While no one is ever going to consider Star Wars Battlefront a flop, it is safe to say that the game left quite a few fans disappointed in the game.
Not only is the title lacking a true story-based narrative, it delivers a large chunk of content via a Season Pass that is nearly the cost of the game, bringing the full Battlefront experience only to players who have shelled out $110 US. This cost gamers virtually double the price of a standard game while splitting the market in a predominantly multiplayer game, making matchmaking that much more challenging for those who have additional content, leaving out everyone who opted not to spend the extra money.
Other games such as Halo 5: Guardians and Rainbow Six Siege are releasing additional maps for free specifically to prevent segregating any part of the player base from another.
All this aside, it seems that Battlefront may not have been the game that Star Wars fans were really looking for all along. We have every faith that, with Jade Raymond’s new Motive Studio, based in Montreal, the next Star Wars game will be the one to watch.
While at Ubisoft, Raymond was a producer and executive producer on three Assassin’s Creed games, as well as Watch Dogs and Splinter Cell: Blacklist. She clearly has some triple-A gaming credit, and she’s working on the new Star Wars game with another industry big wig.
Amy Hennig, best known as the creative director behind the Uncharted franchise at Naughty Dog, Amy also worked at EA and Crystal Dynamics in her early years in game development. A seasoned writer and as an academic with a keen skill of putting words on a page, Hennig is likely to craft a much more story-based Star Wars game, as doing so would play much more to her strengths than something akin to Battlefront would.
Between these two leading women in gaming, the next Star Wars game will be something special to watch, and while we don’t expect to hear news on it anytime soon (we’d peg it for release around the launch of Episode VIII in early 2017), the game is likely to be a cross between the narrative of Knights of the Old Republic and what we expected to see from the massive Star Wars title 1313.
Speaking of 1313, the game’s last demo before the title went dark had some themes similar to what we’re seeing from games like Uncharted, especially with regards to environmental objects becoming part of big action set pieces. This kind of thing is right up Hennig’s alley, so we wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see something revived from the depths of Coruscant for the new title.
While being disappointed by Battlefront is entirely understandable, here’s hoping that Jade Raymond’s studio and Amy Hennig’s storytelling and creative direction make the next Star Wars game the one we’ve actually been waiting for.