I don’t play video games so the hype over SW Battlefront didn’t register much on my radar. But I’ve heard a lot of grumbling about limiting the game’s setting to the OT era and its lack of space battles.
Last week there was a quarterly earnings call with Electronic Arts (EA) CFO Blake Jorgensen and Jorgensen apparently said that Battlefront will remain an OT-era game, so if you’re dying to shoot Cad Bane in the face or engage in a battle on Naboo under the Battlefront banner, you can forget about it. While the CFO said that EA is open to games set in other eras, he had this to say about why Battlefront is only sticking with the OT:
“You can’t make a game in Star Wars that violates the canon of Star Wars,” said EA chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen during a quarterly earnings call yesterday, according to a transcript from Seeking Alpha. Since Battlefront is explicitly set during the era of the original trilogy, adding events from films set earlier or later than Episodes 4 through 7 would be unfaithful to the franchise, he explained.
I realize this is Polygon summarizing Seeking Alpha (where you have to register to read all of the content) but when I last checked, TFA isn’t part of the OT so I don’t know why he’d include 7 except to explain why there was an add-on to the game that allowed characters to battle away on Jakku. (I have a simpler explanation: Disney made them.) TFA characters aren’t in the add-on but still, if you can go to Jakku then why not Mustafar or Kamino or Utapau?
As some commented in the Polygon post, Battlefront jacks with canon all of the time:
“Hell, the time Boba Fett and the Emperor teamed up to kick the s*** out of Han on Hoth was my favorite part of the movies.”
“So old lady storm troopers running around with their helmets off on Hoth is canon?”
“Yeah, I totally remember watching Darth Sidious, Darth Vader, and Boba Fett ganging up on a green lightsaber, black robed Luke during the battle of Hoth back in Empire Strikes Back.”
So yeah, I’m not buying it. It’s one thing to say you don’t want Watto to battle Admiral Piett with a lightsaber because that illogically mixes up the eras. But this makes it sound like acknowledging any elements of the prequels and Clone Wars is somehow being “unfaithful” to the franchise. If that’s true, then what’s your average episode of “Rebels” doing? My guess is EA didn’t want a game that offended older/geekier prequel haters.
