BF3 Trailer
Written by Jock
Thursday, 24 February 2011
A trailer for the next DICE FPS, Battlefield 3, was released this week and many have commented on the amazing graphics. The graphics are so good that a few of you have messaged me to question whether the vid was really gameplay footage.
The answer is: Yes. It really is in-game, gameplay footage. It is pure gameplay. DICE/BF is in a tough battle with Activision/CoD for consumer dollars and one of the major weapons in their arsenal is that they have the better game engine. Frostbite holds a significant edge over the CoD:BO Engine and they are showing off that advantage in this video.
The level of graphical detail has me worried that I will need to, yet again, upgrade my hardware. BF:BC2 made my quad/9800 GTX sweat. CoD:BO made it squirm. I expect that BF3 will make it cry 'uncle'. For that reason I am actively looking to upgrade the hardware as well as the OS as BF3 will need Windows 7. An i7 and 2xx nVidia is probably in my future...better tell my bank manager.
Our friend Noches reports that the German language Gamestar magazine had this to say in their March edition:
General Comments:
* Patrick Bach: The Bad Company series has had little influence on BF3. BF3 will be a direct sequel to BF2
* The BF3 team encompasses about 240 people, or three-to-four times more people that the BF2 team.
* Impressive lighting effects. Lighting technology uses "Light probes" on the map. One probe has more light information than one complete map in BC2. It also works with dynamically changing terrain.
* Gamestar witnessed a presentation that ran on a quad core cpu with a Radeon 5800
* Destructability was apparently impressive.
* Character animations: A combination of ragdoll and scripted death animations, which Gamestar found to be pretty realistic.
* ANT and motion capturing technology from EA is being used which is being used on Sports games like Madden NFL.
* Unbelievable sound: Sound will be better than in BC2. One can easily locate shooters. Most realistic combat sound so far.
Frostbite engine:
* Physics, Destruction
* Can display a huge number of dynamic lights
* DICE: Engine too complex for hobby modders. No mod tools at first, not sure whether there will ever be.
* One object can have up to 83 audio channels
Single Player:
* BC-2-style wise-cracking humor, will be not be used.
* Spoiler: SP is set in a North American forested mountain terrain. There will be a European city setting and Iraq 2014 with 1st Recon Marines. At least one solo mission as jet pilot.
* Enemies: Iraqi resistance army PLR
* Some soldiers faces belong to DICE developers
* Several slow motion moments inSP
* At least one fight scene where the player has to click the right or left mouse button quick enough to win.
* Earthquakes in SP cause a Humvee to disappear into a huge crack, a high building collapses and hits a black hawk helicopter, falling pieces of buildings can hurt characters in sp and mp
* DICE didn't say whether it will be possible to give commands to comrades
Multiplayer:
* Lars Gustavsson: MP designer is part of DICE since 2000
* Max players pc: 64 Consoles: 32
* MP info:
* F-16 and Su-27 spotted, modern helicopters, tanks
* 4 soldier classes, 5 accessories kits
* Maps will be as big as in BF2
* Dice promises more unlock-able weapons and tools, the look can be changed, better balanced ranking system
* Hardcore mode: likely as it is popular
* Commander mode: Very unlikely
* Replay function: (aka Battlerecorder) Dice is testing it
* Coop mode: Has been announced, but Dice also called normal matches vs bots coop mode too
* Dedicated servers: Definitely
* Prone: Yes. Dice wants to avoid dolphin diving
Gamestar's review:
Positive: Sound, destruction, a real Battlefield game
Negative: Story-telling methods in SP is getting a bit old
A good interview with Karl-Magnus Troedsson on the building of BF3 can be found
here.