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By now, of course, it's official. A new version of Star Wars Battlefront will arrive later this year, in time for JJ Abrams's seventh instalment of the biggest space opera of them all. The galaxy might have got its first proper look at how veteran Battlefield developers DICE have revived the franchise at this weekend's Star Wars Celebration event, but we've known about it since 2013 thanks to a steady drip-drip of Imperial intelligence from publishers EA. No Bothans died to bring us this information.DICE will undoubtedly do an extremely professional job. In a reverential E3 teaser trailer last year , the Stockholm-based developers outlined their ambition to "stay as true to the films as possible", scanning original models and props from the extensive Lucas Cultural Arts Museum archive. They also yomped to key filming locations, from the (relatively) nearby Hardangerjøkulen glacier in Norway where tauntauns once roamed to the lush Redwood forests of northern California that stood in for the moon of Endor.
DICE's stated aim was not just to accurately recreate the look of these environments - and you'd hope their proprietary Frostbite 3 engine would make a decent job of Hoth - but to capture "the emotions they invoke" as well. (Perhaps somewhere there exists an early cut of the teaser with a design lead standing in front of a green background yelling "so here I am in Naboo!")
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