Within every Battlefront related thread that gets posted here on GAF and other gaming forums across the web, I've seen a lot of comments involving misconceptions regarding what these games really had in common and what made them unique from each other. I'm here to try and set the record strait by breaking down this series to show just how similar and different it really was to Battlefield at the time. For my own sanity and to make things easier to read, I will use BF when referring to Battlefield games and SWBF for Battlefront. This discussion will only focus on the first two main games in each series meaning Battlefront 1 & 2, and Battlefield 1942 & 2. Modern Battlefield games from 2142 to the most recent Hardline have had the chance to evolve its series over time while future Battlefront games were limited to releases for handheld devices like the PSP and DS. I feel like this is where a lot of the confusion originates from because comparing Battlefront to today's Battlefield games strikes a lot more differences than the earlier installments.
Conquest:
Conquest was the defining game mode of the Battlefield series. Conquest was Battlefield, and Battlefield was Conquest. Give players a large open map sprinkled with vehicles for lots of players and ai-controlled bots to fight over a handful of key map locations. Capture a location and you get a new place for your team to respawn from. You win when the other team has run out of respawns or no longer control any posts. This mode is what made BF1942 what it was compared to other shooters on the market so when SWBF1 centered itself around this game mode then many no longer felt the need to look any deeper into these games. At this point, some were certain SWBF1 was just BF1942 with its WWII era models replaced by Star Wars ones, and that any other changes would not be big enough to impact the game in a meaningful way. This is a reasonable assumption considering no other game was like BF1942 at the time, but a game is not defined only by its modes. Doom invented Team Deathmatch as we know it, but every game that includes it is not considered a Doom game. There is so much more to what makes a shooter game what it is than just it's match structure even for a series as closely associated with it as Battlefield is.
While Conquest in SWBF1 was pretty much a copy/paste of BF1942's, it threw in two key twists to keep things fresh. Those two things were destructible command posts and heroes. On some SWBF1 maps like Hoth and Endor, specific points on the map could only belong to one team and could not be captured by the opponent. The only way to take it from them was to destroy it. This added an asymmetrical element to a symmetrical game mode and fit perfectly into Star Wars lore given the objectives of those battles in the films. Large vehicles like AT-ATs even acted as mobile command posts letting players spawn around them wherever they went.
Heroes were another addition that spiced up Battlefront's take on the formula. In SWBF1 they were invincible AI-controlled bots of famous characters like Darth Vader that roamed the map picking off enemies with their one-hit melee attack. Sounds a bit boring at first, but they became my personal favorite part of SWBF1 after I found a few tricks you could do to actually kill them, but they were difficult to pull off. After hundreds of normal matches, they suddenly became the most challenging aspect of the game for me and kept me hooked for a few hundred more. They gave me something new to focus on that BF1942 never had. In SWBF2 they had a similar effect, but in a very different way. This time the bots were tossed out and players were given control of the heroes as a reward for scoring enough points in the match. Everyone wanted to be the hero. You were powerful and could slash your way through wave after wave of enemy players. Getting your time as the hero became the focus of the match for players. Titanfall's Titans would be a good modern example of this, but imagine that only one player on your team could be in a Titan at a time and were given out based on how well you played instead of a timer. Battlefield games never had anything like this, and it is one of the fundamental reasons for why fans claim Battlefront games as something a little more than just a Battlefield clone.
Classes:
Class-based multiplayer was another integral aspect of the Battlefield games that Battlefront would adopt. Both series had a nearly identical class structure with a few small differences. Both consisted of classes like standard offensive troops, medics to hand out health and ammo, engineers to repair vehicles, heavy troops to combat vehicles, and snipers to scout and provide support at long range. Future Battlefield titles would go on to allow players to customize these classes, but the early titles did not along with the Battlefront games. Both SWBF1 and SWBF2 had a slight spin on the system by allowing players to unlock special classes like troops with jetpacks and Droidekas with shields for earning a certain amount of points during a match. This helped add some more variety to the encounters as the match progressed while also contributing to Battlefront's larger sense of scale with something like a jetpack's added traversal options.
