Star Wars Battlefront's E3 2015 Demo Shows a Simpler, Smarter Battlefield

Here's my major takeaway from the Star Wars: Battlefront gameplay trailer shown at EA's E3 2015 press conference: This looks like a more accessible and arcade-like Battlefield game. I think this is a great idea. Compared to the Battlefield series, where the recent games have become inundated with more complex mechanics of much smaller scope, Battlefront looks like it's stripped down and simplified in a smart and deliberate way.

Consider that primary weapons don't appear to use ammunition; instead, they heat up as they're being fired, and you must let go of the trigger to let them cool down. Ammo management doesn't have much of a place in a Star Wars game where everyone is firing blaster rifles, so a heat system makes perfect sense. I wonder, though: will this mean the team-focused mechanic of providing ammo for other players also has no place in the game? Perhaps not: three cards in the lower right of the heads-up display appeared to represent inventory items like grenades, which had an ammo count.

Your crosshair doesn't expand while you're moving. This means your aiming doesn't get worse when on the run.

Outside of ammo management, weapon handling appears to be simpler, too. There's less of a focus on using iron sights--though some longer-range weapons still have scopes--and more on firing and moving. This is possible because--and let's not understate how significant this is--your crosshair doesn't expand while you're moving. This means your aiming doesn't get worse when on the run.

The use of special weapons is also simpler, too. Taking a cue from a game mode that originally appeared in a Battlefield 3 expansion pack, weapons such as rocket launchers are now found as power-ups placed throughout the level, rather than equipped in your loadout. This means that anyone is capable of taking down a vehicle, as long as they can find and retrieve a rocket launcher. This hasn't been possible in a Battlefield game before, to the same degree.

On the objective side, instead of capturing flags, your mission on the Hoth level appears to be to activate a number of radar dishes in a manner similar to how you would activate MCOM stations in Battlefield's Rush mode. It's a simpler, easier thing to achieve: just go up to the console and activate it, rather than stand in an area for a while.

This simpler, arcade-like focus makes sense. Star Wars is bigger than Battlefield, and DICE is smart to try to make the game as accessible as possible to allow room for any kind of Star Wars fan to play it. But from this gameplay trailer, it looks like the developer is doing this without sacrificing the tactical, competitive gameplay that makes the Battlefield series so enticing.