Star Wars Battlefront 2 promises to be different from its predecessor in some significant ways. It will have a proper single-player campaign, for one thing, and in this story, the bad guys are actually good. And from a more practical, real-world perspective, it may not have a season pass—although there's a bit of confusion on that point.
"We don't have a season pass," creative director Bernd Diemer told Mashable earlier this week. "When we looked at the way Battlefront had evolved over its lifetime, with the DLC and everything, we decided, 'You know what? For this type of game, season passes are not the best thing. We need to [take it apart] and come up with something better'."
Diemer acknowledged that it was a difficult decision to make, but said that EA wants to ensure it doesn't "segment the community" by locking some players out of future content. There's obviously going to be some sort of post-release program—new maps, modes, heroes, that sort of thing—especially since "expanded multiplayer" and "characters from every era" are two of the game's big selling points.
It's possible that EA could make it all free, as it did with Titanfall 2, but Diemer hinted at something else in the cards. "I cannot talk about the specifics of this, but we have something different in mind that will allow you to play longer, be [more] invested in the game without having a fragmented community," Diemer said.
Despite the lack of detail, "We don't have a season pass" is a pretty black-and-white position to take, and it sounds like whatever they do have cooking is fairly well-developed at this point. But shortly after the interview, EA waded into the matter by asking the site to withhold confirmation that there won't be a season pass, because it can't yet say definitively that there won't be one.
"While we’re not ready to confirm any live service plans just yet, what we can say is that we heard the feedback from our Battlefront community loud and clear," it said in a statement. "We know they want more depth, more progression, and more content. So we’re focused on delivering that in every dimension of Star Wars Battlefront 2. We’ll have more to share about our plans soon."
Make of that what you will, but there's a difference between clarifying or correcting a statement made in error, and asking that it be kept quiet to avoid spoiling the surprise. And that appears to be what's happened here: The statement is thick with vagueness, but the fact that EA asked it be left out, rather than corrected, suggests that it is (or at least will probably be) accurate.
I contacted EA for further clarification, but a rep said that it isn't prepared to say anything more about it than what it told Mashable, and that—again—it will have more to share "soon."
