It looks like Star Wars: Battlefront fans will be receiving some much-welcomed news tomorrow, if a post on the official Battlefront Twitter account is to be believed.
Although not much detail was given aside from a mysterious tweet that read “Prepare for a cold front coming through #StarWarsBattlefront tomorrow… “, a recent community event held by DICE challenged players to play over 500,000 hours as both Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. The community shattered that goal, and with that accomplishment came the suggestion to “look to Hoth to show the fruits of your labor once the January update has been released.”
Given the hint of a cold front in the Tweet, it’s likely that the news coming tomorrow could be directly related to the reward for the community event. DICE has promised more free content in addition to the Force Awakens tie-in Battle of Jakku as well as content coming in the paid Season Pass. Whatever is announced tomorrow, we’re excited to get back into Battlefront with some new toys.
EA DICE released Star Wars: Battlefront on November 17, 2015. While the game has been criticized for not having the same range of weapons, vehicles and campaign play as its previous iteration, the new Star Wars: Battlefront has made some awesome advances, including absolutely gorgeous graphics and stunning sound effects and music.
One notable different between the new Star Wars: Battlefront and its previous versions, is its inclusion of female and minority Stormtroopers. In fact, the game has gone to great lengths to provide a diverse range of skins to choose from, male, female, young, old, black, white. Each are listed innocuously as “Human” followed by a number, with a brief descriptor for each version of the skin of their hairstyles. This is a wonderful way to allow people to put themselves into these skins without labels telling them. I looked at one of the skins for a long time, trying to determine if it the character was supposed to be of Greek or Middle Eastern origin, before realizing it doesn’t matter. In the Star Wars galaxy, those labels have absolutely no meaning. Anyone could play with that character skin and relate to it as they wish.
The “Human 1” skin in Star Wars: Battlefront.
When Polygon asked Patrick Barch, general manager at DICE, about the existence of women Stormtroopers, he responded:
“Why wouldn’t there be? When you talk to Lucasfilm, they’re like, ‘Yeah, of course there are. We just haven’t shown you [in the films].’ For us, it’s about filling in the details in the universe. We help out by asking the question, ‘Can we do this, can we do that? Should we do this or do that?’ And then we work it out [with Lucasfilm].”
Thus, female Stormtroopers during the reign of the Galactic Empire are canon and Star Wars: Battlefront has been sure to include them. This is a great step forward for the community, especially for people like me, who have been desiring to step into some Stormtrooper armor both online and in real life.
Star Wars: Battlefront does a great job of having slight distinguishing physical features for females from males without making them seem sexualized or out of place. The Stroomtrooper armor looks basically the same between the two sexes. The only noticeable differences between the female and males versions of the Stormtrooper is that the female has a slight taper on the lower half of her chest piece, a smaller waist, slightly less bulge on her codpiece and a higher belt. Overall, it really does look like standard issue Stormtrooper armor on a female body– No ridiculously curvaceous proportions, no missing armor protection and no “boob plates”.
The base Stormtrooper skins in Star Wars: Battlefront (male on the left, female on the right).
EA DICE deserves applause for this, they have done a great job making the Star Wars universe more open and inclusive for all. However, they’ve fallen short of being a truly welcoming game.
It is easy to get lost in overwhelming joy of the sheer amount of diversity of skin selections in the game and overlook where they are lacking. First of all, on a pure numbers side, there are still simply more male choices, with 70 male skins (42 male Rebel skins, 28 male Empire skins) and only 55 female skins (31 female Rebel skins, 24 female Empire skins). Some of this can be attributed to male skins having combinations of hair and beard combinations. Where it is inexcusable, though, is for the high level skins.
In Star Wars: Battlefront, you unlock skin variations as you progress in level. For the most part, these skins are hair customization. However, at level 40, you begin to unlock more noticeable skins that clearly show your peers and the enemy team that you are of a high level. For the Empire, this first skin is a Scout Trooper skin and for the Rebel Alliance it is three alien skins (Sullustan, Duros and Rodian). The problem? All of these skins are male, with male voices.
In fact, of all of the high level skins (of which there are 9), only two are female skins and both of those are aliens on the Rebel side (Zabrak and Twi’lek). The complete lack of special female Empire skins means that, if you prefer to play a female character, you will never get to fully flaunt your accomplishments while on the Empire side.
