It isn’t often that a game comes out with a huge amount of animosity behind it, only to stay relevant for two whole years after the release. Normally when a multiplayer centric game comes out and is received very poorly, it dies off within the first 6 months. Games like Battleborn and Evolve are clear examples of this, but with any rules there are exceptions. Battlefront 2 falls into the category of multiplayer games that turned it around, joining games like For Honor and The Elder Scrolls Online as games that got the ship on the right course. It is a credit to the developer and the publisher when a game makes a full turn around and becomes successful. A majority of publishers would just cut their losses, but when they stick it out, it shows the faith they have in the developers to listen to the community and make the changes required. If you were to look at Battlefront 2 in 2019, you wouldn’t be able to see the issues that plagued it upon the initial release. So where did DICE and EA go wrong initially? How did they take such a beloved IP in Star Wars, and piss so many people off? More importantly, how did they turn it around?
Controversy from the Start
Even before Battlefront 2 released, people were quick to try and bury the game. EA didn’t give people a lot of hope to believe in them after the release of Battlefront 1, a game that can really be summed up by saying “ehh, its okay.” As with many DICE games, the mechanics were solid, but the game severely lacked depth. Everything was unlocked at level 50, but once you reached that point there was no other form of progression. The maps were gorgeous but the game modes to play on them were simple and didn’t do much to separate themselves from their counterparts. It is worth noting that DICE started to turn Battlefront 1 around towards the end with some decent DLC, including new maps, guns and heroes. However, the season pass was $50, which is only $10 less than the entire game. That isn’t something you see very often when it comes to season passes.
Perhaps the biggest issue everyone had with Battlefront 1 was that there was no single player campaign whatsoever. There wasn’t anything you could do by yourself other than some survival missions that felt like they were ultimately thrown into the game, presumably so that DICE could say there is SOME single player. It is especially disappointing when the two original Battlefront games had such simple, but extremely fun single player campaigns. That was the feature people looked back on when they thought about the two original games. Because of EA and DICE’s mishandling the first time around, people were skeptical about whether they would improve the sequel, or if it would be more of the same. When Battlefront 2 did finally hit shelves, the worries of most fans turned out to be true.
EA and Their Good ‘Ole Microtransactions
Now I have been on record in saying that microtransactions are not all that bad when used properly. Battlefront 2 did no such thing. When you are adding things that people have to pay real money for, the one glaring and obvious rule is that those things you can purchase cannot give you a leg up on your opponents in the game. That is truly the one thing people will look at, and instantly grab their pitchforks microtransactions did in Battlefront 2. You could pay money for loot packs, and in those packs could be items that make your blaster overheat slower, make your character generate health quicker and even make your character deal more damage. All of which drastically affect your moment to moment gameplay. And in the true gamer way, people were pissed, and EA being the perpetrators, making it that much easier for players to hurl their anger at them. It also didn’t help that Battlefront 2 came out during the most controversial time for microtransactions to be implemented in a game. There were multiple countries that looked into even making them illegal at the time. These countries looked at microtransactions as a form of gambling, that shouldn’t be so easily accessible to minors. More than a few developers make microtransactions that prey directly on the people who are more susceptible to gambling issues. This was a problem that was seriously shining a negative light on video games as a whole, and EA made this problem that much bigger with the release of Battlefront 2.
There were some players that wanted to highlight just how much you would have to grind for certain items as opposed to just purchasing them. If you wanted to play as Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, you had to put in nearly 40 hours of gameplay for just one of those characters. Again, when this is done right, that isn’t the craziest thing ever. But for just a single character, especially one as iconic as Darth Vader, there is no excuse to put him behind that long of a grind. This issue was only made worse when EA tried to excuse this decision by saying players would feel “a sense of pride and accomplishment” when they finally unlocked one of these characters. Yeah, I would feel really prideful after I played for 40 hours to unlock Darth Vader, when some kid just bought him instead after just getting the game.
What Battlefront 2 Got Right in the First Place
Of course, like most games, Battlefront 2 wasn’t all bad when it came out. People tend to overblow how bad a game is when things like microtransactions are added to the experience. Battlefront 2 seemingly improved on a lot of things that the first one got wrong. For starters, it actually had a campaign! The campaign was one that you would fully expect out of a AAA first person shooter. It took 5-6 hours to complete, there was a pretty solid story behind it with incredibly acted characters and the same beautiful graphics that the first one had. The main protagonist of the campaign, Iden Versio, is a character that I truly enjoyed playing as. All of this came together to tell a Star Wars story that can be respected by even the most hardcore of fans.
