'Star Wars: Battlefront' gameplay news: Players get one loyal partner, no squads and classes

When DICE said that "Star Wars: Battlefront" will be a very special title, one that will be different from its predecessors, the game studio was dead serious. 

"We were so mindful of the fact that we wanted to make this franchise our own," the game's senior producer Sigurlína Ingvarsdottir told PC Gamer. "We wanted it to feel like Star Wars and not be directly comparable to something else." 

With this big change is the removal of classes or squads. Gamers will instead get a single player deemed to be always available to help them out when summoned. Aside from players trudging the sprawling worlds in twos, these partners will also be able to share unlocks, which means that when one's partner reaches a level higher than their own, they will be able to access their unlocked items without having to unlock them themselves. 

Also, instead of cooperative missions, players will be challenged to go through "crafted" missions wherein a gamer and their partner can play online or offline with a split screen. Moroever, the maximum player count is 40, and gamers will be able to switch to first-person or third-person whenever they want to. These major changes are the result of DICE's adamant effort to separate "Star Wars: Battlefront" from the rest. 

"We're not taking into account what we've done before, because I think that would be disrespectful to the fans, and to what we're trying to achieve here," executive producer Patrick Bach said. "A lot of the things you saw in the game have nothing to do with anything we've done before. Some features of course resemble [our other shooters], because we want to make the best possible shooter, but in general we've tried to do something completely unique."

"Star Wars: Battlefront" will be released on Nov. 17. 

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