Star Wars: Battlefront isn't just a "big-budget Battlefield mod," says DICE

DICE boss Patrick Bach has promised Star Wars: Battlefront isn't just a "big-budget Battlefield mod," as the game carries the Battlefront title for a reason.

Speaking with Eurogamer during Day 2 of the Star Wars Celebration yesterday, Bach said the team stayed true to the "core ethos" of the Battlefront series by adhering to what "fits with the IP."

"The whole idea of building a Star Wars Battlefront game is about two things," he said. "First of all, it's called Star Wars Battlefront for a reason, so [we're] going back to the roots and the core ethos of that. On top of that, it's Star Wars together with LucasFilm.

"We have the opportunity to work with them on this; it's a super tight relationship. We have daily contact with them - they approve everything, we discuss everything with them. It's super tight.

"That doesn't really marry with the thought of making it in a mold, right? The whole idea was: 'let's clear the table - it's gone. What do we want?' And from there, we start to put things on the table again. In some ways you could argue it's close to what we've done before - because it's something awesome and people want that - but in other ways it was like no, let's go down this route because it fits with the IP, it fits with what Star Wars stands for."

Bach went on to say the team never had the intention or "even had the process" of building something which resembles anything it has created before, as that's "not how this game has been built."

The demo shown to Eurogamer took place on Endor, one of the more prominent scenes which was shown in the reveal trailer yesterday. On this particular map, the team wanted to recreate the Speeder Bike scene from Return of the Jedi and the mode shown in the demo was called Walker Assault.

During the presentation, Eurogamer noticed familiar Battlefield staples such as Killstreak and Nemesis bonuses, but Bach wouldn't elaborate on such features.

It was revealed yesterday players would be able to customize their characters "as much as possible" by being able to choose gear, abiities, weapons and gender to allow players to choose their own play style. The customization only goes so far though, as lore characters such as Darth Vader will stay true to the IP.

"You won't be able to put a pink cape on Darth Vader," said Bach. "That would be easy for us to build and some people might say that'd be fun, but its not authentic. That's how we're grounding all of the features in the game, including the customisation.

"Picking alien heads, or different heads for different species is something that we think people want and its also true to what Star Wars stands for. And there are different things like that that you can do. We want to stand very firm on that; we want to protect what Star Wars stand for."

There's more information in the Eurogamer article, including a breakdown of what was shown in the game demo.

Star Wars: Battlefront will be released from November 17 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game is currently available for pre-order through various online retailers including Origin.