Star Wars Battlefront – the quest to capture fan nostalgia

We’re in a tiny closed-off area at the Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California. It is, of course, decked out like a Rebel Alliance briefing room. Journalists from around the world are waiting to see a video of the new Star Wars shooter, Battlefront.

Publisher Electronic Arts is not letting anyone play the game, we’re just here to gaze at footage of someone else playing. We watch a short skirmish on the familiar planet of Endor, complete with AT-ST walker, Stormtroopers, trees splintered in half by blaster fire, and speeder bike chases. A platoon of rebel soldiers encounters an AT-AT, stomping through the lushly detailed forest; they call in a Y-Wing airstrike which incinerates the giant transporter. Then in strolls Darth Vader, force gripping throats and fending off laser blasts with his lightsaber. Above all, the stentorian John Williams score booms around us in Dolby 3D. It is intoxicating.

This is “Walker Assault” one of the modes that makes up Battlefront’s multiplayer-focused offering. There’s no campaign, only themed single-player “special missions” to accompany the main attraction: online fights with up to 40 participants. Players will get to fly X-Wings, TIE Fighters and the Millennium Falcon (but only just above the planet surfaces – not in space). Apparently, at certain points in battles they’ll also be able to spawn as major hero or villain characters, like Vader and Fett, to wreak more havoc – a feature from the original Battlefront games, but also more recently reminiscent of the asymmetrical gameplay in Titanfall, with its giant over-powered mechs.

Whatever, this is basically a compendium of beloved Star Wars moments and concepts, a greatest hits package designed to excite the sort of people milling around outside this media cubicle.

Star Wars Celebration is a huge Star Wars fan convention with costumes, exhibits, screenings, exclusive merchandise, celebrity guests, panels, autograph sessions, and fan-inspired activities. EA’s PR rep tells us that it’s the “only place” to debut this game footage. We have been brought here, I think, to experience (before we start writing) how vast, diverse and lovely the Star Wars fandom is, and how absolutely hyped they are about Battlefront. As if on cue, a few fans ask us about the game as we stride by; they gesture excitedly at our Battlefront media passes.

The characters in Star Wars Battlefront will be customisable, but within rigidly defined limits. Players will be able to select weapons, gear, abilities and various alien species, but as Patrick Bach, general manager of EA’s Dice studio, later tells Eurogamer, they won’t be able to give Darth Vader a pink cape – to “preserve the authenticity”.

However, I think the attendees at this convention could cope with that – they seem perfectly willing to experiment. There are grandma Jedis, there’s a Princess Leia pushing a pram with a tiny baby Princess Leia (complete with tiny knitted bagel-hair hat), there’s a woman dressed in fluffy Taun Taun costume, there are four or five of the blue slave dancers from Return of the Jedi, there are gender-swapped Han and Leia families and toddler X-Wing pilots, there’s even a cheeky Star Trek Uhura with her boyfriend dressed as a redshirt just for laughs. There are people from every age and background here. It seems like a community that welcomes everyone.

In the briefing room we’re hearing about the framerate (60fps on all platforms), the splitscreen two-player co-op mode (a hark back to the classic days of shared Star Wars gaming) and the ability to play in first- and third person perspectives. Alongside the game’s Tatooine, Hoth, Endor, and Sullust locations, there will also be a Battle of Jakku expansion pack, available with pre-orders, or later as a download. Jakku is one of the main settings in Force Awakens. Brand synergy. Meanwhile, somewhere else in the building, merchandisers are selling toasters in the shape of Darth Vader’s helmet and a Chewbacca Furbie that is called a ‘Furbacca’ and sings the Star Wars theme tune. There are Han Solo in carbonite shower curtains.

Everyone is friendly and happy, but the show floor is fairly quiet and free of shouting and big flashy screens. It recalls the hubbub of a Tattooine street market – there are even Stormtroopers wandering the place looking a little lost. I’ve never been to a convention that isn’t about video games before. And as soon as I walk out of the tiny Battlefront press briefing into a much larger world of fandom, that is suddenly all I can think about: how three films that began life 38 years ago created this diverse mass of people who all have this one thing in common.

And I realise that the overpowering flashiness of video games is actually frowned upon here, that the booming drum‘n’bass of the traditional E3 experience is not what they want. Instead, Star Wars fans seem to have been burned by newness. There is very little sign of the three Star Wars prequels here at the convention – or in the game. There’s a total disavowal of Jar Jar Binks. When I interview Bach, I ask him, “Will Jar Jar Binks be in Star Wars Battlefront?” “I don’t think I’m allowed to say this,” he says, glancing at the PR, “but – NO.”

There’s a definite feeling of distaste about computer generated graphics, accentuated by JJ Abrams’ insistence that Star Wars: The Force Awakens will rely as much on physical props and sets as is possible. Battlefront mirrors this approach. EA Dice gained access to the Lucasfilm archives, photographed all the key models from the original trilogy, and then, through a process known as photogrammetry, used these assets to create 3D in-game representations. The Dice artists have copied everything – blasters, X-Wings, Admiral Ackbar’s face – so that the models we all remember from the original films are perfectly recreated.

Throughout my interview with Bach he is careful to emphasise accuracy and credibility as the primary goals for Battlefront. “Our take on it is a little more to the authentic side, rather than all-out fun,” he says. “We want to create the most authentic and fun. We know what it takes to build a great shooter. We know the different ways of going about that. But this is a great example of where we can reset our own expectations and build it from the ground up. To us it’s like treading new ground – the first shooter we’ve ever built, even if it’s not true.”

By squeezing in Hoth, Tattooine and Endor as well as every vehicle and character you can think of, Battlefront is effectively a digital preservation project, an admittance that the Star Wars movie legacy is so much more powerful than much of what the games industry’s legacy has yet produced. As beautifully evocative as it is, what Dice has to prove is that Battlefront is more than a reskinned Battlefield; that it is more than a respectful art gallery.

“That would be the simple way, right? ‘Let’s reskin Battlefield’,” says Bach. “Maybe it’s us being stupid, but when you set out to refresh everything, and start to build it up again, you end up with some things being similar to what you have done before, but some things go completely differently. That’s the most exciting part of the project.”

Or maybe it doesn’t matter. Later, as I sit and watch the public airing of the new trailer in a huge auditorium filled with cheering fans, there is an engulfing feeling of my soul filling up against my will at the soaring John Williams score, an ever present fanfare that I can’t see ever dying.

“We want [players] to experience that same child-like sense of wonder we all felt when we saw the movies for the first time,” explains design director Niklas Fegraeus, during his YouTube developer diary. And I realise that what we have all been living on for years is that emotional high provided by nostalgia. Even the three Star Wars prequels could not kill it. And it can certainly sell a video game.

• Star Wars: Battlefront is released on 17 November for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Cara Ellison attended a press trip organised by Electronic Arts, which met her travel expenses from New York to Los Angeles.