Star Wars Battlefront is nothing less than its development teams' childhood memories brought to vivid, affectionately authentic life. DICE is attempting to recreate the feeling of being dropped into the original trilogy's most memorable scenes, and building this potent fantasy fulfilment on the sparkling foundations of its powerful Frostbite 3 engine. No Star Wars game has ever looked so convincing, certainly, but DICE's real challenge is to go beyond that surface sheen in order to engineer an online competitive shooter capable of enrapturing both the genre's uninitiated, and those hardened by years of Battlefield and COD warfare.
For our eight-page cover feature this month we play the game and speak to senior producer Sigurlína Ingvarsdottir and Niklas Fegraeus to find out how they're going about doing that, and channeling their own fervent passion into creating a love letter to Star Wars fans. After that, in a second eight-page feature, we consider how Star Wars' spirit of innovation has had a lasting impact on videogames throughout the years. Issue 286 of Edge is available now in print, on iPad, Google Play and Zinio.
The latest cover alongside the exclusive subscribers' edition
There's more innovation to be found elsewhere in the issue. We head to Japan to drop in on Tokyo Game Show 2015, where we find a development scene determined to succeed. In Collected Works, we spend some time with Diablo creator David Brevik to chat about the games that defined his career and how he made the RPG genre fun again. Our The Making Of… feature looks back at how Namco Hometek's Kill Switch invented the cover shooter. And in Time Extend we go a few more rounds with Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, fighting gaming's greatest spectator sport.
In Knowledge we speak to industry figures to gauge the potential of the new Apple TV, and head to Oculus Connect 2 in LA to find out what developers are doing with the VR headset now that it's almost ready to roll out. We turn up the car stereo in FOAM, a game that fuses music with racing lines. And we take a look at roguelike For The King's perennially autumnal art style. Finally, we speak to skateboarding icon Tony Hawk about his love of Amigas and Super Mario 64.
Hype: XCOM 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Homefront: The Revolution, Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, Dragon Quest Builders, Umbrella Corps and more.
Play: Destiny: The Taken King, Soma, Transformers: Devastation, Rock Band 4, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, Project Zero: Maiden Of Black Water and The Legend Of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes.
For subscription details in print and digital, click here; and if you've missed a particular edition of the magazine you can grab Edge back issues here.
Our new special edition, The 100 Greatest Videogames, is also out now. You can buy it from all good UK newsagents, or order a copy here.
