DICE has announced the addition of three new ‘Hero’ units for the hotly anticipated Star Wars Battlefront: Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Emperor Palpatine.
All three characters were leaked via dataminers rummaging around in the beta files last week, so it’s not a surprise to see them officially confirmed for inclusion in the upcoming science-fiction shooter. The trio will join existing Hero characters Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.
Writing in a post on the PlayStation Blog, DICE was kind enough to go into detail on the process of creating each of the new characters for Star Wars Battlefront, so read on to find out what they had to say on the matter. Star Wars Battlefront is due out on PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One in November. Check out the latest trailer here.
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Leia
Leia is a character that succeeds through her fearless, strategic mind. We can all remember moments when her quick-thinking blaster fire helped the Rebels out of trouble. Our goal for all the hero characters has been to capture their essence and spirit from the original Star Wars film trilogy, and then convey that through gameplay.
Doing that is more straightforward with characters wielding Lightsabers and Force abilities; it’s obvious how to build gameplay around those things. Leia was trickier in that regard since she doesn’t have a specific, favorite weapon, so we had to represent her in another way. It’s clear that Leia is a leader, so in Star Wars Battlefront she’s very much about support play, buffing team members and holding positions. Furthermore, players spawning close to her will spawn as Alderaan Honour Guards.
That said, she’s got a lot of offensive output as well. Just look at the original Star Wars trilogy: you’ll notice that when Leia shoots at stormtroopers, she kills them quickly. We’ve based one of Leia’s abilities on this: Trooper Bane. A hard-hitting, boosted blaster shot, Trooper Bane is designed to be fired in single bursts. Now, this packs a real punch if you hit your target. A stormtrooper will get killed in one blast by Trooper Bane, and against Villains it will both deal a lot of damage and temporarily stun them.
Han
It’s been incredibly fun to work on Han Solo for Star Wars Battlefront. He’s such a likeable character, and turning his unique persona into gameplay features is a thrill when you’re a Star Wars fan. We’ve also witnessed the love for this character in our playtests. Han’s sardonic lines and emotes seem to put a smile on everyone’s face.Gameplay-wise, Han Solo is a gunslinger mainly designed for lone wolves and, echoing the beginning of the original Star Wars trilogy, he’s not very dependent on others. Similar to a Rebel trooper, but with a greatly boosted arsenal, Han Solo might be the easiest Hero character to get into. Offensive output, damage, and mobility — that’s what this guy’s about.
Han Solo has three useful abilities to even out the odds fighting the Empire and the first one is called Rapid Fire. Active for a few seconds, this lets Han fire his Blaster as fast you can pull the trigger, without having to worry about overheating. Try this out when taking on compact groups and mow down those stormtroopers! Rapid Fire is also really good for when villains like Darth Vader approach. Use it at the right time and you’ll lay down a ton of damage.
Palpatine
Based on how he’s been characterised and how he plays, Emperor Palpatine might be my personal favourite character in Star Wars Battlefront. But getting to that point has been a challenge. We wanted many different things with the Emperor. We wanted him to be very mobile, but also about deception and fooling people that he’s fragile and weak. As you’ve seen in the original Star Wars trilogy, Palpatine pretends to be a weak old man, when he in fact is extremely powerful. That two-faced side was something we wanted to convey in gameplay and the Emperor’s abilities.
Palatine’s main attack is the iconic Force Lightning, which does a lot of damage to troops within reach. The lightning also comes in the more powerful Chain Lightning form, which is an area of effect ability dealing damage to enemies around you in all directions. Another power is called Force Dash and is (pun intended) shocking in another way. When Palpatine activates Force Dash he’ll move extremely fast in his current direction, which can be a real nasty surprise for Rebel soldiers. We’ve seen some players get really startled when they have been aiming down the sights at Palpatine and suddenly see him right up close.
In contrast to these abilities, Palpatine is also the Empire team’s support Villain, capable of providing power-ups for others and himself. Thanks to his command of the Empire, Palpatine can use the Imperial Resources ability to hand out power-ups to teammates and health boosts to other Villains.