Star Wars Battlefront Won’t Feature BattleLog, Space Battles or the Prequel Era

Nothing but Star Wars hype filled the weekend with the one-two punch of trailers for The Force Awakens and EA's Star Wars Battlefront. Now that the smoke has cleared and the initial outbursts of nostalgic delight have died down, it's time to talk about what features may be missing from these otherwise super cool Star Wars projects. We'll leave the movie buffs to decode The Force Awakens, as plenty of news about Battlefront's missing elements have already surfaced.

First comes the news that Battlefront will not use the BattleLog system used by other DICE shooters like Battlefield 4, though it was initially reported to be included. Battlefront assistant producer Jesper Nielsen responded to a thread on NeoGAF with a straight answer: "No, it won't. I can tell you, no, there won't be Battlelog for Star Wars Battlefront."

Next comes the quotes from a pair of DICE representatives to IGN revealing that neither space battles nor content from the prequel trilogy of Star Wars films will be included in the game. It could be that the space battles are being saved for a possible Rogue Squadron game — we have our fingers crossed for that one. Producer Craig McLeod gave an outright "No" to the question of prequel content, explaining that the core trilogy was the main focus of this game.

“Space is hard, right? Not from a [development] perspective, but from a logistical perspective," DICE general manager Patrick Back replied to a question about fighting in outer space. "Is that fun? For us it doesn’t make sense to create a battle above you if you’re fighting other players who are not there to fight. Our focus is to do planetary battles.”

"One of the biggest challenges you have when working on Star Wars is the breadth of it. How do you choose which areas to pick?" McLeod said. "We grew up with the Original Trilogy. We love it. It’s absolutely loved by our fans. In the new teaser, when Han Solo says, ‘We’re home,’ that’s the feeling we’re going for."

In closing, if you were hoping to play as Jar Jar Binks piloting an X-Wing in the darkness of space against the Empire and that BattleLog would track your exploits, then Battlefront will be a massive disappointment. Everyone else has a lot to look for, and we'll have all the information right here as it develops.

Star Wars Battlefront will launch for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on Nov. 17.