The limited edition includes the Back to Karkand map pack, 4 remastered maps from BF2.
The price if the discount comes through would be $60 - %40 = $36
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What's int he limited edition? 40% off would bring it
in at $60?
The limited edition includes the Back to Karkand map pack, 4 remastered maps from BF2.
The price if the discount comes through would be $60 - %40 = $36
There is a story running around the internets about a %40 off sale on all shooter titles at the EA store, starting tomorrow, and that Battlefield 3 will be included.
I HIGHLY doubt this, but, keep your eyes open and if it happpens, jump on it!
Has the success of Call of Duty done more harm than good?
Australia, April 8, 2011
by Toby McCasker
For centuries, man has been predicting the end of the world as we know it. The Mayans, Nostradamus, R.E.M. - they've all been singing the same tune. What none of them managed to predict however, was that the world would be destroyed by Call of Duty. Well, the world of video games, at least.
Come on, you've been sensing it for a while. You've looked on in despair as yet another FPS is released that wants to be Black Ops. You've felt the mounting deluge of dissatisfaction that's been building inside you ever since Activision clearly realised Call of Duty 4 was a gambit that very much paid off, and could conceivably continue to pay off year, after year, after year at the cost of an entire genre of gaming.
So what do you do about it? Once it's dawned on you that you've been playing the same game with different titles for years now, you look to alternatives. But guess what? They're all uncomfortably familiar; especially when it comes time to go online. At this point your internal reactor reaches critical mass, explodes, and your passion for the act of first-person digital warfare becomes a shadow burnt into the couch where you used to sit for hours and ponder the great quandaries of the 21st century schizoid gamer: "AK-74u w/ grip or FAMAS?" and "Where best to camp?" and, gradually, "Wow, this kind of sucks," and, eventually, "Why is everything trying to be this game?"
Call of Duty engineered the destruction of its race, allowing its masters to subjugate the universe, giving them wealth and power beyond anybody's wildest dreams. Now it controls the evolution of any species or technology that it judges to be a potential threat; the greatest FPS scientists and developers forced to work under the supervision of so much inexplicable profit. For that, the global tribunal of gamingdom must put Call of Duty on trial. Intermediaries in this affair include but are not limited to anyone bemoaning the rise of casualised meta-gaming to a seat of absolute power. Hypocritically enough, however, if you play Black Ops then you become part of the problem - or, at the very least, you become an unpaid beta tester, according to UK-based consumer advocacy group Gamers' Voice, who've been taking the concept of a trial extremely literally for some time now. Figuratively or literally, it's a trial that's sorely needed.
So far every glimmer of salvation has been swiftly snuffed, undone by the very tyrant they each seek to usurp. When the Medal of Honor reboot loomed on the horizon, bristling with bearded promise, hope for a better tomorrow stirred in the weary hearts of gamers everywhere. A new challenger had appeared; EA finally taking the fight to Activision with a game that...looked indistinguishable from Call of Duty, and... played similarly... and... might as well have been called Crap Ops, provided that name hadn't already been attributed to Black Ops by certain quarters. Even formerly unique FPS franchises aesthetically outside CoD's jurisdiction towed the line to some extent: Killzone 3's heavier sci-fi tread couldn't escape the prevalence of identically-implemented perks and killstreaks; neither could Crysis 2, despite its dog-tag riff on the former's familiar theme. And Homefront? THQ might be hurling optimistic press release confetti into the air to placate investors, but every gamer knows the truth at the heart of that disappointment.
We're seeing the backlash now. Dead Space 2 was criticized by many for its by-the-numbers multiplayer modes, while the upcoming Prey 2 has no multiplayer to speak of at all. DICE is even actively taking to Activision's lackluster modus operandi in the press, with General Manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson recently launching a salvo of unguided missiles in the obvious direction of Kotick's Fourth Reich and its many silent partners: "The competitors are out there, they're established, and they're very, very big. We believe that they are not innovating, that they are treading water. They're using the same engine," he added, "the same recipe for building a game. At some point you need to take that leap. I haven't seen them take that leap since a long time ago."
Battlefield 3: Saviour of the Shooter Genre?
It's an interesting sentiment given that, by all hands-off reports, Battlefield 3's single-player looks and possibly plays a lot like Black Ops. No one can be completely sure, however, as no-one's been hands-on with the latest Great White FPS Hope just yet. Have you already pre-ordered yourself a Limited Edition copy? Maybe you have. Scared? You should be, but for a much more worrying reason than the fact DICE might be setting you up for yet another hum-drum offering of derivative tin-can target practice (they have brought back prone, you know, and that means dolphin-dives, and... wait, is that some quick time events we see?).