Combat:
To me, the main thing that separates one shooter from another is its gun play or combat style. So many factors tie into this like weapon behavior, player mobility, abilities, speed, etc. All of those things combined are what truly make a shooter what it is, and this is where these two series differ the most. I want to start off by saying that there are two sides of the Battlefront community. One is the console side filled with players who had never touched a Battlefield game before SWBF1 released because it was a PC-exclusive series until the Modern Combat version of BF2 released one week before SWBF2. The other side is the PC player who knew and played BF1942 before SWBF1 released in 2004 or BF2 before SWBF2 released in 2005. If you were a PC player then Battlefront games were played from the first person perspective by default just like a Battlefield game, but if you were a console player then they were third person by default. This might not seem like a big change at first, but it had greater effects than you would think. Players had the option to change their perspective if they wanted, but many didn't even know the option existed as it was hidden away in each game's settings menus.
Over the years I have played the games from both perspectives and each time I did I would notice my play style change. One of the core differences between these series is the ability to barrel roll. If I was playing in third person view then I found myself using it often for dodging shots, escaping a grenade's blast radius, and moving in and out of cover quickly. Whenever I played in first person view then I found myself using it less and less. The smaller viewing angle gave me less visibility to know where my character would go when I barrel rolled. I ended up running into trees, walls, and falling off of platforms enough that I eventually stopped using it. This caused me to ease out of my run-and-gun style to a more cautious and strategic style of play after that defensive option was no longer usable. I would hug walls, pop in and out of cover, and use my squad commands more. Basically, I would start playing it more like a BF game. It went from a faster-paced, run-&-gun arcade game to more of a slower, tactical sim just by how I looked at the game. Maybe I'm just exaggerating here, but I can't help saying that the game felt different to me, and I don't believe I am the only one.
Just look at the differing styles of play seen in these two videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NdWoXQz4gm0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1-5jz3VP25s#t=28
One is utilizing all of their mobility options like jumping, barrel-rolling, and strafing to avoid shots and grenades while the other is hugging and peaking around cover while knowing when to move. A run-&-gun arcade experience vs a tactical sim-like experience. This is what really separates these two games from each other when they are nearly identical in most other areas.
Dogfighting:
Both SWBF1 and BF1942 featured aerial vehicles on their maps for players to get into dogfights (a.k.a. flight combat) and attack ground targets from the skies. BF2 stuck close to this formula as well, but SWBF2 separated the aerial vehicles from the ground battles into their own game mode by taking them into space. Space combat is something that many would consider to be the biggest contribution that SWBF2 made to the Battlefront series. Spawn in a capital ship, get into a star fighter, board the enemy's ship, and take it down from within. These are some of the features that are making Star Citizen such an anticipated title today when the seeds for it were planted by the Battlefront series almost 10 years ago. Something like this would have never been seen in a Battlefield game with its focus on realism even in its sci-fi installment BF2142.
There were a few other fundamental gameplay differences that contributed to its more arcadey style of play. Battlefield games let you equip a knife to use as a melee weapon, but Battlefront games did not give the player the ability to melee. After all, a knife wouldn't exactly feel at home in a Star Wars game. Its going to be interesting to see how DICE handles the mechanic in their reboot of the franchise. Other small features like aim-assist made popular by console shooters over the years were present in SWBF1 & SWBF2, but not in the PC-exclusive BF1942 as expected or even BF2 as well. Above all was the lack of ability to pick up weapons dropped by dead players on the map. No matter what happened in a Battlefront game, you were always locked in to whatever class you were playing as until you were killed and allowed to respawn with a different choice. SWBF2 would eventually let players change classes at command posts, but that is beside the point here. This allowed for the designers to have greater control over the balance of the game without having to deal with mixed classes from weapon exchanges, but gave the game a lot less variety in its encounters that had to be made up for in its extra classes.
