(Which is probably just as well - it wouldn't do to have Vader running around yelling, "Who's your daddy? I am your father," would it?) You're one of the guys in oily overalls and rags and odd-looking hats fighting against a demented grey despot with lightning fingers and an intergalactic armada or one of the white-helmeted Stormtroopers clubbing and clanking together to stop them. You'll occasionally band together with noted Star Wars characters, and Pandemic takes advantage of the freedom afforded to it by LucasArts and sprinkles plenty of memorable scenes from the film in and about the single-player pursuits, but on the whole the idea is that you're just one of the troops. Then just make sure there's enough action on screen most of the time to stave off that creeping sense of isolation that sometimes penetrates the Battlefield veneer, and Vader is indeed your uncle's brother.Īlthough in this case, he actually isn't. And make them good ones, like AT-ATs, AT-STs, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, snowspeeders, hover bikes and, why not, tauntauns. Then split players and/or bots between the goodies of the appropriate era (be they Rebels or the Republic Clones) and the baddies (the Empire, or the Droids and Geonosians), and throw in the occasional bonus character, like AI-controlled lightsabre-wielding Jedi NPCs (stand up Luke, Dooku, Windu, and even Vader), or playable Wookiees. Whack in a few secondary objectives (defending a shield generator, for example, or capturing a carbon freezing chamber), and then channel a few cherished memories (like the Sarlaac pit's tentacles and pig-like squeaks) to complete the picture. Mine the original trilogy and the recent prequels for decent locations - Mos Eisley, Kashyyyk, Endor, Yavin 4, Rhen Var, Kamino, Hoth, Naboo, Bespin - and then create a couple of sprawling maps out of each, and populate them with disparate but defensible command/spawn points that change hands depending on who's controlling the nearby area. It's a remarkably simple and effective idea. With Star Wars Battlefront though, Pandemic Studios crushes those pretenders with a sinewy, Force-ified claw.
Although, to be fair, it's not entirely accurate to say that nobody's thought of it before - many have tried to emulate the sprawling conflicts of Hoth, Endor and Naboo, but the key thing is that outside of the space combat genre, no one has succeeded to any significant degree. It seems, in hindsight, like the obvious thing to do. Given just how much fighting goes on across the five Star Wars films we've seen to date, it's surprising that it's taken this long for someone to marry the films' vast, iconic battles to a Battlefield 1942 style premise.