You now have more in common with Bobby Kotick than is comfortable to admit. The aggressive expanse that is his waistline might swell concurrently with Call of Duty's success, but so too does his receding helmet of ever-shrinking red ripcurls. And how many times has Black Ops made you pull your hair out, either directly or indirectly? It's not just the screaming frustration inherent to a sudden blinding crash whilst you're up 195-190 in the tensest game of Domination ever or being informed in slow-motion that ENCHANTMENT_LOL has nailed you from afar with a frag grenade tossed mindlessly into the ether (again), it's also the fact that everything else not so much wants as needs to repeat this tired montage of firefight fallacies over, and over, and over - and the more they decry this increasingly obvious dead-end, they more likely they are to be trapped in it. The first-person shooter has gone nowhere for years largely because of this series' success; in some cases, it's even gone backwards.
Why? Money, mostly. Big business savvy will always copy rather than create. It's easier, and the herd at large (you) won't turn dissent into action (by not playing the game), which would in turn either force evolution or result in overdue dismantlement à la Guitar Hero. We're gamers; we have a unique addiction that we love to death yet argue for and against constantly, hoping it will improve itself but feeling more or less powerless either way. It's not wholly unlike being the bitch in a relationship. Simply asking gamers not to play the latest and greatest is totally unfeasible. What it really takes is the stumbling of the status quo to fire up the signal flare of change, and while Homefront's crippled offensive is a very disappointing thing indeed for gamers, it is also a means to a much greater end. It is a Call of Duty copycat that ticks all the right boxes, but fails to rise above campaign gameplay mediocrity. Perhaps it will be the last straw?
In times of tragedy it does us good to laugh, and laugh we should - it's just too bad the comforting comedy we crave is almost as tragic as the tragedy it's supposed to be relieving. The only reason Call of Duty has become such a billion-dollar gaming behemoth is because the franchise at large took a safe but calculated risk back in 2007 with Call of Duty 4, turning 1944 into present day while every other FPS around it pushed forward - whilst marching on the spot - in a slow wave of identikit WWII-centric ennui. Call of Duty 4 didn't do much to innovate, but sometimes changing your stripes is all that's needed, and the rest will follow. Ironically, hilariously, everyone else followed, and continue to do so.
Hope lies with Battlefield 3 ... but even men with their mouths full of trash-talk need to eat.
It looks awesome. if you could make a game out of Black Hawk Down, it would look like this.
So, specific answers.
Yes there is an extensive singleplayer campaign.
Its developed with the Frostbite2 engine and it was developed for the PC. The xbox version has been scrunched down. In fact one of the techs was telling me that when they first tried it on 360, it would barely render a single player object before optimisation.
Snipers are in it but i didnt get to see any play as them.
There is regenerating health like Halo.
Here's the shocker.... no dedicated LAN support. The lan has to have connection out to the interweb. He said would you be able to rent dedicated servers, "like before" ... which i hope makes sense to you.
I asked about commander mode and they all clammed up and wouldnt say anything. I doubt you will see it as one head guy did say "it was only 2 out of 128 people, its a lot of work for that"... but i expect some new tactical and strategic elements to MP because there was something they werent telling us.
They wouldnt say a lot about MP and certainly wouldnt answer questions about mods squads, mostly they wanted to show off the pretty pictures which were... in fairness... pretty.
There was one thing I loved, their destruction physics are amazing, you can tear down a 5 storey hotel to the ground, to rubble, or you can blow about a 1/6th of a breezeblock away from a wall to get a shot or to reveal an enemy in cover.
If we get another invite in the fall (as we sometimes do) I'll try to get a BF mod over to it, we've done it before for driving games mods. This was much more than BF though, i got to see and play Portal 2(awesome, gonna be huge!) and tons of other stuff.
DeV
Follow-up message from the guy who was at the hands-on:
Well it looks to no on commander and yes on 128 players. That's a pretty good tradeoff I'd say, as long as they have good squad-based commands.
GameCentral talks to Patrick Bach, the man whose job it is to beat Call Of Duty, as he discuss photorealism, the sport of first person shooters and bettering James Bond.
We don't like to stereotype anyone, but usually when you meet a first person shooter developer they turn out to be a scary-eyed American who insists on talking very loudly about how awesome guns are. Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach is a quietly spoken Swede, who seems endearingly embarrassed about some of the things EA execs have been saying about his game.
Not that he isn't confident that Battlefield 3 won't be the best first person shooter of the year, though as we spoke to him at length after seeing the first press demo of the game (you can read our preview of Battlefield 3 here).
GC: We hate ourselves for using the term but what we've seen of Battlefield 3 does look genuinely photorealistic. How close is the game visually to your original vision and is there anything you're frustrated that you still can't do on a technical level?