The core gameplay in these series weren't completely different though as they shared many features as well. Both had a early form of aim-down-sight that would soon be made popular by today's shooters. Back then it was simply a more zoomed-in view of the game screen to let players line up their shots a little easier at longer ranges, but without the added animations and visual sights seen in recent entries of the Battlefield series. Hit markers are another popular feature today seen in both games that gave the player visual feedback when their shots hit an enemy. Squad commands allowed players in both series to give out orders to nearby bots to do various things like follow them, attack an enemy, defend an area, etc. Other core mechanics like going prone, crouching, and sprinting were seen in both series albeit some were exclusive to certain installments.
Campaigns:
The campaigns in both BF1942 and SWBF1 were structurally identical, and basically were not campaigns. If there was one thing to copy from BF1942, it was not this. They were just normal games of conquest multiplayer matches dressed up to be something more than they really were. Titanfall would again be a good modern day comparison to what these "campaigns" were like. As time went on, both series made drastic improvements to their campaigns, but as they stood at the beginning they were the same and not great. They were the true low points of both games at the time.
Ranking System:
While neither SWBF1 nor BF1942 featured any kind of ranking system, their sequels did. 3 years before Call of Duty 4 came along and made RPG elements like progression ranks and unlocks a staple of the shooter genre, BF2 and SWBF2 had them. The system isn't exactly the same as CoD's and wasn't presented as well to the player or given as much focus so it was easy to forget about after 10 years have passed. In SWBF2, players would earn medals during each match by completing various challenges. These medals would ultimately add to your overall rank after every match and eventually lead to unlocking award variants of each class's weapons that functioned slightly different from their normal counterparts. BF2 which released in June of 2005 had a similar system, but not exactly the same. Considering BF2 released in mid 2005, one might assume that its ranking system had a direct influence on SWBF2's which arrived on Halloween of the same year.
You can find a quick recap of each system at the follow links:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Battlefront_II/Table_of_Contents
http://bf2awards.com/ranks/
Overall, the Battlefront games were without a doubt Battlefield style games at their core as they were originally envisioned with that series in mind. However, those who say they were nothing more than just a Star Wars version of Battlefield is a premature assumption as well considering the Star Wars license and console focus allowed the games to develop a style of their own that the series could have evolved if it had continued on over the years. For console gamers like myself at the time, Battlefront was our first taste of a Battlefield style game. Because of this, many look back at the series as being something more than it really was, but the same could be said for those who played on PC and see the series as something less than what it eventually became. I don't ever really see an end to the debate as Battlefront is about as borderline of an example as you could find of something being considered a clone and there is more than enough evidence to support both sides.
The majority of the discussion surrounding what DICE's reboot of the series should and should not include have often been based on the common misconceptions of these series as many simply do not remember these games as well after 10 years so they generalize their thoughts based on what they do remember of them or simply point out things they don't like about today's Battlefield games and say it shouldn't have that even when the original games did. When many say they hope it won't just be Star Wars: Battlefield, they truly mean a modern Battlefield game and not the ones that the Battlefront series spawned from. Everyone just wants the game that they have waited 10 years to play and not just a rehash of the ones they have been playing on a bi-yearly basis in recent years. So many feel that the reboot needs to retain the series' defining alterations or it wouldn't be worth the wait, but this isn't necessarily true. As long as it is great then it will be worth the wait in my opinion. DICE knows they have lots of fan expectations on their hands, but they still have to be realistic about today's audience. Because of this I feel like they would use the modern Battlefield formula as a base and incorporate aspects of the Battlefront series that would fit well into it. With that in mind I think things like heroes, special classes, and space combat could be safe bets for returning while its arcadey third person combat style would require an overhaul of Battlefield's combat mechanics. That's just the reality of it to me and many out there will find it difficult to accept which is why I fear for its reception. Expectations ruin a lot of games, and 10 years of waiting currently has them through the roof for this one. Just don't let the dark side cloud your judgement of what could a good game just because it wasn't what you wanted. I know its hard after so long of a wait with so many cancellations along the way, but its something that fans like myself just need to learn how to do.
