ever.”
The new Battlefront game won’t feature a singleplayer campaign. It will have a “Mission Mode” which can be played in a number of different permutations including online/offline singleplayer or co-op, as well as local split-screen, against enemy bots.
Instant Action, a gametype which lets players jump right into the fray against an army of bots, will be returning as well.
In the update DICE also notes that each of the maps will be tailor-made to specifically fit certain gametypes and modes of play, like the Walker Assault mode which was showcased in the game’s reveal trailer. This fits right in line with Fegraeus’ similar claims made last month.
DICE has also made some pretty staggering claims about Battlefront‘s graphical fidelity.
Jesper Nielsen took to Reddit to claim that the PS4 version of the game looks exactly the same as the stunning footage in the reveal trailer.
“I don’t like making hard guarantees. The game hasn’t shipped yet. We’re not done with it. But this is how it looks right now – on PS4 as well, yes.”
Another DICE exec named Sigurlína Ingvasdóttir says that the trailer featured “in-engine footage”, and actually furthers Nielsen’s claim that the PS4 version will be quite impressive.
Ingvarsdóttir affirms that the studio has learned quite a bit about the PlayStation 4 by working closely with Sony’s (NYSE: SNE) own engineers–and of course from Battlefield 4. They’ve also gleaned quite a bit about their own next-gen Frostbite 3 engine that powers Battlefront.
“This is DICE’s second game out on the next gen consoles and out on PS4. We learned a lot on the previous title, BF4, and now we’re at the place that we feel like we’re getting more familiar with the hardware.
“We’re getting better results, we’re having a good collaborations with the engineers at Sony.
“I’d say we’re really being able to, as I think our gameplay video shows… We’re really able to get the maximum out of the hardware, and really able to sort of harness that power.”
It’ll be interesting to see if DICE can deliver the promised graphical fidelity while maintaining the targeted 60 frames-per-second console rates. I
f they can hit high FPS/graphical ratios in a game like this where chaotic explosions and widespread 40-player multiplayer battles are commonplace, then the studio will undoubtedly have unlocked new potential in the PS4’s capabilities.
Star Wars: Battlefront is slated to release November 17, 2015 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
