Dear Dice,

I appreciate the new Battlefront game, I enjoyed it as an online shooter, and its use of the license is fantastic. But I am making a case for the inclusion of "Galactic Conquest" in the sequel to this game.

While the new Star Wars Battlefront game from DICE, is fun, beautiful, and authentic to "Star Wars," it is lacking one particular game mode that made "Star Wars Battlefront 2" a title in everyone's library years after its release: GALACTIC CONQUEST. It is also missing the necessary large offline AI battles, space battles, and the wide-open-map game mode called "conquest," which are the building blocks of "Galactic Conquest."

In Galactic Conquest, all the planets in the game were laid out on one big map, and you would build fleets and attack planets. The attack would trigger a battle with the other team, who already owns the planet, for control over it. Two enemy fleets could also meet in space, which would trigger a Space battle between the two teams. It was fantastic.

What made it even better, is that you could play it cooperatively or against a friend, with split-screen. You could for example have a 2vs2, or 3vs1, or 4vsAI journey for control over the galaxy. Every battle mattered not just as a small trivial 5 minute event, but as part of the a whole journey. Better yet, you could save your progress and load it back with the same amount of players at any time.

The game required you to actually use some light strategy- which planet should you attack and when. Some battles were harder than others. Ownership of planets gave your credits that you could spend on unique bonuses that would alter the battle in your favor. Which bonus to use was often relevant to the map at hand.

Battlefront 2 was not a perfect game. The Space battles, where you could fly in fighters and board an enemy capitol ship, were a new concept and got repetitive after several play-throughs. But Dice made the flying quite fun in a lot of ways with this new game, and it would be great to see that brought into space, if only so Galactic Conquest can exist. It would also be great to see the destructibility of the Battlefield games and the great infantry combat of the new battlefront on foot inside the capitol ships.

This brings up the issue of large-scale offline AI-battles, which were the key to Galactic Conquest. The ability to play the large scale battles with AI units was the heart of the older games. Online support didn't last terribly long back then, and a lot of people didn't have it at all. I can understand why it appears to some that it was an online-centric game, and maybe it was designed that way, but it became something very different for all of us.

The big AI battles were fun because you were a war hero, and you could do it with a friend sitting right next to you. You would see huge battles occurring all around you, and you could make a difference easily. You and your (local) friends were war heroes in a huge battle, who were making the biggest moves but surrounded by large scale vehicular battles delivered with the complexity and bravado that Pandemic Studios gave us in Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction earlier that year. Vehicles had multiple seats, weak points, and various weapons. There were non-canon vehicles allowing for more variety. The open nature of the conquest mode maps led to more strategizing and more interesting, unexpected situations. There was incentive to try to flank. Having to find (destructible but repairable) droids to heal yourself was more complex. These epic battles in the context of galactic conquest were even better, because they then had a larger meaning relevant to the entire campaign.

That's why some people are upset with this game, despite the fact that this game is a fun online shooter and in a lot of ways captures star wars, it was missing this element in my opinion and the opinion of many others.

My friends and I still play Star Wars Battlefront 2 sometimes to this very day, two generations on. And that's because it has a long-term, strategic, split-screen experience that very few games offer. It's not just "let's play a round," it's a journey, and every battle has meaning in the grander whole. The fact that you can do it versus, is also awesome, because then you can be plotting against your friend(s) the whole time.

Dice, I understand what you were going for with this game, and I admit it is fun as an online shooter, and great with the Star Wars license, but every time I think about it I am also disappointed about what could have been. Everyone I know who had Battlefront 2 (which is also A LOT of gamers) misses Galactic Conquest, and is upset that it is gone.

I don't care if the graphics have to suffer to finish the game. In the next Battlefront game- PLEASE BRING BACK GALACTIC CONQUEST and large scale offline AI battles!