PB: Yes, of course. When you've been working with something like this for... many years now, you see a lot of flaws. I can't watch that demo without seeing things that I would like to improve. And we are improving it for the final game of course, but in general I think - like you said - photorealism is only compared to the rest of the pack at that very moment. I think photorealism... we won't be there.
GC: Is photorealism just an impossible goal - do we need to be beaming visuals into our head to achieve it?
PB: No, I think it's possible - it depends on what you're trying to achieve. I think we as game developers, we need to be clever in what we show. So we don't show the things that are impossible to do, so to speak.
We know that when we build a first person shooter like Battlefield 3 that there's a lot of things you will see over and over again, one of them being characters in real environments. So our goal was from the start to focus on the things that are important, the things that happen all the time. Because those are the things that will give the most bang for the buck.
And we sat down and said, 'Okay, where do we want to be in five years'. Rather than saying, 'How can we beat the competition?' or 'How can we be better than our last game?' I think that's something more developers should do, because I think most people try to beat the competition rather than focus on their own ambitions and what exactly they want to achieve.
And like you said, if you think it looks photoreal then that was what we were trying to do. Even though we want to make a game that is fun, having it look real, having the characters look real, is very important as well because it gives a lot of emotional impact to feel like, 'Oh hey, I'm actually standing in a real environment looking at real people'.
And first person shooters haven't really moved forward at the pace that I was hoping, so we're trying to push the envelope by moving into the next generation.
GC: Obviously the graphics are a key focus for the title but what where the other primary goals for Battlefield 3, what else are you hoping to achieve with it and what is changing from the previous games?
PB: First of all, just by saying that you want to build a Battlefield game gives you a lot of direction. We see Battlefield as a sport, so we don't want to change the fundamental rules on what Battlefield is. We think that the formula for Battlefield is where it should be.
What we need to do is enhance that experience, much like playing football for instance. It's the same rule set when you're playing on the backyard as when you play in the World Cup, it's the same sport. It's easy to understand what you're supposed to do because it's the same game but the experience of playing in the World Cup or on the backyard is fundamentally different. Even though it's the same sport.
So that's how we see Battlefield. We have the rule set that you can't tamper with too much and then you have the experience of playing Battlefield which we think we can move miles ahead... and not only us but every other games.
So examples of this are of course the rendering, that you can bounce lights around and create this super-realistic environment and also the animation. How can we make game characters look more human? The destruction is something we've been enhancing for quite some time and trying to build as a natural dimension in the game. Rather than having it as a gameplay feature it's actually a part of the environment, much like you would see it in real-life. 'Oh, I have a big gun I should be able to shoot a big hole.'
And then one area where I would argue we already are number one is in audio. We're also trying to push that envelope and make that better, for the same reasons. Because our sole goal is to create a more realistic and believable experience. The whole physical presence on the battlefield is really, really important for us.
And you've heard games talk about that before and you've heard me talk about it - but you've seen it, you saw the demo and I would argue you feel very present in the world in a way that you haven't really seen it before. And there's different bits and pieces that we need to attend to, to get there, it's not just a feature, it's not just a thing that you tick off... everyone is working very actively on getting closer to that goal.
GC: That's interesting how you compare first person shooters to a sport. You often hear people suggesting that gamers will get tired of the genre, that Call Of Duty, for example, is starting to feel old. And yet the sales figures don't suggest this at all.
And then the other arguments is the example of 2D platformers - if you'd said in the 16-bit era that the genre would all but dead in just a few years nobody would believe you. But platformers were supplanted by games styles enabled by new technology - and it's hard to imagine that happening to shooters. Do you think that's why they'll also remain a popular genre, because as you say the formula is well tested and has such a primal appeal?
PB: I think you're absolutely right. We've had the same discussions and in my head this is an ever ongoing topic. I see games as psychology, period. Humans in our DNA are designed to like certain things and do certain things and get positive feedback on certain things. And one of those things is the whole hunter/killer behaviour. It's fun to hunt. It's fun to chase something and hit it, and win over your opponent or your prey or whatever you call it. That won't go away. Our DNA won't change.
So it's more looking at what do we like in real-life and turning that into gameplay features. If you compare it to other genres you have the whole collector's behaviour, where you collect stuff just because it's fun to collect whatever it might be. Turning that into gameplay features is an easy thing to do, even though it doesn't on paper make sense - for people it makes sense because they like the whole, 'I have 50 caps rather than 20, therefore I feel better'. 'I killed 80 rats rather than 50, therefore I am better than you.'
GC: People talk about gunplay and it's often the difference between a good first person shooter and a poor one. With a platformer, if the actual physical sensation of jumping is not fun then all the game's other achievements are almost irrelevant.
