“May July the 16th be with you,” as Star Wars fans say. This weekend saw Trekkies from across the world gather in London to celebrate the Star Wars Summer Holiday Special festival, which brought announcements aplenty. For starters, you’ll be able to swing a glowtube in cyberspace with Trials On Tatooine coming free on Vive today. Then there’s Star Wars Battlefront [official site] news. Electronic Arts showed off the Death Star expansion’s space-battling, trench-running, and Chewbacca-hgrngnnrnging action in a wee trailer, which you can see below. They also said a tiny bit about the final add-on, which draws from the upcoming spin-off movie Star Wars: Rogue One.
Here, have a gander at the Death Star expansion:
“There are all-new maps, with combat taking place in space outside the Death Star, and inside the walls of the ultimate weapon,” EA said in the announcement. “Test your skill by taking off and flying through a trench on the surface of the Death Star.”
It’ll also bring new weapons and new Heroes in the form of lizardman Bossk and carpetman Chewbacca. Death Star will be coming in September for DLC Season Pass holders, because EA had the damned foolish idea of giving two-weeks’ early access to them.
As for Rogue One, its add-on is named Rogue One: Scarif and will be coming this holiday season. That’s pretty much it for that.
In other Battlefront news, an offline mode is coming this Thursday. EA have said that it “offers players the option to play offline against bots in a solo mission or with a friend using co-op split screen. (Console only) Skirmish can be played on a difficulty level of your choosing and across two modes, Walker Assault and Fighter Squadron.”
18/07/2016 at 14:18 Llewyn says:
Oh, Alice. You know it’s mean to troll the Trekkies.
18/07/2016 at 14:58 int says:
My favorite part of Star Trek was when Jack O’Neil said “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”
18/07/2016 at 17:49 Dare_Wreck says:
Mine was when the Wookiee said, “On Chulak, when a great warrior retires from the field of battle, it is customary to sing a song of lament. Fortunately we are not on Chulak.”
18/07/2016 at 18:00 phuzz says:
To be fair, the O’Neill/Teal’c friendship is pretty similar to Han/Chewie. They’re both made up of a wise-cracking adventurer and a straight-man (er, alien).
18/07/2016 at 17:34 Carlos Danger says:
No need to troll the Trekkies any more, that has been fully covered by JJ. It is poor form to pile on.
18/07/2016 at 14:24 King in Winter says:
“Commence operation Vacu-Suck.”
18/07/2016 at 14:40 phelix says:
“(…)the ultimate weapon.”
18/07/2016 at 14:42 phelix says:
Blast! I fail at HTML. The text was supposed to link to: link to youtube.com
18/07/2016 at 14:47 phelix says:
And while I’m referencing meta humor, I should of course show this: link to youtube.com
18/07/2016 at 15:53 Nosada says:
You should like spaceballz, everyone should.
18/07/2016 at 15:55 Nosada says:
Did I just end a word with a z … I need to get off the internet for a while, like a decade or two.
18/07/2016 at 16:50 DanMan says:
Yeah. What a rude thing to say.
18/07/2016 at 16:52 DanMan says:
That was supposed to be a reply to Nosada.
18/07/2016 at 17:27 Askis says:
Flying the trench run, in Frostbite, with the marvelous sounds EA put together?
Nngh, want.
Buying Battlefront just for that?
Nope.
18/07/2016 at 21:54 Det. Bullock says:
And you can’t even use the old four-buttons USB joystick used for Freespace so much time ago either mouse and keyboard or an Xbox360 gamepad.
Also the flying engine isn’t arcade, it’s simply rubbish, Rogue Squadron 3D and Rogue Leader did it MUCH better and it felt like flying not some clumsy “point at thing and autoaim”.
I’m not using the X-wing series as a reference only because that would be triple overkill compare to the simple overkill the Factor 5 games are.
19/07/2016 at 02:25 Nick says:
Y’know what? The trench run isn’t actually much fun. Thanks, X-wing. Oddly enough, patrolling the borders and scanning for illicit cargo in TIE Fighter is infinitly more engaging and enjoyable.
What makes for good cinema doesn’t always make for good gameplay.
18/07/2016 at 17:38 Freud says:
I don’t know how they failed with this. Just make a Battlefield game in Star Wars.
Don’t focus on adding big lore characters. Just Battlefield in Star Wars. Empire Soldiers vs Rebellion Soldiers and speeders/X-wings/Tie Fighters replacing the planes.
If there was a game that should have been a slam dunk it was this one and they screwed it up.
18/07/2016 at 20:26 Spinkick says:
Just like the prequals, every company wants to cash in on the “casual” money, which is a bigger market. Everyone wants to make the big bucks.
18/07/2016 at 20:33 Darth Gangrel says:
Fortunately, it eclipsed EA’s sale projections, so obviously enough want it and there’s already a second game (and probably a third) in the making.
At least, we’ve heard more of the so-called “Uncharted Star Wars” game by Amy Hennig. Finally a Star Wars game that doesn’t seem wholly uninteresting… okay, the offline mode for BF with bots solves the problem of people being jerks and bad internet connection/server issues. I’d still rather play The Force Unleashed 2 than BF, though.
19/07/2016 at 02:22 Nick says:
yeah, cause the Uncharted games are so fucking interesting.
19/07/2016 at 10:59 Darth Gangrel says:
I haven’t played any Uncharted games and don’t know much about this new Star Wars game, but like I said, I don’t think it’ll be wholly uninteresting unlike the (basically) MP-only BF.
19/07/2016 at 11:21 Comco says:
Ok, I don’t hang out in console circles, but you are seriously the first person I’ve seen write Uncharted off in a single sentence. I thought it was an outstanding series, personally…
18/07/2016 at 22:05 Det. Bullock says:
The sad thing is that a straight remake of X-wing vs Tie Fighter would make boatloads of money anyway just because it’s Star Wars, hell I bet it would sell so much it’d put Elite and the JPEG sellers to shame, but since it won’t make quite CoD level money it will never be made.
19/07/2016 at 02:21 Nick says:
Why don’t you like spaceballs? Is there something wrong with you?
19/07/2016 at 11:33 Comco says:
“Test your skill by taking off and flying through a trench”
That is seriously the worst, most pedestrian piece of PR writing I’ve seen in a long time. You’re a multi-billion dollar corporation marketing a multi-billion dollar franchise and that’s the best excitement-inducing hyperbole you can come up with? What’s next?
“Display your incredible strength by picking up a chain and strangling a fat guy with it”.