Shortly after the E3 reveal of Star Wars Battlefront , DICE's Patrick Bach told IGN it wouldn't be a Battlefield game . At Star Wars Celebration this week, we asked the studio why, exactly, this isn't just a re-skin of the iconic multiplayer series.

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"It’s not a Battlefield in a number of ways," Producer Craig Mcleod told IGN. "We’ve built this game from the ground up."First up, Battlefront supports 40 players. "64 players is Battlefield," Mcleod said. "That’s what worked for them. When developing the best gameplay experience, we tried all sorts of numbers, but we found that 40 players delivers the best experience for the universe. We didn’t want to use an arbitrary number that would lessen the experience. We have a range of modes that affect the experience, all the way down to eight players for a more intimate experience."Also, Star Wars Battlefront isn’t just a first-person shooter — DICE is including an optional third-person perspective for purists who prefer the series’ original view. Players can switch between over-the-shoulder and first-person with the press of a button, whether they’re infantry on the ground or piloting from the cockpit.It’s also different, Mcleod said, "when you think about the hero characters. Darth Vader, Boba Fett, these are characters who are more powerful than average Stormtroopers or Rebels. We had to bring that into the game as well." In doing so, Battlefront features an entirely new combat dynamic. When a hero enters a battle, their enemy's priorities will ideally shift away from their objective to focus on fighting back against a strong, almost boss-battle level hero or villain.Indeed, Battlefront is a first-person shooter with vehicles and soldiers, but it really does have an identity of its own -- all while maintaining the ever-important authenticity of the Original Trilogy. For more how it's going about that, read our breakdown of the seven-minutes of footage we saw behind closed doors at Star Wars Celebration.For everything Star Wars bookmark IGN's Star Wars Celebration hub

Mitch Dyer is an Editor at IGN. He hosts IGN Arena , a podcast about MOBAs. Talk to Mitch about Dota 2, movies, books, and other stuff on Twitter at @MitchyD and subscribe to MitchyD on Twitch