PB: It's what we call the second-to-second. It's what you do every second in a game, if that doesn't work then maybe you should go back to the drawing board. If you're doing a shooter and the shooting isn't fun then it doesn't matter what features it has it will never be fun. And good doesn't mean complicated, good doesn't mean new always. You can have a very standard 3D gun experience and still the game is great. You mentioned people are getting fed up with the genre, but yeah - it's still fun. So it doesn't mean anything when you say that because it's still an interesting thing to do over and over and over again.
GC: There's been a lot of talk in the press, particularly from EA, about the chances of Battlefield 3 beating Call Of Duty in sales this year. Do you honestly think that's a realistic possibility? Is there not a fundamental difference in Call Of Duty's approach and appeal compared to Battlefield?
PB: I think you're right. Personally, that's not my goal. My goal is to create the better game. My goal is to create something that I see as a high quality shooter that I would like to play... and all of my team that is super into Battlefield and extremely talented people - if they want to play this game we've built a great game and I would argue that you could sell that in millions and millions of copies. But that's not my job.
I'm doing my job for another reason. I'm not here to sell the physical copies to the consumer. I'm here to create a great Battlefield experience and I think last year we did that with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. You could argue that that's a better game than the competition last year, but it didn't get the same numbers. So I think it's the whole awareness, having people try it out. What is it that the consumer wants that makes them pay $60 for a game?
GC: Every game that succeeds on the level of Black Ops, there has to be an inherent level of accessibility and shallowness - and that's not meant in a pejorative sense. In Battlefield there's a lot to learn and there's lot to specialise in, and that seems like it might be beyond a lot of Call Of Duty's audience. It's hard to see how Battlefield can compete unless it was a fundamentally different game - and it seems you're suggesting that it isn't.
PB: No, we want to keep the core of the game. But I think we can attract more people by just having them pick it up and play. I don't know what that means in numbers because I'm not an expert in that, but in general creating a better game is a very good platform to sell more units. [laughs] And on that I agree with you on the whole... I would call it a low threshold rather than shallow.
GC: That's probably a better word, yes.
PB: Because of the fact that a lot of people don't feel comfortable picking up and playing a game for the first time. They don't want the complexity of complicated game modes and deeper systems. In theory we could do a better job in introducing people to the game, not scaring them off, because I think once you start playing it you will see that the depth of the whole Battlefield system is very rewarding.
The whole teamplay aspect, the destruction, the different roles you can have that actually supports the rest of the team rather than just shooting people... I think that's a very attractive thing for the people that actually pick it up and play it. But like you said, if the threshold is too high, if they're a bit scared of picking it up because it looks too complicated then I think we can do a better job.
GC: It's probably fair to say that the single-player experience has always been the Achilles heel of the series, so what primarily has changed about it from previous games? How are you improving it?
PB: I think it's the whole accumulated learnings from our previous games. We know what we've done sub-par, so to speak. Even though I could argue that it's still decent. It's not top tier. You could claim we're number one in multiplayer but we're not number one in single-player. And I think that it has to do with accumulated knowledge, you need a couple of iterations before you can challenge the best.
GC: It seems that memorable set pieces are a particular problem, especially compared to the competition?
PB: Yes.
GC: Are things like the slow motion effect a conscious attempt to address this, to make the game more cinematic?
PB: I think we're focusing on creating dramatic moments and it's not only bigger explosions it's slow motion and the dragging of bodies... stuff that adds to the narrative of the game. We have been thinking about the elements we could make good use of. It's more like film storytelling than games, because single-player games in general need to think more drama I think. That doesn't mean simplify or make more stupid. It's more about, 'How do you create a better drama for the player?' Because it's a fundamental difference between the single-player narrative and the multiplayer sandbox all-out war and I think we want to create more dramatic single-player and we think we know now what we need to do to do that.
GC: Is there not a danger then that the single-player turns out to be too serious? Too overpowering for the average player. Call Of Duty, particularly Black Ops basically turns into '70s era James Bond by the end, which is presumably part of the reason for its success. But Battlefield seems a much more harrowing experience than that.
PB: I would compare it to movies. What's the film you want to make? What is the book you want to write? We have our style of storytelling and we don't want to be the other game. If you say James Bond, that's not the movie we want to make - we want to make a better movie. So, I think it's style and tone. What is it that you want to create? We want to create Battlefield and the competition want to create their vision, so if it's jarring that's... sad, we are aiming to create an adult game - and that's adult meaning, not cursing and gore but, that it's for grown-ups.
GC: Does that mean there'll be a political element to the story, which is something other games with a similar setting have always shied away from?
PB: We are trying to stay away from both religion and politics as much as possible, but by doing that you are actually making a statement in trying to avoid it.
GC: But isn't there an element of cowardice there? That you want everything to look realistic, but you don't want to face the realities of the real-world conflicts that underpin your story?
