Ik denk niet dat ik de enige ben wiens mond op de E3 persconferentie van EA openviel wanneer Star Wars: Battlefront met een bijzonder korte, maar toch oh zo opwindende teaser trailer werd aangekondigd. Nu LucasArts zijn hele inboedel aan Disney verkocht heeft, betekent dit uiteraard dat een andere studio met de licentie gaat lopen.

Dat uitgerekend DICE de franchise onder handen neemt, bleek een uiterst aangename verrassing. De ontwikkelaar heeft het momenteel uiteraard erg druk met Battlefield 4, maar “smeekte” volgens Patrick Soderlund van EA om de licentie. Het scheelde nochtans niet veel of een ander bedrijf was ermee aan de haal gegaan.

“[DICE developing Star Wars: Battlefront] was almost not happening. It was just something as boring as resources and availability. The DICE guys Karl Magnus Troedsson and Patrick Bach were talking and I told them we were in dialogues with Disney over this deal and they just looked at me and said, ‘Why haven’t you spoken to us? What are you doing? We want to make Battlefront.'”

“DICE is a very particular place and they are very proud of what they do and you don’t really tell them what to do. I didn’t anticipate them wanting to work on a license – they’ve always been new IP or their own IP. But they were just like, ‘we would kill to make this game’ and the whole studio started talking about it like, ‘please give us this game’.”

“That’s when I called Frank [Gibeau, EA Labels boss] and I realised we had something here. ‘If they want it that badly, then the game will be freaking awesome – we have to figure it out’. So we figured it out, we got them the game and it was that simple. They begged to do it, the opportunity was there and that’s exactly why you’ll see a game that will be what it needs to be.”

Toch handig, zo’n goede reputatie. Dat Star Wars: Battlefront – een bloedzuivere reboot; “Battlefront volgens DICE” – nu ontwikkeld wordt door DICE garandeert uiteraard ook een zekere vorm van kwaliteit. Battlefront was immers van meet af aan al gebaseerd op de Battlefield formule die zijn oorsprong vond bij de Zweedse ontwikkelaar.

“You will have people that have worked on Battlefield for many years on it, you will have Patrick [Bach – Battlefield 4, Executive Producer] himself involved in it. These are experienced DICE people in Sweden building this game – it’s being built in Stockholm.”

“When it comes to the actual game, the approach we’re going to take is it’s a rebirth of the brand, it is Star War: Battlefront done the DICE way. The original Battlefront games actually took a lot of inspiration from Battlefield and they’ve been publicly open about that. As the guys said, the game is ‘coming home’. That’s as much as we can say.”

Ik kan alvast niet wachten om meer te weten te komen over deze titel. Geldt dat voor jullie ook?