Star Wars Battlefront’s first content update, the Battle of Jakku that serves as a major plot point in the upcoming movie, will be hitting servers tomorrow for those who pre-ordered and in a week for everyone else. However, there’s a preview livestream happening tonight with various YouTubers and streamers playing the map and its new mode Turning Point before it’s officially released.
Everything you need to know about Star Wars Battlefront.
The livestream will start in about 30 minutes at 11am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm GMT / 8pm CET on the EA Star Wars twitch channel, embedded below.
The event is broadcast from London with a 40-person squad to show off the new map and mode. Turning Point, as it’s called, is a non-linear capture point mode in that the attacking Rebels must take control of areas before the timer runs out. Each one they grab increases how much time they have left and opens up more points to snag. Mixed in there’s obviously all the Battlefront mainstays of vehicles, laser beams and hero pickups. There’s no X-Wings or Tie Fighters in this mode as the massive space battle that’s happening over the planet is rather taking their time away. Sadly that’s a visual element only and you can’t fly up there and get involved or call in bombardment.
The setting is the same desert planet that will be popping up in The Force Awakens in a few weeks, with the battle explaining why everything’s quite so totally ruined and forming a prequel of sorts. The story significance of what Battlefront will offer is probably being overplayed beyond “a war done happened”, but it is cool to see the two things tied together so tightly and, let’s be honest, Star Wars doesn’t have the best luck with plot-relevant prequels anyway. Now to ruin it all by bunny-hopping around as the canonically dead Emperor.