PB: We will definitely be making sure that it feels real when it comes to how people talk to each other and we like characters, we don't want them to be stereotypical superheroes. We want them to talk about their everyday lives but maybe like movies, choose the path you want to go down.
Because if you choose the wrong path you might end up in super political mayhem and no one would like to play your game and you get crazy letters with dust in them. So you don't want to do that either, so it's a challenge to find the right path and not go all out in one direction or another, because that's not very sensitive either.
GC: Okay, thank you.
PB: Thank you.
Formats: PC (previewed), Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: Digital Illusions CE (DICE)
Release Date: Autumn 2011 - possibly 2nd November
tl;dr
The first trailers have tantalised gamers everywhere, so we sat down with executive producer Patrick Bach to lift the lid on the most advanced shooter of 2011, Battlefield 3.
By Emmet Purcell
Is it finally time for a new first-person shooter to wrest control of the world's biggest video game genre from the industry-leading Call of Duty franchise? EA's CEO John Riccitello certainly thinks so - he told Games Industry.biz this week that DICE's Battlefield 3 is 'designed to take that game down', adding that there will be a "couple of hundred million dollars of marketing" spent on each title.
If this year marks the first true battle of the titans within the shooter genre, Battlefield 3 has took the first shots, debuting a series of stunning clips from their 'Fault Line' level, with sights including particle physics to literally level a skyscraper and the full power of the cutting-edge Frostbite 2 gameplay engine in action.
At an EA event in London this week, we took a disappointingly brief(due to alpha-build irks) look at the title's stunning Fault Line demo on PC and sat marvelling at what might be the most essential shooter for gamers this year. Before all that, however, we sat down with DICE producer Patrick Bach to discuss Battlefield's multiplayer evolution and the task of scaling a PC behemoth for consoles, while Bach made no effort to shield his views of the pesky 'competition'.
What can we expect to see from Battlefield 3 today?
PB: We're showing what we showed at GDC [the Games Developer's Conference in February]. There are some technical improvements but generally it's the same.
It's a snippet from the single-player campaign, which is divided into three different. It's on PC, because we want to prove that we are focusing a lot on the PC this time around, making sure that we develop on the PC and then we scale it to fit on consoles.
And would this be the same section that we've seen in all the promotional videos so far [part of he sequence can be seen here]?
PB: Yes.
In terms of the actual response to the game so far, the community response has been huge from the go. People are really embracing the trailers, screens - what's your reaction to that?
PB: Of course I'm really happy about that, because we want people to like what we are doing, but we want people to focus on what we think is the best Battlefield game. We haven't really adapted anything to their demands; when we built Battlefield: Bad Company, a spin-off series, it was our mission to build that type of game. Now we're going back to the core of the Battlefield series by building the next in the series.
To us, the focus has been clear all the time - we're not listening too much to the audience because we are the audience. We love to play Battlefield in the office, we play it almost every day, either the old ones or Battlefield 3, so we know what we want and if we like it, the audience out there will like it as well.
So I see that multiplayer is obviously a key component of the game, but you're putting more of an emphasis on the single-player campaign this time around?
PB: Uh... I'm not saying that actually [laughs]. I'm just saying that we're showing it right now. We have a lot of confidence in our multiplayer and we have a lot of stuff in store that we haven't released any information on yet. The reason for that is that we think we need to prove to everyone that we're getting better at building a single-player.
We already... well in my opinion, we're market leaders in this type of multiplayer, so we don't feel that we need to prove it right now. We want to make sure that when we show it, it's something epic.
A lot of people that I've shown this to [Battlefield 3] haven't played a Battlefield game before and they've been incredibly impressed by the trailers. What would you say to someone that hasn't ever played a Battlefield game and is really looking forward to this - what can they expect?
PB: To us, our goal is always to create the ultimate first-person shooter, where it's not only about twitch skill [player's reaction time and precision] but taking your personality into account - how would you solve the problem? How would you counter the enemy? And giving you all the tools and possibilities to someone, rather than saying, "if you're not quick enough, you'll die." There are a lot of games that only do that. We have that as well, there's a lot of twitch skill involved, but we also have the element of strategy, team play, the vehicles, as well as gadgets and weapons.
You want to give players the way out. No matter what the situation, there's always a way to counter it. That's how we're designing - we're looking not at the shooter but the shootee, or whatever you call it [laughs]. If you're getting shoot at, how is that fun?
Fun comes from, "I'm getting shot at - how should I counter this?" If you find the way out, then we know we have something that works. Not, "I don't know who shot me; I don't know how to counter it. This is not fun."
Even if you respawn you should think, "Oh, I will change to this kit, I will put these specialisations on to counter you." It's really hard to explain Battlefield to something that hasn't played it but I would say it's the best strategic, team play-based shooter on the market.
