STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT may have brought in enough in sales numbers to surprise EA Games, but that definitely does not make it a true success. And make no mistake, The Daily SuperHero was not a fan of the game. Click here to read our November review.
The reboot of the video game franchise was soft and lacked any true depth unless you prefer mindless, repetitive arcade-like online action that forces you to pay-to-play and buy all the add-ons and future downloadable maps for more of the same gameplay over and over again. All this on top of the already expensive $60 price tag at launch.
Day 1 of its release last fall meant buying the game and devoting many immediate hours to it. But then it was sold after just a few days because it was such a letdown when it came to trying to play it offline, single player (or even local co-op) gameplay as well as hardly any options for any real offline play. Sure, we could have paid to experience more online, but after playing the Beta before its release there was no reason to since even that quickly became mindless and repetitive.
And don't forget how STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS actor John Boyega went to Twitter this past March to say how he thought the game needed more offline play as well as a narrative story campaign. (See this post link below.)
The other night during an investor call, via ScreenRant and EuroGamer, EA's Patrick Soderlund confirmed exactly what he shouldn't have.
“We made [the choice] due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact.”
Soderlund continued, via io9.
“Star Wars I think is a game where you have to look at it maybe from a slightly different perspective. Yes we know that the one thing we got criticized for was the lack of single-player campaign in it. That was a conscious decision that we made due to time and being able to launch the game side by side with the movie that came out, to get the most possible, to get the strongest possible impact. I think the team created a really good game based on the premise that we had. I would say the game has done very well for us and reached a very different demographic than a traditional EA game would do, so from that perspective it’s a success.
“The depth and breadth is something that’s proving to be more and more important. In a world where we want $60 upfront and where we expect people to stay with us over a long time, the depth of what we offer is important. We’ve actually had some dialog—Star Wars Battlefront came out and it totally nailed a lot of these factors out there but we got criticized for the depth and breadth of it. As we look at why that was, we have to go back and course correct that for another version if we were ever to build one.”
So they wanted to maximize their money-making potential by jumping on the STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS hype train as well as getting the title out right before the holiday shopping season was at full force. The real problem with this answer is that it sounds like it's being made to give fans a better one. Although this comes after constantly telling fans and the media a single player campaign was not their goal because the focus was always on the online multiplayer.
@TheDanielWolf We've stated a few times that we're focusing on multiplayer to let YOU GUYS create your own stories.— EAStarWars (@EAStarWars) March 3, 2016
The unfortunate part of all of this is that EA looks like they just changed their reasoning completely and perhaps they're finally being honest now.
In the end, this sudden change of reasoning does nothing to get this writer (and probably lots and lots of fans who felt ripped off by Battlefront) to trust that EA can make a suitable Battlefront game when its sequel hits sometime in 2017. It's going to take an amazing gaming experience to make believers out of all the angry gamers who felt short-changing by STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT.
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Even 'The Force Awakens' Actor John Boyega Wants a STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT Full Story Mode From EA
STAR WARS: BATTLEFRONT is a Beautiful, Fun Acrade Players Dream But Highly Repetitive and Thin on Story