Star Wars: Battlefront Dev Says It Didn't Consider Single-Player Campaign

Star Wars: Battlefront developer DICE has said it never thought about including a narrative-driven single-player component in its game, and stated multiplayer was always the focus.

Speaking in an interview with GameSpot, the studio's general manager Patrick Bach was asked whether the lack of a single-player mode was a consequence of needing to launch prior to the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens movie.

Bach responds by saying, although the release deadline "did influence [DICE's] decisions early on," it never reached the stage of concepting a single-player campaign.

"To be honest, single-player was never in the plan," he said. "It was never the concept."

He added: "The concept for us was always that we wanted players to re-live the battles. We wanted them to play the battles from the original movies. And DICE, coming from its Battlefield background, knows how to make awesome battles in that context."

Elsewhere in the interview, Bach discussed the quality of DICE's previous single-player campaigns. He was asked if the studio thought about hiring the talent required to improve its campaigns, given that publisher EA is becoming increasingly reliant on the studio for its big projects.

"Yes absolutely, and it's not as though we haven't done single-player before," he said. "I would agree with you, our single-player has not been as strong as our multiplayer.

"But then again you could argue that we are comparing our campaigns with what some say are the greatest multiplayer games in the world. If you try to match that, you are probably doomed for failure. Or at least, it's very, very hard."

Star Wars: Battlefront was the final demonstration at EA's E3 2015 press conference. The lengthy gameplay demo shown during the event depicted a large-scale battle on Hoth, and viewers were shown both ground-level and air combat. It culminated with the appearance of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader on the battlefield.

GameSpot went hands-on with the game at E3. Read our Star Wars: Battlefront preview for our impressions.

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