Particularly with Battlefield 2, it's a very layered out there in comparison to other contemporary shooters, but obviously people think of other franchises such as Call of Duty. What is it about Battlefield 3 that is really going to make it stand out? If you go onto forums and blogs people are talking about Battlefield 3 and the competition, but what is really going to make it the definitive contemporary shooter that we've seen to date?
PB: There's also a very layered answer to that, because when you see it [the game], the goal is to make sure it looks stunning. Everything from the lighting to animation to effects to destruction - everything needs to look amazing, that's the hook.
After that you have the sound layer, which brings the world to you and adds a lot of the drama to the piece. When it comes to the shooting experience and longevity of the game, people need to experience it. They need to be able to try it because we are building something spectacular.
We're not trying to copy someone else and some people are really scared of Battlefield because they think it's a strategic shooter, but it's not. It's never been.
It's more accessible than you think...
PB: Yeah. Our goal is to make it very accessible. It's a very sandbox, open-world component married with a very dramatic and narratively strong single-player campaign. That in combination will create something that is very attractive to a lot of people and on top of that you have the co-op, which we haven't really talked about and I won't. In general, it's a blockbuster package but with depth and that's our goal.
We don't want the sugar rush game that's, "Oh it's fun because I get it." Fun can be deeper than that.
It's not just drop-in, drop-out.
PB: Yeah and if you put hours into something, it should give you something. It should evolve while you're playing, into something else. A fun example from the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 game was that we added smoke grenades into the game from day one. It was there day one - no-one used it. Six months later, everyone used smoke grenades [laughs].
People started to get that smoke grenades are a great cover in some of the open areas, where you need to get to a point where it's completely open and I get sniped. [They would say] "The game is completely unbalanced." And then it's like, "Hey wait a minute, what if we used smoke grenades?"
You find out by the rest of the community and you can start to counter that by learning other things. Everything evolves around the gameplay that's already there because we've been thinking a lot about this and not everyone picks it up day one, and that's fine. Depending on who you are, the game should work for you and you shouldn't have to adapt to the game.
We see it like a sport. It's like football; everyone knows what it's about - it's about getting that round thing into that square thing, but how you do it, you can do in a million ways. And you can do it on a professional level or in your back yard. The rules are the same but you can do it differently depending on who you are and the game is the same. It depends on who you're against. We need to keep the rule set but give you slightly different tools.
Also, having maps varied with what vehicles are there, open fields or tight urban settings, there's so many things that we can play with when it comes to the core game mechanics.
Of course it's going to be enhanced by the beta and things like that. Are you at a place where you can announce a retail launch date?
PB: No we're not, sorry. But we are playtesting the game like crazy.
I think on a ground level, people get used to a norm, Modern Warfare and whatever, and they kind of get sick of it and they rally behind a newcomer and a new product. I think Battlefield 3 could becoming that title, at least on the internet.
PB: I hope that, because we are a bit fed up. We feel a bit sad that no-one is really trying to set a new tone. That's what we're trying to do and everyone is still building games based on five-year-old consoles - that's quite sad. Of course there's good reasons for it; because it's super expensive otherwise, but we're trying to focus on what is scalable.
Most of the system, since we're building it [Battlefield 3] for the high-end PCs - which no-one is really trying to do nowadays - we're finding out that there is so much more that you can do for the consoles.
People thought that they hit the roof but just adding the new rendering technology and animation technology and trying to get that to fit we see, "Hey, wait a minute, it actually works - oh my god". It's super exciting to see that on a console because you feel like you put something extra into your console because it looks so much better
That's very interesting actually...
PB: It's about pushing the boundaries and if you focus on the previous game or the competition, you won't push the boundaries.
The only way to push the boundaries is to go somewhere else and we want to go there. We want to build the best possible Battlefield game ever, rather than, "Let's build a copy of the competition and make it slightly better." If you do that, you will definitely fail.
I think we've definitely ran behind our allotted time, we really appreciate that Patrick.
PB: Thanks.
By Martin Gaston - 08/04/2011 - 5:00pm GMT
'We are looking into ways of creating more social interaction,' says DICE executive producer.
Battlefield 3 screenshot
EA has been using Autolog in its racing games since Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit - developed by Criterion with assistance from DICE - was released last year. Will DICE be adding similar features to Battlefield 3?
Speaking to VideoGamer.com, executive producer Patrick Bach teased that "without going into details with what we're doing with Battlefield 3, we are looking into ways of creating more social interaction with the people on your friends list and in the world. So you get the same feeling, the same emotion that you'll get from Autolog."
Bach also explained how Autolog, in its current iteration, wouldn't work in a FPS.
