2015 Gaming Odds & Ends Awards | GameSided Recap

2015 Gaming Odds & Ends Awards – Hard Deadline Victim of the Year: Star Wars: Battlefront

Whether or not you want to believe it, Star Wars: Battlefront launched in an incomplete state. Not only were there a depressingly limited amount of planets to explore at launch (Hoth, Tatooine, Sullust, and Mustafar), but the sheer amount of gameplay options that were present in previous editions of the Star Wars: Battlefront series were absent. No more substantive single-player modes. No more aerial space battles. A large focus goes towards original trilogy content. One throw-in map of Jakku as free December DLC made to hype Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Therein lies the rub; there is no way that EA DICE could have delayed Star Wars: Battlefront. Not only was its one-month-early release a heavily planned ploy to market Star Wars nostalgia to a wanting and eager market, but there’s no way that Disney wouldn’t be supremely angry with a post-The Force Awakens launch of the game. It’s there to serve as overall Star Wars hype, as well, directing fans of the space opera film saga towards a new generation of gaming experiences.

It’s made most clear in the Season Pass plans for Star Wars: Battlefront, which cost almost as much as the base game to provide as much as the base game currently has in add-on maps, gameplay options, and other content. Paying $50 to double the number of planets in the game seems like an unfair injustice of a supreme magnitude, especially when you’re expecting millions to buy the game for Day 1.

Next: The EA DLC Award