Sorry, Star Wars: Battlefront won’t look as good as the trailer

Last week, an absurdly, painfully gorgeous trailer for the upcoming game Star Wars: Battlefront was released to the internet. If you haven’t seen it, view it here before continuing to read:


So then, everybody said “oh man, this game looks awesome!” The beginning of the trailer even states that this is in-engine footage. Here’s what we learned: the Frostbite engine is powerful and beautiful. What we should learn from watching this trailer? The game isn’t going to be that nice.




The trailer shows what the engine is capable of, it does not show what the game is going to look like when we play it. This is only different from the old days of showing high-res cutscenes in commercials for games, only to have the game look far worse, in that these videos are being rendered in the same engine that the game will use. But these probably are not the same models, textures, animations, etc… that will be used in game. It is a joy to watch this trailer and see how movie-esque it is, but unfortunately, it’s just not going to look that good once you’re the one in control of the characters.