The actual gameplay of the multiplayer was overshadowed by its pay to win formula, but when you isolate how the game actually played, it did a lot of things right. For starters, Battlefront 2 looked and sounded better than any game out at the time. There is one thing we can say for certain about EA games by now: when their games are created using the Frostbite Engine, they are always gorgeous. Battlefront 2 somehow looked better than the first one, which is saying a lot. The multiplayer also got the heroes more balanced this time around. In the first Battlefront, heroes could block blasters all day long, and one hit killed any non-hero player. That isn’t the case in Battlefront 2. You can’t just charge an entire battalion of Storm Troopers and expect to get out just fine. They can kill you relatively quickly if you let them hit you. You are encouraged to play it a bit more passively when roaming the battlefield with these heroes.
These aren’t the only things that Battlefront 2 got right, but it’s clear to see that the bad outweighed the good. When the reviews were released, Battlefront 2 scored between the high4’s and the mid 5’s on a ten point scale. Metacritic showed that the average review score was 66, nowhere near the quality that you would expect from such a successful IP; an IP that, when portrayed on the silver screen, seems to get nothing wrong.
The Road to Redemption
It didn’t take long for EA to see what a royal mistake they made when approving this game for launch. By the end of the month, after Battlefront 2 was released, EA had lost $3 billion in stock value. On March 16, 2018 DICE announced that they were going to change the formula for loot and progression entirely. Here are some of the key changes that DICE made.
Loot boxes now only contain credits, which you use to buy in game skins, poses and emotes. Loot boxes would no longer contain “star cards” which were the items that upgrade your class stats and made them more powerful overall. You now had to actually play as that class in order to unlock the abilities. It is honestly amazing the EA and DICE didn’t see that as being the proper way to progress your character. It took $3billion in stock loss and more negative media attention than you could imagine in order for those changes to be made.
Following these changes, Battlefront 2 was steadily gaining a loyal fan base, and the game was slowly turning around. In E3 of 2018, DICE amped up the positivity around the game by announcing their future content that would come to the game. The content was centered on The Clone Wars. The roadmap showed new maps, blasters, skins and a whole lot more. But most importantly, we got 4 new heroes: General Grievous, Obi Wan, Anakin Skywalker and Count Dooku. If there is anything we love being added to new Star Wars games, it is new heroes (the more the better). All of this DLC was completely free by the way. The second half of 2018 was a good few months for Battlefront 2. The buzz around the game was slowly coming back, and the player base that stuck with the game was finally starting to not be so alone.
Even now, in 2019 Battlefront 2 is going strong. It helps when a new Star Wars movie is coming out of course. Around these times, people start to get Star Wars fever. To take advantage of that, DICE just recently added a Rise of Skywalker update to go along with the new movie. Battlefront 2: Celebration Edition was just released as well: and it includes every skin that was previously added to the game. It is sold at $40 regularly, but at a discounted rate of $25 for existing players. Even if you aren’t willing to shell out $25 for Battlefront 2, that’s okay. You can pick it up at most retailers for $15 or even less. You can get it used if you don’t want EA making any money off you if that’s how anti-EA you are. With a buy-in price that is so low, the game really becomes a steal for any Star Wars fan. There is a whole lot of joy to be had when playing this game with your friends. If you aren’t that into multiplayer games, you can still play the single player campaign. While that may take up 5-6 hours of your time, there has also been free story DLC released that can give your experience a little bit more bang for your buck.
This won’t excuse the mistakes that EA has made in the past with the Star Wars license, that much is certain. That shouldn’t deter you from trying this game if you have been wanting to for a while, but all the negative media coverage has made you hesitant. With only a few years left on EA’s deal with Disney, most of which has been a letdown so far, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order was just released and both fans and critics seem to love it. Battlefront 2 is constantly being improved on and has become a viable game of service. It just goes to show that some companies, even the huge money hungry ones, can learn from their mistakes. We should be rooting for them to fix the poor decisions of their past. When we do, we get excellent games out of it. I know that is why we are all angry in the first place, but there is no reason to get worked up about it. If enough people voice their problems with a game, we can eventually get something as bad as early Battlefront 2 turned into one of the best games of its genre that is around today.
