PISTOLS AT DAWN, SIR. It was either this or a walloftext and I've hit my quota for those. Honestly, I'm sad they're really advertising the space battles thing. I seriously always found that the weakest part of SWBF2. And once again I'm mad at the text editor on these forums. Why does it suck so badly. (it's probably CKEditor is the answer)
I will admit that the space battles in the old game were very same-y because once you'd figured out a formula for targeting the high profile sections of the ships, you could go from one to the other so rapidly the enemy team couldn't really react and so it became more of a race. However, I feel that with some refinement they could really be the 'stars' of the show, pun intended, because all they need to do is balance the race/target element (because of the reinforcement counter/score target) and the dogfighting element, in terms of motivation and reward, and you'd potentially have a really good gamemode there. I didn't really play the new BF so I don't know how the dogfighting mode worked, but it seemed a little lack luster to me in so far as the hero ships existed and the actual 'near ground' terrain didn't really do anything as the purpose wan't to dogfight, but to target a cargo ship? Again that's the issue, balancing the objective with the dogfighting element. I am very cautious though, because this is EA, and I can't help but notice a latent potential for a bait-and-switch here, because the trailer is EVERYTHING people asked for out of the last game. As much as I want to think they've listened, this is the games industry after all, and EA, and I've been burned too many times in the past to think that what they are showing is representative of intentions and feedback given.
So, the order of this series is officially. Star Wars Battlefront > Star Wars Battlefront II > Star Wars Battlefront > Star Wars Battlefront II What the ****