‘Star Wars Battlefront’ Dev Says Content Is Not Being Held Back For DLC

While the recent reveal of the first gameplay footage of “Star Wars Battlefront” has been warmly received, some gamers are already starting to ask questions about the game. One of the most common questions asks why EA and DICE have chosen to announce the “Battle of Jakku” DLC so far ahead of launch. Gamers would also like to know whether the developers are holding back content to release them specifically as DLC.

Taking to Reddit, assistant producer Jesper Nielsen, who works for DICE support studio Uprise, attempted to clarify things. Responding to a Redditor who proposed that DICE had purposely excluded space battles in “Star Wars Battlefront” with the intent to release them as DLC further down the line, Nielsen said that no one on the team had ever proposed such a thing.

“Please don't make me break what I can and cannot say, but if you think there's anything we're not including in the game to save it for DLC, I can tell you you're 100 percent wrong. In this project, I've never heard anyone say ‘Let's not do this for launch so we can do it as DLC instead.’ Ever,” he said.

Directly addressing criticism of the post-launch release of “Battle of Jakku,” a post-launch piece of DLC which bridges the narrative gap between “Battlefront” and “The Force Awakens,” Nielsen explained that the idea for this DLC came late in the development process. He added that the team simply didn’t have the bandwidth to get the additional content ready in time for launch and settled on releasing the pack after the release of the main game.

As noted by the official “Star Wars Battlefront” website, the “Battle of Jakku” DLC is available as a free DLC add-on for those who pre-order the base game and will be available to customers on December 1, two weeks after launch. Players who did not pre-order “Battlefront” will be able to get the DLC one week later, on December 8. The map pack will include two multiplayer maps set on Jakku, the desert planet glimpsed in some of the recent trailers for “The Force Awakens.”

“Star Wars Battlefront” is set for release on PS4, Xbox One and PC on November 17. The game will include multiple maps across four different planets, including Hoth, Endor, Tatooine and Sullust. Gamers will be able to engage in combat in either first or third person view and can also take control of playable Hero characters such as Darth Vader and Boba Fett.