With this year’s Gamescom coming to a close it has come clear that gaming is getting bigger each and every year. Completely sold out drawing over a staggering 335,000 visitors from all over the globe coming to check out what developers and publishers alike have us gamers to offer.

Having been awarded for Best of Gamescom, Most wanted, Best PS4 game, Best PC game and Best multiplayer game Star Wars: Battlefront is without doubt one of the most popular games this year. Having shown us awesome gameplay footage over at E3 just a few months back they’ve now revealed Squadron Mode and it.. was.. glorious!

Let me start by saying that I’m a massive Star Wars fan, I’ve grown up with both the original trilogy and the new trilogy and I love it all. This may somewhat alter my vision towards this game in ways some of you may not understand, but I will try to make it as clear as possible!

For fans from fans

One thing I notice when I look at everything DICE has revealed so far is that this is a game from Star Wars fans to Star Wars fans. And I think this bit is very important for anyone that isn’t a fan. Globally this may seem like every other SW game that has ever been made. Squadron Mode could just as well be linked to the old Rogue Squadron games (oh the nostalgia!) And the surface man-to-man combat could just as well be any shooter with a Star Wars theme poured over it. But the truth lies much deeper.

As a fan of the galaxy far, far away there are these little things like the imitated ‘practical’ effects that I notice that fuse the entirety of the experience into something truly immersive

In the above video there are a lot of these little things, for example the X-Wing fighters reporting in, the squad orders over the comms (and instantly abandoning them just like the movies), the way smoke flies up in the air when blaster shots hit the ground, how sparks eject from the jetpack exhausts and stutters when they burn out or even the nearly stop-motion animations of the AT-ST’s walking around. And overall they nailed the sound and I don’t even think I have to say anything about the graphics, because the new Frostbite engine has the looks to render some of the most beautiful models and environments out there to date. All these little things are completely unnecessary for any given game or even a SW game, but for fans this means a lot while a common gamer may completely oversee these kind of details. But it goes to show DICE put a lot of effort into this and that they know what they’re doing.

The (probably) vocal minority

Since the first reveal over at the SW Celebration event in Anaheim a lot of people have expressed their thoughts on the game. After the initial game reveal showcasing in-engine rendered scenes from the Battle of Endor (or actually the forest moon of Endor) there was a lot of outrage about whether or not what they showed us was actually any resemblance of the final product. Because it didn’t show any actual gameplay. Overall the trailer looked great, it showed a little bit of everything (that moment when you hear a scuba-diver approaching…) and I was impressed. It all came right at me, the puffs of smoke, the sparks flying around, speeders crashing into trees and the awful sound of Ewoks celebrating the death of the poor guy.

It all came back again, the blasters, the practical effects, the sounds…

It had been so long since we’ve seen a quality SW game and it looked like it was finally going to happen again. Of course I still had my doubts and I had yet to see for myself what the actual gameplay would end up like. It took a little while until the E3 a couple of months later to show us actual gameplay and I was impressed once again, it all came back again, the blasters, the practical effects, the sounds… But the majority of viewers seemed to focus on the fact that this was ‘just another Battlefield with a SW skin’. Thus coming back to my previous statement about this being a game for SW fans and suddenly I felt like a lonely guy between all these non-fans and I gave up explaining why this game could become so incredible.

Of course there are still these nitpicky things I can’t wrap my mind around (as a fan) as to why Luke is wearing his Return of the Jedi costume when he’s on Hoth, or why Vader is on (the forest moon of) Endor when he was supposed to be on the Death Star solving family issues, or why the Falcon’s satellite dish is still the same one from the original trilogy while the battle most likely took place after Lando knocked it off, and maybe most important of all; did Boba officially survived he Sarlacc pit because he’s shown in the Jakku content? But holy hell, I’m thankful DICE is working on this because it all looks so amazing!

DICE also revealed a lot more about the game during its official gameplay reveal. For a lot of people this seemed to take a turn for the worst and even lists of ‘missing features’ started appearing around the web. A lot of these “issues” were completely made up based on non-existing “facts”, but some legit mentions were the lack of space battles, no singleplayer campaign and the disappearance of the Clone Wars since its prequel game. Which brings me to the next chapter question:

Sequel or reboot?

Early on DICE already confirmed this game was not supposed to be a sequel to its predecessor games, hence the reason why the game isn’t called Battlefront 3. There is no official reason or explanation why this game isn’t a sequel to the 10 year old franchise, but there doesn’t need to be one either and it is pretty clear why give the short development time of two years they’ve had. Which also explains why there is no singleplayer campaign, given that if the game would’ve launched with a quality singleplayer campaign they’ve probably needed a lot more time, but two years is rather short for a new game build entirely from scratch and on a new engine which requires a lot of bug-testing and ironing. And let us not forget the fact that another developer is working on a singleplayer game set in the SW universe which kind of makes up for the fact that Battlefront is missing one. Despite of missing a singleplayer campaign, Battlefront does offer singleplayer gamemodes and even offline split-screen gameplay, how many games do actually still have this?

One other “issue” naysayers have is the lack of maps, I can agree that 4 planets seem a little few. But the game launches with 12 maps, which means there are about 3 maps for each planet and they can be vary from the indoor bunker and forest warfare on Endor to the ice caves and trenches of Hoth and the skies above Sullust. And we’ve also seen short bits of game play taking place on Tatooine and Jakku (the latter of which releases shortly after launch). Some people find 14 maps still scarce, but personally I think we can all agree that the trenches of Hoth in this Battlefront kicks Battlefront 2’s ass in each and every way!

Most naysayers will try and twist this in something as “they want to sell it as DLC” but it’s far from the truth

This day and age seems to be a popular window to reboot games and some take the turn for the worse *cough* SimCity *cough*, and some others benefit greatly like the new Tomb Raider back in 2013. Personally I’m glad DICE is gambling and take a slightly altered path, given the time they have to work with and the demand for quality games (visually and gameplay) they just had to make cuts in order to give fans what they want. As a result you can’t please everyone, but you can try to polish whatever you can into something the fans want. Most naysayers will try and twist this in something as “they want to sell it as DLC” but it’s far from the truth, because I’d rather put it as “things that aren’t ready to be released yet”. And it saddens me that we live in a community that thinks everything revolves around profit and selling more and more, but these are genuinely SW fans working on the game and it shows, because you can’t just deny that the Squadron Mode reveal just doesn’t look awesome and if you’ve seen the movies you will most definitely recall scenes. It definitely looks way better than anything that resembled space combat in the old Battlefront games, impressive even.. Most impressive…

Despite things that won’t be in the game at launch I am impressed so far, the one thing I love to see in the near future is the addition of space battles, even tho’ it looks like I will be able to enjoy a hell lot out of the Squadron Mode we’ll get at launch. Give DICE the time and space to do their thing and they will deliver. I’ll be picking up this game on November 20th and I hope to see you all there!