Why Star Wars Battlefront Doesn't Have Space Battles

There have been a lot of announcements concerning Star Wars Battlefront these past couple of weeks, not all of which have been received too warmly by eager fans. One of the biggest disappointments, it would seem, is the game’s lack of space shootouts. The folks at DICE have finally broken silence, though, explaining why that is.

The folks over at OPM UK recently had a chat with DICE’s Patrick Bach, who cleared the air pertaining to space shootouts in Star Wars Battlefront.

“We want players to stay in the same [environment] – we don’t want players to fly off and do something over here,” Bach told OPM UK. “It’s about the Battlefront experience, so we want to keep you in-atmosphere and fighting with the infantry.”

In other words, they want to keep all of the players in a single area, focusing the action rather than letting it spread about. I can understand that mindset for game modes that let infantry firefights take center stage but, if you’ve already got flying crafts planned for the game, why not have a separated “Dogfight” mode for those who just want to zip around in the inky blackness of space, laying waste to the Rebel scum?

The lack of space battles is only one of the recent Battlefront announcement causing waves. For starters, it was recently revealed that the game would not boast a single player campaign. There will be offline play available, but not including a set narrative, cutscenes and the like, it seems.

People were also upset to discover that aiming down the sights will not be available in Battlefront but, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t believe that sort of aiming was ever a part of the Battlefront franchise in the first place.

It think one of the problems here is that people are mixing up the game DICE aims to deliver with the game they personally want to play. Many, for instance, seem to be expecting Battlefield: Star Wars Edition, despite the fact that the developer has been adamant about the fact that such a game is absolutely not what they are trying to make.

I feel like this is leading to some unfair judgments being thrown upon the game before anyone really knows what, exactly, we should be expecting. Save a couple of trailers and a few announcements, nobody has actually seen this new Battlefront in action, much less played it themselves. This kind of mindset leads to hasty assumptions, like an early comment on three available maps being misconstrued to mean there will only be three maps in the entire game.

Either way, we’ve still got a while to wait for the November 2015 launch window and, with E3 and other trade shows just around the corner, I’m betting we’ll be seeing a lot more of Battlefront between now and then. Here’s hoping fans will at least give the team a chance to wow us before writing the game off completely.