Star Wars Battlefront - On this day

Old games by the Star Wars franchise were mostly single-player formats. It wasn’t until the early 21st century that fans of a distant galaxy began to merge into an online environment. First came the Star Wars Galaxies MMO, and then the competitive Star Wars Battlefront. It was the latter that came out on this day 17 years ago.

Star Wars Battlefront was the creation of the then promising Pandemic Studios, which set itself the task of creating a game that would compete with the then greats of online multiplayer - Battlefield and Unreal Tournament. Star Wars was their ideal premise, but the big battles from the movies needed to be put into a meaningful game, which they somehow managed to do.

In the game, players chose between four factions: the republic, the separatists, the empire, and the rebels. Each side had one unique class, and four shared classes. In addition, unplayable characters from movies, such as Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and others, would occasionally appear during matches. The battles between the warring parties were already quite attractive at that time, and different vehicles could be driven during the matches, and the vehicle fleet was really rich with 25 models.

The biggest battles were fought on the PC where Battlefront could play up to 32 players at a time. On the PlayStation 2 console, this limit was significantly lower and a maximum of 16 players participated in the matches. There was also the option of solo playing, and the events from the films could be seen from the perspectives of both warring parties.

Star Wars Battlefront was well received by both audiences and critics. After only a year, a sequel followed, and for a while, work was done on the third part. But Pandemic Studios burned down quickly and was closed in 2009. Since then, Star Wars Battlefront has been just a fond memory, and then Electronic Arts handed it out to the creators of Battlefield. The return of the series in 2015 did not go very well, and the same could be said for the sequel from 2017.

Even today, some fans prefer to play the original Battlefront than its modern versions. This has been possible on PC since last year as the game is back on Steam and has functional online multiplayer.