More details about the highly anticipated Star Wars: Battlefront 3 have been leaked ahead of the game’s official reveal which is due later today at the Star Wars Celebration convention.
According to the Associated Press, the game will be set during the events of the original trilogy and will indeed be released on the rumored release date of November 17th.
The game will feature frenzied shootouts of up to forty players who will be on the side of either the Rebel Alliance or the Galactic Empire. A demonstration of the game apparently showed footage of jetpack equipped rebels fighting against Stormtroopers in the forests of Endor. The Stormtroopers were using Speeders, Walkers, and a huge AT-AT. Other locations will also include Hoth and Tatooine.
The game will also feature the gameplay mechanic seen in Battlefront 2 which allows the best players to play as heroes and villains from the Star Wars universe such as Boba Fett and even Darth Vader.
“You can storm in as the Dark Lord himself,” said Battlefront design director Niklas Fegraeus. “You can wield a lightsaber. You can Force choke the rebel scum, which is fun. Basically, you are the boss of the battle. This means that you, as Vader, can lead your team to victory — if you play well.”
The game will also feature fierce dogfights in space between TIE Fighters, X-Wings, and the Millennium Falcon. There will be plenty of iconic vehicles from the Star Wars universe as the Executive Producer, Patrick Bach explained.
“You can get into these vehicles, from speeder bikes to X-wings, TIE fighters, AT-STs, AT-ATs. There’s a wide range of vehicles that we wanted to realize. The difficulty with a game is that they need to be balanced with the troops on the ground.”
The Associated Press has also reported that Battlefront 3 will receive a free downloadable level two weeks before the release of the film, The Force Unleashed. The level will be set on the desert Jakku, which is seen briefly in the teaser trailer for the film. The level will include a battle set after Return of the Jedi and involves New Republic forces battling it out against Imperial loyalists.
“You never get to see it in the new movie, so it was this brilliant opportunity to recreate the Battle of Jakku, which you only see the remnants of in the movie,” said Bach. “In the game, you actually get to play the Battle of Jakku. It’s the same place from the new movie but 30 years earlier.”
It seems this leak has prompted Game Informer to share what they’ve seen of the game as well, including brand new screenshots featured in this article.
Journalists were apparently taken into a walled off booth which was designed to look like a Rebel base interior. They were then shown a video of the game in action where Rebel Alliance forces battled it out against the Empire on Endor. It seems this falls in line with what was reported earlier by the Associated Press and even mentions the presence of an AT-AT walker.
The demo was heavily scripted and not played live but it did show off a very impressive first impression of what we can expect from the game.
We expect more details will become apparent over the course of the Star Wars Celebration convention.
[Sources: Game Informer, Associated Press]