The two high level Empire skins in Star Wars: Battlefront both only have male variants.
With the base Stormtrooper skins, EA DICE showed how little modification is required to provide both a male and a female version. Why would they leave out female Scout Troopers and Shadowtroopers? Using Barch’s own words, “why wouldn’t there be” female Shadowtroopers?
It seems quite a pity that EA DICE worked so hard to be inclusive in their character options only to leave out women at the highest reward tiers. At level 50, I am reminded of this every time I end up on the Empire side and have to choose between having a character that speaks in a voice like mine and one that shows my accomplishments.
Progress has been made, but we don’t have equality yet.
So I’m currently playing EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront for review on PlayStation 4 and I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in some of the multiplayer forces. No these lobbies aren’t a hive of scum and villainy but rather it seems like almost everyone is using the same weapon – Han Solo’s iconic Blaster the DL-44.
So why is everyone using Han’s favourite side-arm? Because it offers the highest damage per shot in the game combined with a fairly high fire rate. As the current end-game Rank 25 reward it makes sense that experienced players might be given a reward but when you’ve include weapon stats in the game giving players who theoretically the most polished skill set giving them the best weapon in the game can put newer players at an extreme disadvantage.
To add insult to injury in terms of the DL-44 being able to absolutely wreck, EA sells an unlock packaged in the the Deluxe Edition or higher that automatically unlocks Han’s Blaster right off the get go. $10 extra for the best weapon in a competitive multiplayer shooter? Why the fuck not?
So what can EA do to help balance out this flaw in game design? Here’s hoping the optional first Expansion Pass adds a new set of unlocks that provide extra equivalents up the DL-44 since Battlefront’s weapons are centred around stats and that’s not going to change. Perhaps DICE deeper into Star Wars lore – perhaps the Sand People’s Gaffi Sticks?
This weapon is so prevalent that it’s even caused discussions recently within dedicated Battlefront communities. When you’ve got something this strong, the DL-44 certainly is the blaster you are looking for.
After playing the Star Wars Battlefront beta I was 100% sold on purchasing the game. I planned to order the game through origin and pre-load to play day 1. Then came the announcement of a 50$ season pass DLC. I immediately found myself stuck in a major conundrum. I am HUGE Star Wars fan girl, my love for the franchise extends far beyond the movies in to games, books, and even comics. So Battlefront should have been a guaranteed sale for me. However I found myself hesitating, the game itself is 60$, a fully priced AAA game from one of the largest dogs in AAA publishing. EA has no shortage of money, and yet in what would seem to be a clear money grabbing move they have priced the first DLC pack for their new game at 50$ (it is a season pass and so contains 4 DLC map packs). My mind was changed faster than Han Solos blaster draw. There simply is no room in my already crowded budget to have to purchase a game like Battlefront twice. Perhaps even more important than the money I can’t understand why a company would still think it’s a good idea to sell this much DLC for this price. It alienates your core multiplayer audience if they can’t afford it, and causes strife in the games community. Yet it seems EA simply keeps making the same set of mistake. Diving your player base and charging an already stretched player an additional sunk cost isn’t the way to win over your core audience.Read More
EA is keeping the Star Wars hype alive by trickling out a steady stream of news about the final release of Star Wars Battlefront. The latest bit of news is to say the least controversial, EA today through a series of tweets confirmed there will be no “ingame” chat in Battle Front. The tweets are below, but the gist of it is that 3rd part voice clients are going to be needed to talk to anyone in Star Wars Battlefront.
Whether they jumped on for a short time and hated it or loved it and stuck it through the entire beta phase, the game’s senior producer, Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir, revealed the the beta is officially the largest open beta in Electronic Arts history by accruing over nine million active users through the course of its tenure.
Considering that a lot of Star Wars franchise fans have been salivating for a Battlefront game for a very, very long time, now, this isn’t entirely surprising. What is surprising, however, is the mixed responses it’s gotten from those who have played. While there are reports that this game is one of the most anticipated of the last quarter of the year, after playing the beta, there seems to be some hesitation among some of the people I know that are playing the game, hoping, at the very least, that it will improve.
Star Wars: Battlefront is coming on November 17th of this year, putting it in direct competition with another titan of a franchise being release around the same time: Fallout 4, which is coming out a week earlier. The season pass, which will set you back fifty dollars, will give you access to all planned expansion content.