EA unveils Star Wars Battlefront freebies and Season Pass info

Star Wars Battlefront

Electronic Arts has announced the settings for three of the four planned DLC packs included in the Star Wars Battlefront Season Pass, beginning with Outer Rim, a trip to Sullust and Tatooine that's scheduled to happen in March. Ahead of that will be a handful of free updates, the first of which will go live tomorrow with a new option to create private matches, plus Daily Challenges, Community Events, and some free stuff.

Tomorrow's update will include a Tatooine Survival map called Raider Camp that will support the Blast, Droid Run, Drop Zone, Hero Hunt, and Heroes vs. Villains multiplayer modes. There will also be Hoth-themed outfits for Luke and Han—I'm imaging Luke running around in a zip-up tauntaun suit, bleating pathetically at anyone who ventures too close—and the usual balance tweaks to weapons and multiplayer modes.

Another free update, scheduled for February, will add a new Survival mission on Hoth, and a new Hoth multiplayer map that will support large-scale modes like Walker Assault, Supremacy, Fighter Squadron, and Turning Point. A third update in March will drop a new multiplayer map on Endor, and another Tatooine Survival map.

March will also, barring unforeseen catastrophe, see the launch of Outer Rim, the first piece of the Star Wars Battlefront Season Pass puzzle, which will put players into the factories of Sullust and Jabba's palace on Tatooine. After that, sometime in the summer, will come Bespin and its famed Cloud City, followed in the autumn by Death Star. The fourth and final release in the Season Pass is called Title TBA, which I'm assuming is some kind of bounty hunter droid type of thing.

(That's a joke, by the way. EA said details about the fourth expansion will be revealed “in the coming months.”)

It all sounds like good fun, but as we noted back in November of last year, the Star Wars Battlefront Season Pass is one of the most expensive we've run into, selling for $50/£40 on Origin.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.