It appears DICE is wanting to shake up the traditional shooter in more ways than one with it’s anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront reimagining.
Seemingly ditching traditional classes for a more RPG feeling ‘Star Card’ system that let’s you shape a character how you like it. This, coupled with the removal of traditional iron sight aiming akin to HALO and Doom-esque powerups littered across the battlefield, make it seem DICE is looking to create something fresh that also borrows a lot from the old school.
Senior producer Sigurlína Ingvarsdottir spoke with Leon Hurley @ Gamesradar about what we can expect.
“so we don’t have classes but as you progress in the game you are able to unlock more and more of these cards. You saw players with the jet pack for example? The Jetpack is an example of a card. So basically your shields, your grenades, your jet packs, all of these are cards and you combine them into what you feel is a good kit for you going into battle. That’s how you basically create the loadout that goes with how you like to play the game”.
As well as creating your character’s abilities before playing, you can modify them using power ups you can collect during the game. “The power ups are basically what you pick up in the level,” confirms Sigurlína. “So they might be an especially powerful weapon like the ability to call in a strike or an X-wing or a Tie-Fighter or an AT-ST or AT-AT or a hero token that would be then spawn you as a villain or hero depending on which faction you are playing”. As far as getting a chance to play as one of the film’s iconic characters (Luke, Vader and Boba Fett are confirmed so far), that all depends on “certain conditions” according to Sigurlína. “There’s a random spawn system that we have. In the multiplayer modes that have heroes, they spawn in certain locations at a certain time”.
Sigulina goes on to explain about another cool feature that battlefront is bringing to the table which is the ‘buddy system’
“One thing that we think is pretty cool is that you can share unlocks with your partner, If you have a certain set of star cards and he has a different set of star card you can share them. You can do that via sharing hands because you have the card hands: pre-selected hands that you bring into battle”.
This sharing system creates a couple of immediately obvious ideas, points out Sigurlína: “Your partner can share your hand and that becomes a very interesting dynamic in two situations. One when you’re both pretty up to speed with the game and kit yourselves out to compliment each other and create a really cool unit. Or, if you are bringing a friend who’s a noob into the game and hasn’t played before, then you are also able to give them more of a taste of the game by actually sharing unlocks that you have”.
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When the game finally launches later this year, it feels like a lot of us who have been playing shooters since the days of DOOM and Wolfenstein can expect to have our nostalgia fix in more ways than one. That, and this is motherfeckin’ STAR WARS.