Star Wars Battlefront features ‘fighter squadron’ combat

Electronic Arts unveiled more details and scenes from Star Wars: Battlefront, the big console and PC game that is coming this fall. The latest reveal: fighter squadron combat. You can fight some serious aerial battles inside the cockpits of iconic Star Wars spacecraft.

EA made the revelation during its press briefing at Gamescom 2015, the big game fan event in Cologne, Germany. You can fly Tie Fighters, Y-wings, X-wings, and the Millennium Falcon.

The highly anticipated title from the Battlefront series uses the Frostbite game engine — the same that DICE uses for the Battlefield games — to deliver outstanding 3D graphics. EA is trying its best to deliver a high-end gaming experience that lives up to one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. Battlefront takes us back to the time of the original Star Wars trilogy. The game is the last hurrah for the last generation of Star Wars before everything shifts over to the new canon of the next episodes. It will come out Nov. 17 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and on Origin for the PC.

If EA does this right, it will mean a big bucket of money. While we’ve seen two previous Star Wars: Battlefront games, EA didn’t call this one Battlefront 3 because it was a rebooting of the franchise.

You can fight as the heroes of the Rebellion or the villains of the Galactic Empire. It has some intense multiplayer modes, featuring 12 maps on Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, and the previously unexplored planet of Sullust. You can control vehicles such as X-wings, TIE Fighters, and AT-ATs. You can play as Darth Vader or Boba Fett.

The game comes out close to the time when Star Wars fever will be high because of the pending Dec. 18 launch of the new film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The trailer has everything, including Darth Vader and the Millennium Falcon.

The first downloadable content (DLC) for Battlefront, dubbed the Battle of Jakku, will tell about the events that precede the The Force Awakens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcxP7iXMdI0

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.