Games
Star Wars: Battlefront’s design boss on what DICE has learned from the first mass test of the game.
It’s been a long journey for Star Wars: Battlefront from a galaxy far, far away to a console much closer to home. Out in November, DICE’s ambitious multiplayer shooter is one of the first Star Wars products of the Disney-owned, post-LucasArts era. This week, over nine million players joined the skirmish on the public beta, pew pewing each other senseless on the icy wasteland of Hoth, hopping in X-Wings and tripping over AT-ATs, sometimes even squashing Darth Vader in the process.
Millions of players means an awful lot of data and feedback for EA to trawl through, and with less than a month to go before the final release, lots to change after a stress test on a galactic scale. To get a sense of the task DICE, the studio best known for the Battlefield series, has ahead, we caught up with game’s design director, Niklas Fegraeus. Read on for the inside scoop on the game.
DICE is obviously well known for the Battlefield series, and Battlefront shares some similarities with it, especially the large open maps and emphasis on vehicles. Was it a case of trying to put Star Wars into a Battlefield game, or the other way round?
The ethos that we used was trying to capture those fantasies that we had as kids when we played, watched the movies, started playing, had the toys, created your own scenarios. That became the guiding principle: let’s create this amazing authentic Star Wars sandbox where you and your friends can play those battles that you have so fond memories of from the films.
Were there any rules as to what you could and couldn’t do within that?
When it came to designing the core pillars of what the game should be, we looked at the old Battlefront games, of course, and tried to figure out what makes a Battlefront game Battlefront. You can see some of those decisions of course in the game with the big battles, the free choice of first and third person, the heroes that are there – you know, things that are strong identifying features of this franchise. But then we chose to do a reboot of the franchise due to the fact that a whole generation of consoles has passed since the last outing, and we had some cool ideas that we thought would enable this to become the new Battlefront for a new generation.
Which famous Star Wars set pieces are included in the game? And which aren’t?
When it comes to what you can include, I think the Star Wars universe is just enormously huge and everything is super-cool – so there’s not enough time in a life to do everything. But the things that we have focused on are some of the really core fantasies from the original films. Like fighting big AT-AT walkers, for example, or being Darth Vader with a red lightsaber and force powers in hand, or flying X-Wings versus TIE fighters, which is another really core fantasy. There’s more to that as well. The games have tonnes of modes and a lot of really, really fun toys to play with.
Explain to us how hero and villain characters work within that framework.
They work through different rules depending on what mode you’re in, but in the Walker Assault mode that we showed in beta, they work through the power-up system. If you find one, it allows you to choose a hero to spawn in as, and then you’re assuming the role of that hero for one life, so that life is your chance of turning the tide of battle for your team. If we were to have Jedi characters available at any time, they would have to be balanced in such a way that they would be equally powerful to normal soldiers, and that just wouldn’t feel right. That’s the design philosophy behind them.
What goes into creating a level in Battlefront? What’s the process?
It takes a long time and a lot of people. We start with gathering a lot of reference – in this case we went to the filming locations, and we got tonnes and tonnes of reference data from how those environments look, and what we need in order to create them digitally.
So you send people out to where the movies were originally made?
Yeah, we used the films to see what it looks like there, but then we go to the place where it was actually shot, and we take a lot of reference from there in order to create scenes. So that takes quite a while. We had to send people on planes and in cars, and with lots of cameras, to lots of different places on the globe. And when they come back we have to gather all that data, structure it in a way that’s useful digitally, and then we have a lot of software and pipelines and workflows and so forth to actually make it into Frostbite [DICE’s game engine]. When you have those assets available you can start with design and how it comes together. You need to render it properly, so you need programmers and engineers to create some kind of pipeline to make all these assets look the way they’re supposed to look. It’s quite a long process – it takes a lot of months and a lot of people.
What can you do in vehicles in Battlefront?
Well, what you can do of course is you can jump into the vehicle and fly with it, both in first- and third-person. The X-Wing has the four laser cannons, it has the shield, and when it comes to what things that you can’t do, it comes down to what mode you play. You can attack walkers in Walker Assault with an X-Wing, using tow cables to wrap around the legs. In the Fighter Squadron mode, that’s when you can do these really big dog fights, with tonnes and tonnes of ships in the sky.
What didn’t work in previous Battlefront games that you wanted to change this time?
I don’t think there was anything specifically you could point to that didn't work. It was more, ‘How do we adopt some of those older mechanics into a new era of games?’ I think those who enjoyed the old games, I don't think they will see many strong core gameplay differences. They will recognise quite a lot, they will be able to jump in and enjoy it quite quickly.
But as you say, it’s been a whole console generation. What paradigms have changed since then?
The biggest transition that has passed is how you deal with the whole meta of it, and how you create motivations for players when they play. And of course the breadth of mechanics for example. A lot of things have happened, especially when it comes to persistent systems and some of the social aspects when it comes to playing with friends and so on. There’s been a lot of evolution in those areas over the last console generation that we've put into Battlefront.
Who was your lore guide for the game? Someone has to act as the Star Wars fact-checker, right?
That was actually Lucasfilm, which has been helping us since day one. They are the masters of the lore and all the things that are Star Wars. They have been really helpful when it comes to guiding us and setting rules and boundaries around Star Wars, and what happened at this point in time. They have all that knowledge; it’s a very useful collaboration for us in order for us to keep things within what Star Wars is.
But how does that process look?
We've been working with them correspondence-wise. They have their offices in San Francisco so we have of course been there, and they here to our studio in Sweden, lots of times during development. So there’s been a few times where we've had Lucasfilm on site so they speak to the team and we have a little geek-out.
It must have been scary the first time Lucasfilm played the game.
You can say that again. Just going there for the first time and presenting, ‘Hey this is what we want to do with your universe.’ That was very scary. But they really liked it and it all went really smooth and has been great.
What’s your earliest Star Wars memory?
I remember when the first film came out in the theatres, but I was too young to go an see it. I was only three years old, but when I got to seven, eight years old my dad got the VHS and that was my first time. I’d heard about it, my friends talked about it, there was huge hype around it and by that time the second film had come out. I was just dying to see it and then my dad got that VHS and we got to see it, and yeah, the rest is history as you would say. I was so hooked and I’ve never really let go.
What are you looking to find out with the public beta?
We’re looking into two major things. One is to really test the online environment to make sure we get a stable, problem-free environment. We’re really load testing in this beta. The other thing is to get feedback on all kinds of gameplay-related things like balance and potential bugs.
How do you determine if there are issues? Is it the whole studio poring over analytics and web forums?
All of the above. It’s the entire team keeping an eye on it. We’re looking at all of those things you have mentioned: the background numbers, the analytics, all the forums, the videos, the comments on the net, tweets. We just try to get as much on all those things and gather them and make changes accordingly.
Star Wars: Battlefront is released on November 17, 2015 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
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