EA's PR director, Pete Nguyen, offered up a bit of clarification, saying that DICE L.A. was a branch of DICE Sweden, and both companies are working on the same project. That same project? "Battlefield 4." This is actually similar to what Ubisoft does, at last report, with its "Assassin's Creed" lineup. So what does Star Wars have to do with DICE? As it turns out, DICE, Visceral and BioWare would all be working on Star Wars games with the Frostbite engine.
So, essentially, this raises two possible points for consideration. One, since Nguyen made it rather clear that DICE, be it Los Angeles or Sweden, was 100 percent focused on "Battlefield 4", yet will be working with BioWare and Visceral, it's a safe bet that any Star Wars games won't come out until after "Battlefield 4." Now, along with that comes another interesting possibility. Since Nguyen also let out that the Star Wars games would be developed with the Frostbite engine. Most of EA's titles involving Frostbite were first person shooters including much of the Battlefield series, as well as "Medal of Honor: Warfighter" and "Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel."
A first person Star Wars game may not be what people were hoping for in terms of this new license, but with an MMO already in play in the form of "Star Wars: The Old Republic", it may well prove to be good enough. Frankly, I wouldn't mind a Star Wars first person shooter, especially if it's one like the "Fallout" series. Give me some wide open spaces to run and gun in, with lots of things to find, well, I'd welcome it. Another vent-crawler, though, would be profoundly disappointing. It's still somewhat distressing to see that EA will likely be going back to the well of the ultra-safe FPS when it comes to its big new license, but then, there's something to be said for going with what you know. Hopefully EA can take a page or two from BioWare's book with "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic" and include the time and resources to do the job right.
Just what DICE, Visceral and BioWare can put together is as yet anyone's guess, but it's looking pretty clear that it will be a while before we see anything Star Wars-related out of EA under the terms of this license.
