GameSpot's The Lobby: Is the Star Wars Battlefront Beta too casual?

[MUSIC] The Star Wars Battlefront Beta is live. That game is out, just about a month away, November 17th and we've got the whole crew here. Justin Haywald. Aaron Sampson. Robert. And Laurie. You're all here to talk about the Star Wars Battlefield beta. Mostly these two though, because you guys have been playing it all morning. Aaron Sampson, first of all, what's in this beta, where can you get it, what platforms, what can you play? It's by, I think it's gonna be open in two days. It's just by invite right now. I think anybody who wants is gonna be able to get in on the eighth. It includes Hoth And walker assault mode. And it involves Sullust Drop Zone which is kinda team death match. King of the hill. And there is co-op, right? Yeah, they also have the entire co-op in there. But no-one plays that. [LAUGHS] Well, when you start up, the Beta of the game very clearly tells you you don't have any gear, go get gear before you play these other modes. They want you to go experience the two other modes before walkers. It's PC and PS4 you guys are playing in the office right now, correct? Yes. Is there an Xbox one beta as well do we know? Haven't gotten codes for it. Okay. I don't think so. I don't know. Time will tell. Eventually, yeah. What's most important than is what you guys think about it. There's been a lot of chat in the office this morning about this. It seems to be waxing and waning. Aaron, first of all, you're a massive Battlefront game. What do you think about battlefront? As a guy that plays a lot of multiplayer shooters The thing doesn't seem targeted at me. It's like I feel like the advertising was targeted at me but it's a very very simple, very casual game. Like, it's got dead simple unlock most of the abilities you can get in like a morning and they don't do all that of different things. And each mode is just really straightforward. So yeah, its mechanics are solid. But in terms of game play itself, I'm already bored. Yeah. Important that it gets the basics, that it gets the gameplay down, and you can, like this is the beta. You're gonna layer on the more difficult stuff. Right. That's what we're hoping for. I think that's why, initial kickoff today was a little, a little boring was because it's just the same stuff because you're, I mean, rebels and Imperials start off, or have the same weapon. Okay. And so it's like you're firing and I mean, Like Aaron says, there's kind of an active reload with recharging. There isn't really a reload. You're just finding a corridor and you're just [SOUND] Everyone is using the same weapons? There's no classes or weapon loadouts at the start? No classes. You can buy the different weapon loadouts. It has a bit of a card system, which is just your abilities. And there's some customization to it, but I don't know, I feel like there's a thing where they're solving problems they created. Like, the game has a sniper rifle in it. Why do you need a sniper rifle in Battlefront? The game has X-Wings and Tie Fighters but that's just solving the Walker assault mode problem. The original movie right, it was just Snow speeders verse walkers, that was cool, it was fun right. But then like. You had guys on the ground. You had the assault on the Hawk Base itself, you had guys defending the base. But it feels like it's kind of expanding that outing, melding them in a way. Maybe that's not as true to the movie but I feel like if you're having that same problem about the three head where the aerial fights were just completely disconnected from what was happening on the ground. [UNKNOWN] I think that, I might go down for three. It's funny like, coming in I really was just pissed off with aerials, and the aerial game in this [UNKNOWN] entirely, I was like, really upset. For some. I couldn't even hook up my joystick. Get the hell outta here. Yeah, that's for PC. That's a huge thing for me. Maybe, you know it's just Beta of course. But just now a couple of hours ago I was playing and I was an A wing. And I started Starting to get some kills for the first time. Aerial kills. If you watch all the footage all you see is this [SOUND] just people crushed. Because the aerial gape is just too freaking fast. It needs to be slowed down. Drastically. So the mats don't seem that big- They're not. So you're just kind of speeding over everything, right? Right. There's just a constant rain of like Tai Fighters and aliens and [INAUDIBLE] falling out of the sky. Right. More like- Maybe people just found that to be really effective at killing. [LAUGHTER] It sounds cool though, that's for sure. Like, I would be, I'm at the point now where like, I'd dislike the air game so much I'll be