When Electronic Arts signed an exclusive contract with Disney to make "core" Star Wars games, one pairing made so much sense it was almost a foregone conclusion: DICE and Star Wars: Battlefront.
But EA Games Label executive vice president Patrick Söderlund told CVG that the stars were right only at the specific request of DICE's leadership.
"The DICE guys Karl Magnus Troedsson and Patrick Bach were talking and I told them we were in dialogues with Disney over this deal and they just looked at me and said, "Why haven't you spoken to us? What are you doing? We want to make Battlefront," Söderlund said.
He said the studio is "a very particular place," and he didn't think it would deign to work on a license as opposed a new or existing franchise. But the opportunity to take the reins of the beloved (but battered) Battlefront series--which was very much inspired by DICE's own Battlefield--was too good to resist.
DICE plans to work on the new Battlefront in its Stockholm studio, with several key members from across the history of the Battlefield franchise.
"When it comes to the actual game, the approach we're going to take is it's a rebirth of the brand, it is Star Wars: Battlefront done the DICE way," Söderlund said. "The original Battlefront games actually took a lot of inspiration from Battlefield and they've been publicly open about that. As the guys said, the game is 'coming home'. That's as much as we can say."
