Battlefield has always been a persistent experience, keeping the player engaged in hours, days, if not weeks of constant warfare. But the one thing it always seemed to lack was the presence of a truly dedicated system to keep constant track of your gameplay, inside and out of the game—at least one that served a purpose larger than tracking your kills and your progress.
Battlefield 3 will attempt to remedy this shortcoming with the introduction of the new Battlelog, which allows you to keep track of your progress whether you're on a PC, a console, or a mobile device. The Battlelog offers social elements, allowing you to track the progress of the friends you play with, their forum posts, and conversations between players.
The new Battlelog allows you to form platoons (clans) with your friends, to create a cohesive social unit with players you can invite and whose games you can join whenever you're online.
Unlike all the previous games, players on the PC version of Battlefield 3 will have the Battlelog serve as a launch pad for the single player campaign, co-op, and of multiplayer. The server browser is embedded right into the Battlelog, which should alleviate all the problems from the previous games. There's no more having to log into EA Online just to see if your friends are playing and crashing when you're attempting to join a server. The Com Center in Battlelog will even allow you to join friends mid-game, or create a squad out of the game before joining a server.
Battlefield 3 is set for an October 25 release on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
