The Star Wars Battlefront Sequel Spans 'Multiple Eras'

This fall's Star Wars Battlefront follow-up will take players on a journey through the series' timeline, Electronic Arts confirmed during the company's quarterly financials phone call. The game will also ship with a fully fleshed-out single-player campaign.

On the call, Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson said, "Our next Star Wars Battlefront will be even bigger, taking players into more locations and allowing them to play with more heroes and characters across multiple Star Wars eras." Later, Wilson noted, "This game, again, is going to be in more locations, more game modes, more eras, including a full single-player campaign which is very, very exciting."

This marks a major change from the last Star Wars Battlefront game, which came out in 2015, just about a month before Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters. EA and developer DICE made a conscious decision to confine Battlefront to the first trilogy's timeline. While the planet Jakku, which was featured in The Force Awakens, made a brief appearance via a free downloadable content pack, Star Wars Battlefront didn't include any content from the controversial prequel trilogy.

In addition, Star Wars Battlefront didn't ship with a single-player campaign (although a few modes could be played offline, either alone or with a friend). According to EA COO Peter Moore, data indicates that "very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games," making single-player less of a priority given Star Wars Battlefront's short development time. Eventually, DICE added an offline "Skirmish" mode, which replaces real people with bots in a couple of Battlefront's most popular multiplayer modes.

All of this new content comes at a cost, of course. With DICE hard at work on the Star Wars Battlefront sequel, support for the 2015 Battlefront is over. The studio confirms that there is "no future Skirmish" content planned.

On release, players and critics praised Battlefront's graphics and sound, but were wary of its shallow content. Still, if you're hankering for some Star Wars action, you could do a lot worse—thanks to its attention to detail, Battlefront is still one of the all-time best Star Wars games. Hopefully, the follow-up will be even better.