"Autolog is a very clever feature based on a few factors," he said, "but it's also based on that you can go in and beat a person on the same kind of foundation. You set the time on a track with a car that gets sent over me, that's now my challenge - can I beat you on that track with that car? In a first person shooter that's not how you actually how you play the game. If you shot ten guys, and that's sent over to me, do I then go into another game and shoot ten guys? There's obvious difficulties in translating that directly."
Battlefield has been using social-like features for a while now, such as collecting dog tags from enemies you melee kill. "We're shaping features like that to become more attractive and more interesting," said Bach. "I think Bad Company 2 was the first game where [dog tags] actually popped out and created this mass-market appeal, and [people] got all excited about something that existed before but never popped out in the way that it did."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you see something similar in Battlefield 3," Bach added.
For more on Battlefield 3 check out our impressions of a recent demo.
Battlefield 3 is due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in November.
Story by Keza Macdonald
Fri, Apr 08, 2011 | 17:00 BST
The future. It is here. The first demonstration of Battlefield 3 absolutely BLEW MY TINY MIND. This is going to be one hell of a game about shooting things. Impressions, quotes, new shots.
It’s running on a PC the size of a large Alsatian, so it’s perhaps not all that surprising that Battlefield 3 looks so much better than any other FPS I’ve ever seen – but it is still extremely impressive. The videos do a pretty good job of showing off the level of detail, but until you see it running, you can’t quite believe it’s possible. But it is, on this hardware anyway: we’ll have to wait and see what DICE can deliver on current consoles.
You’ll have seen the beginning of the demo in the gameplay trailer EA put out at GDC last month. Beginning in an ATV with three other soldiers partaking in typically gruff, sweary, jarhead banter, we emerge into a middle-Eastern city, all dust and traffic and sun on concrete. This part of the game is set on the border between Iran and Iraq, in an imaginary conflict set in 2014.
The squad is sent to a market to investigate the disappearance of another team of marines. Making their way through narrow, dusty, atmospheric alleyways, they eventually come to a car park near the missing team’s former position – at which point a shot rings out and one of the squad falls to the floor. As the demonstrator drags him behind cover by furiously hammering the S key, insurgents start appearing from behind cars and climbing wire fences.
In the ensuing firefight, it’s impossible not to notice Battlefield 3′s startlingly advanced sound design. Guns really sound like guns, the shots echoing differently indoors and out in wide open space. Even the explosions sound detailed.
An exploding car heralds the presence of two RPG-wielding enemies on a second-floor balcony overlooking the carpark. They’re swiftly despatched with thrown grenades whilst the rest of the squad takes care of targets on the ground, keeping tight behind cover. In a matter of a minute or two, it’s all quiet again, and the demo skips ahead to an underground basement.
Bomb lore
Having found an ominous wire leading from upstairs, we’re sent to investigate it alone. Following the wire into a storage area, a tell-tale beeping emanates from somewhere up ahead – our demonstrator turns to find an IED hooked up to two red wires.
After disconnecting one of them, the beeping starts to escalate alarmingly in tempo. Suddenly, someone grabs him from behind. There’s a frantic, close-quarters QTE fist-fight using the mouse buttons as our demonstrator tries to beat the young assailant off and disconnect the other wire, pinning the guy up against the wall, slamming his head against it until he eventually loses consciousness. He yanks the second wire out as the beeping reaches fever pitch.
We skip forward again to the rooftop of the same building, where a sniper fires a shot from a building somewhere off to the right. Going prone, the whole squad creeps across the roof, looking for a good defensive position.
“You don’t want to be one-dimensional, always running and gunning.”
Every five or ten seconds, a sniper shot chips a hole in the low wall, sending bits of rubble bouncing across the rooftop, or hits the ground uncomfortably close to a teammate’s prone body. Eventually, our demonstrator reaches position and fires an RPG at the hotel opposite, under suppressing fire from the other squad members – and practically the whole building blows up, neon sign, balconies and all. “Good effect on target,” says one teammate, which seems a bit of an understatement.
Battlefield 3 already seems to have an excellent feel for the rhythm and tempo of a good single-player shooter, interspersing the chaos and destruction with minutes of quiet tension. Brand manager Kevin O’Leary considers this one of Battlefield’s key differentiators in the single-player campaign.
“In that demo we saw a one-on-one fight, and then outside there can be hundreds of people and vehicles, all-out war,” he says. “But you don’t want to be one-dimensional, always running and gunning. I didn’t fire a bullet for the first five minutes of that demonstration. It’s about highs and lows, so you can really feel the battle.”
The last part of the demo is set out on a wide road, as the squad tries to hold back waves of attackers from a narrow overpass with helicopter support – the noise of gunfire, helicopters and enemy vehicles is overwhelming. There’s a tinkling sound, oddly clear over the cacophony of gunfire – our demonstrator looks up, and sees a shimmering stream of spent bullet cases showering down from the helicopter above.
