Star Wars Battlefront has authentically balanced guns thanks to LucasFilm

Star Wars Battlefront is turning out to maybe not be a kak game at all. At least, that’s the word according to Sandy, who I had to Force choke with my mind and my hands because he wouldn’t shut up about the game.

It looks great, plays fantastic and it has more Star Wars in it than an R2-D2 prop with a dead midget inside on the set of Star Wars Episode VIII: Finding Yoda. It’s a game that really nails the essence of Star Wars. Including fictional weapons, such as those clumsy blasters.

“I think that there’s a lot that’s known about Star Wars,” senior producer and the rather awesomely-named Sigurlína Ingvarsdottir said to GamesRadar.

People that we worked with at Lucasfilm have supported other game teams for quite a while so some of the challenges that we are facing, other teams have faced. So we get to share learning with them.

With the Star Wars, came some specific requirements as well, as LucasFilm was very strict on keeping their universe in any format in a consistent space. “They have some very specific opinions about how things need to work in order to be consistent with the logic of the Star Wars universe,” Ingvarsdottir explained.

We work with a group called the Production Group. Then there’s the Story Group. They have a set direction for how things work and how things are. We work pretty closely so they tell us ‘this works this way, this works that way. We can tweak this, this we can’t change.

All that oversight then governs exactly how fast Han Solo’s trusty DL-44 blaster or a Stormtrooper’s E-11 rifle should fire. And at the end of the day, it’s always LucasFilm who gets the final word on what should work, as Ingvarsdottir explained:

What they say doesn’t work is what doesn’t work. Of course, games are not movies. Things that are obvious from a movie perspective don’t necessarily work in a game. You have to make concessions for the medium and make sure if it looks fantastic.

 

If it isn’t fun as a weapon or as a hero or as a vehicle then nobody benefits. [Lucasfilm] understand that. We go back and forth on issues and usually we solve it. There aren’t many cases of something that we really wanted to do that didn’t make it.

And that’s the tricky part of the game, that needs to be nailed before release. Creating something that is authentic and fun to play.

Last Updated: June 29, 2015