April 18--The line between what it means to watch a video game and play a movie is about to get much, much blurrier. On Friday here, during Star Wars Celebration, the semi-occasional Lucasfilm-produced "Star Wars" convention running though Sunday, one of the most feverishly anticipated events was a panel discussion/coming-out-party for "Star Wars: Battlefront," the upcoming, open-world war game (think "Call of Duty," with Tie-Fighters) from DICE, EA games' Swedish game development arm.
Or is it, in a sense, from Lucasfilm?
Doug Chiang, Lucasfilm's executive creative director, watched footage of the game -- which seems to very much immerse you in George Lucas' imagination -- and marveled. He said the amount of research and detail that went into the game, and the amount of the research and detail that went into J.J. Abrams' "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," was so similar that "we could have been working on each other's projects and we might have both come to exactly the same place" -- in terms of look and feel. "The two mediums are so close now that that," he said, gesturing at the trailer for the game, "that really could have been a feature film."
In more ways than one.
The Friday unveiling of about five or six solid game footage -- the game itself was available yet to test and is not expected to be finished until fall -- drew a ballroom packed with thousands of "Star Wars" fans, many still buzzing about the previous day's unveiling of actual movie footage. And when the presentation was finished, they raced to a massive EA booth, where they stood in line again for hours, for the chance to be ushered into a mock Rebel Alliance war room, where they cheered and audibly gasped.
After one session, a man in a kilt and Stormtrooper armor cried out:
"More please."
Which poses a nice problem for Craig McLeod, the game's producer. Standing outside the screening room, he said he was nervous, he knew he was opening himself up to intense scrutiny by taking on a beloved franchise. Asked what the hardest part of development was, he smiled:
"Managing expectations."
The game will not have a single-player campaign mode; instead, game play will be centered, as with many first-person shooting games now, around on-line play that pits two teams -- Rebels vs. Imperials -- in a handful of familiar "Star Wars" worlds, including Hoth and Endor. Alongside the usual Tie and X-Wing fighters, players can pilot the Millennium Falcon and the Empire's large mechanized At-At walkers.
And so far, based on footage, it's promising, visceral, with a kind of stepping-into the movie feel -- even explosions look slightly cheaper than usual, like a nod to the movie pyrotechnics of the late '70s and early '80s. Another impressive touch: John Williams score seems to cue to the appropriate symphonic flourish or denouement depending on game play.
The effect, McLeod said, should be to give the player a distinctly old-school (i.e., 1970s "Star Wars") sense of playing with their old-school "Star Wars" toys, acting out battle campaigns they once mimed with plastic Han Solos and Wookies. Translation: You never have to leave the house again.