running up a trench and I'll see like an x-wing icon and I'll scoot around it to try and avoid it. Can we just bring this back a little bit? X-wing icon. And we can't. Okay now back to that, we were talking about time earlier, oh, you just walk over and you immediately get in. There is an initiation. Or a pull down. So, you have to, it's a pick up, and then you have to turn it on. So, it's not like in other battlefield games, not to be constantly comparing them, but it's just what I know. Other battlefield games, where Jets spawn, vehicles spawn and you go to it and you get in the jet, and you go up. If you die the chances are you can re spawn back close to the jet and start again. In this you like pick up icons that randomly appear. Yeah its just like Mario cart, cause why not? Well I would say yes and no. Its been a cool down so like There were times where I was in a TIE fighter and crashed or died, however you wanna say it and I was able to respond and go back to that same location and pick up that same icon again.>> Okay.>>So there is that sometimes but the thing about Hoth in the Walker assault is that it's an ever changing map. You'll following the walkers to the final destination. Okay. So things do change. And you know, for instance, and then on the rebels side, you're like, I've gotten the alien once, and I never saw that icon again. That seems so strange, because then presumably, like one of the things in the old Battlestar games is people who wanted to fight as jets, Could. No, no, they went to go and find them and get them. Whereas in this one it seems like if you're running around, you could just wander into one So then the people who are getting those flying ships are not necessarily the people you would want to be playing with.>> And it gets even more confusing when you have the hero system added in, because the heroes are not skill based. They're also like Mario Kart coin pickups. So you can just pick up something and you're Darth Vader? So you never know where they're going to be. So you just run, you grab one, it's like Oh I can be Darth Vader and then it teleports you somewhere random on the map Oh right. Okay. So it's not even like, you can't just pop in and be like I'm going to charge through these stormtroopers. You get teleported. and then you gotta go figure out where the stormtroopers went. So okay, the footage there too, there's this happening like What's Darth Vader doing? See ya! He took a great amount. He got tired. So two heroes meet in the middle of the field right? They can lock lightsabers. And there was a video about how great that is. [LAUGH] But if you think that through that logical conclusion, if two heroes are locked together in a QTE, they're all just gonna get shot in the back. They're just going to be stuck and they're going to get grenaded. Yeah the heroes could be completely removed that's the one thing I do not want to see ever. Some people who are listening could say like oh a lot of these issues are nitpicky or it's the way mechanics work or how does that feel. But the fact that you guys are fans of these types of games, Star Wars And you're not feeling impassioned, and you're not thinking that this is a great game. That to me speaks volumes. You're a massive fan of Star Wars, and this doesn't do it for you. You want it to, but it doesn't. Yeah that's why I'm so sad, cuz the more I play it I'm like, God this is great, man! Listen to that [UNKNOWN] fighter! [SOUND] Yeah, yeah. Keep going, play man play << [LAUGHS] << I mean I'm getting some of that. And like again I was playing as a type fighter and I was finally getting some kills. There's the whole thing where as a rebel you get the uplinks to allow wywans to basically, Use the ion cannon on the AT-AT so now they can be hit by ground fire, I'm on to something here, it was kinda cool because I was stopping the Y-wings. I was shooting them down, I feel like that was finally useful because as we were saying earlier, what the hell were these ships doing up there But the issue is that the Y wings come so quick that it's like, the aerial game is like, slow the **** down. Like Y wing like, oh where's y wing. Oh he's out. I didn't do anything there. Well that's what those ships are. That makes sense, it just doesn't make sense for this map. Like those are aerial dog fighters. Right. You can still slow down I don't know. But yes it's just as initial kickoff for this beta it's a little disheartening. And it's not really, and you say beta like you've been through the mill on this like so many times about your game. Like when it's a beta a month before the game comes out it's not a beta. It's a demo. Yeah, yeah. Like Rambo, you know it's funny, I just played Rambo Sixth