Star Wars Fans React to Battlefront Classics

I was genuinely shocked when I heard the announcement that Aspyr would be bringing the original Star Wars Battlefront games to the current and last generation of consoles. While I believe that it is brilliant that the games are being brought back, it seems rather odd that Aspyr would be the one doing this. Aspyr has been pulling a majority of the weight in bringing old Star Wars games to the current age, and the company has been in the crosshairs of certain sects of the Star Wars community.

Aspyr could still be facing a lawsuit due to their alleged false advertisement, for claiming a restored content DLC would come shortly after the re-release of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. While there have not been any updates regarding this case, and I am waiting to hear from my contacts for more information, there are signs that Aspyr has learned from this mistake with the Battlefront Classic Collection. It was announced that it would come with all of the DLC that was brought to various console versions of the games. This includes additional maps and characters.

Having the DLC built-in and not a later attachment is a step in the right direction. However, it seems like the modding community of these Battlefront games has found an oddity with one of the characters in the DLC. According to a report by IGN, Aspyr was allegedly using a PC mod to bring the DLC characters to the collection. This mod was created by iamashaymin in 2021 to bring these characters to the PC version of Battlefront 2. One tweak that had to be made in the mod was that the two DLC characters had to be copied from other existing characters and re-skinned.

The link above to the IGN report goes in-depth on how the community found out, but this revelation seems to shine an uncomfortable spotlight on Aspyr once again. To my surprise, the developer/publisher was quick to react to this claim. Putting out a statement to IGN’s article that boiled down to the fact that Aspyr put footage in the trailer that shows content that is not in the final product.

While this clarification is important for the company to get out there, it does seem to show that Aspyr still has some marketing quality control issues. Hopefully, none of this will spill over into this collection, but I was curious to hear from other members of the Star Wars community to get their opinion on this re-release.

The best way that I could think of getting the thoughts of the Star Wars community was by making a post on the Star Wars subreddit. While I didn’t get a response from too many people, I did get two comments that shined a spotlight on how some of the community feels. One Redditor commented, “I genuinely think many people will not pay attention to the publisher if the games are satisfactory at launch.”

The other reply stated, “I’m more salty with the situation with the KOTOR Remake (Which they are/were supposedly working on alongside Saber). [W]hile I love seeing Battlefront I & II on Switch and PS5, the only way I would be happy is if they release Bounty Hunter (It’s already on PS4/PS5 but I need it on Steam and Switch), Rogue Squadron II and III on current platforms and Steam[,] and maybe the classic Atari, NES[,] and SNES games, but maybe that’s too much.”

The sentiment shared in these two Reddit comments seems to be reflected in a poll done by Pure Xbox’s Fraser Gilbert. In the poll that was run, 56% of voters said that they were going to be there on day one. Another 28% voted in a manner that points to them potentially getting it in the future, which leaves 16% saying that they are never or most likely won’t get this collection.

So what are your thoughts? Do you think that this collection will thrive online or will Aspyr’s spotty past wreak havoc on the potential of this re-release? Let us know in the comments below.