Siege They called that a beta, that was like an alpha. They were still legitimately working out bugs. This is clearly just a demo to get people in, and to be fair, I've been talking to people in this office who are not huge shooter fans, and who are willing to. Let Star Wars canon just go out the window. Yeah. And they enjoy this game, because like, I dunno. They're not that twitchy of a person, it has a generous aim assist. It has very simple mechanics. So I think that's their audience, like I think their audience are people who are not huge shooter fans. I totally agree. Well, the audience are people who are excited about this upcoming movie. Stars Wars Episode 7 is coming up. That's exactly right. In December. I disagree. That's crazy. I know I think, I think that's I'm a huge Star Wars fan, I've always been a huge Star Wars fan, and that's why when I see like Return of the Jedi like Luke running across Hoth, it pisses me off. Just put him in the right clothes. [LAUGH] Was it that hard? That's the other thing man. Was it that hard to put him in the right clothes? The argument was that he wasn't a Jedi on Hawk. He was still learning. All right I'm reeling that pole back in. I did an interview with the [UNKNOWN] recently. Right. I read it. The reason they did Return of the Jedi, Luke, was because they wanted a Jedi who's more powerful. This was Diversion that we saw [UNKNOWN] [CROSSTALK] But it won't be because some like 12-year-old kid's gonna get the power up and then gonna be the Jedi, so it's not gonna be that powerful. Yes. [CROSSTALK] How do I use Luke Skywalker? It sounds like he made the [CROSSTALK] Made the most like, feels like a Nerf arena blast of first-person shooters. It's like this very basic Version. It's like it's four mainstream gamers or something? [UNKNOWN] You know, that audience is probably out there. Like- They're gonna like it. The audience you want to take down a walker with an iPad version of a quick time events. Yeah. Like when you put the toe hook on it's like- That is really bad! Do the QTE. For some reason you're already flying it and you can't just keep flying in circles. Do you know what this is? Do you hear this? No. So as a [UNKNOWN] you get to of course use the iconic harpoon table and do the laps around the leg. I've seen it in, not other dimensions, I've seen it in every [CROSSTALK] .Disney Infinity. [CROSSTALK] It's like in every Star Wars game by law. Yeah by law. You got [UNKNOWN] you got Walker,it's gonna happen. and in this case it's pretty bad. All it is is you approach the walker and the snow speeder you get the prompt, you hit whatever button, and all it is is now a mini game of keep Keeping the snow speeder reticule in a grey box and it fights you on it. And not all around the box, it's up and down. So, it's like, yeah, yeah, get in there. And that's it. And that's all it is. And then it gets a little smaller. Oh, this is tough. You want the version where you're driving around But you're already flying it You fly it, and then you initiate the tow cable. Yeah. And rather than just keep flying it- A little one handed thing. [LAUGH] I mean come on! That was supposed to be the hardest thing. Remember Shadow of the Empire? Yeah. Doing that, that was tough! It sounds like if they just trimmed this game down to its bare essentials. Yeah. Cover all Star Wars bases. It's a very, very simple game. And again, if they weren't putting the full price on it, and if they weren't putting They have like, the premium concept on top of it. Like, I would be cool with that. I've seen plenty of games recently where, I feel like if you just sold it, that it's like $40 or $45. Like you'd have a much larger audience, people would have lower expectations. They wouldn't be disappointed that you cut out space battles or galactic conquests or, I mean it's never really had a campaign, but Yeah, the fact that you didn't put one in. Yeah. But again, the full-price premium. It's so simple. All right. So I was curious. When you're low on health does it regenerate automatically? Or do you have to find the tauntaun, kill it and crawl inside. [LAUGHS] Shut up. Warm up. All right, so that was our impressions of Star Wars Battlefront. Justin thank you so much and Ares thank you. Play this game. Yes, of course. And Rob thank you so much for coming on. Oh thanks. There'll be more coverage on Gamespot during the week on Star Wars but in the meantime if you get a chance to hop into the open beta yourself let us know what you think in the comments section below. Does this scratch your Star Wars itch? Does this scratch your Battlefield itch? Scratching something. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Let us know in the comments below. [MUSIC]