After the road is cleared of enemies, there are a few moments of calm, which predictably doesn’t last long. The demo ends as a massive earthquake ruptures the ground and a huge ripple of cracked tarmac sends the soldier flying from his mounted gun, as building all around begin a slow, inevitable collapse.
The cityscape is an extremely good place to show off the Frostbite 2′s unmatched capabilities when it comes to destruction – it’s easy to see why EA has chosen this level as our first taste of the game, and it whets the appetite for what will happen later in Paris and London. It’s all extremely scripted, of course, but that’s to be expected from a reveal demonstration.
“It is different every time – it may be slight, but you can choose how you do things. I’ve played this like 150 times; it’s always a bit different,” laughs Kevin.
It feels strange that our first look at Battlefield 3 features no vehicles and no multiplayer – the two things upon which the series built its name. But O’Leary assures us that vehicular combat will be a big part of the single-player game.
“It’s Battlefield, they’re always going to be there,” he says.
“Obviously what we just showed didn’t have any driveable vehicles. Jets are back, so there’s most likely going to be jet elements, and we always like to mix it in. You’ve got to have a good mix of infantry and vehicles.”
As for multiplayer, DICE won’t be talking about that until E3, although it has confirmed it’ll feature 64 players on the PC. The beginning of June would be a very good time to keep an ear out for more info.
30fps target for console versions of Battlefield 3 dashes hopes of matching CoD's frame rate.
Written by David Scammell, 08 April 2011
Battlefield's Brand Manager Kevin O'Leary has revealed that DICE is targeting "a constant 30fps" for the console versions of Battlefield 3.
"We always have a bare minimum of constant 30fps if not higher," said O'Leary talking to GamerZines earlier this week.
"It's always about that great quality experience, so if framerate is something that we see is lagging, we'll bring that back up."
Battlefield 3's closest rival Call of Duty has continued to output at a steady 60fps, while the most recent console Battlefields, Battlefield: Bad Company and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, have both rendered at 30fps.
Some gamers claim that a higher frame rate allows for more responsive controls and less input lag during intense multiplayer sessions.
Battlefield 3 launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in November.
Battlefield 3 coverage available in PCGZine Issue 52 - click here to download it for free!
Battlefield 3: Screenshots, storyboards and concept art
Friday 8-Apr-2011 5:00 PM
Take a look behind the scenes of the 'next-gen' FPS
EA's dropped a crate full of Battlefield 3 media in our laps including screenshots, storyboards and concept art.
The package covers everything from the subtle changes in soldiers' movements to the different stages of massive destruction.
It was only yesterday EA CEO John Riccitiello said Battlefield 3 was designed to take Call of Duty down and, from what we've seen so far, it certainly looks like it's in with a shot.
Have a look at the latest Battlefield 3 gameplay video and feast your eyes on the 54 screenshots we grabbed from it if you're still in any doubt.
Not before you've had a look at all the new Battlefield 3 goodness from EA and DICE first, of course.
Tom Pakinkis
8-Apr-2011
DICE showcases the stunning FPS in all its glory...
As we filed into the 12 minute screening of Battlefield 3 at EA's showcase earlier this week, we were excited. We were more than excited; we might have squeaked a bit, we're not sure.
This is Battlefield 3 we're talking about, the EA and DICE FPS that looks so good it could blow COD out of the water, never mind kill it. We have, of course, already seen a fair bit of Battlefield 3 footage; the nuanced, slick animations, the spine-tingling destruction - big and small - and the blinding shafts of light that somehow manage to beat the real thing only served to fuel our anticipation for this day.
We were a bit disappointed then, to find out that the 12 minutes of gameplay footage that EA had prepared for us was more or less the footage we'd already seen on the internet tacked together. Our hearts sank, we'll admit.
But they didn't sink too far because it wasn't long before we realised this was going to be a completely different experience. Firstly it was an extended version of the Battlefield trailers that we were being made privy to; there was some extra gameplay footage bridging some of the sections to feast our eyes on. All was not lost.
Secondly, we weren't watching this on some tiny computer monitor, sitting on unforgiving office chairs with the threat of the whip if we blinked for too long; this was big screen, HD, surround-sound. It was how Battlefield 3 was meant to be experienced, and then some.
With a full-blown showing of Battlefield 3, we were able to witness all the subtleties of the gameplay for the first time: Things kicked off with a scene that was new to what we'd seen of Battlefield 3 but a well-worn classic for the military FPS; the old 'sitting in a jeep with your squad while the one with the loudest mouth talks through the situation' scenario. Except this one was the best we've seen by a long way, not because anything particularly revolutionary happened in terms of the scene's structure or mechanics but because it was absolutely flawless. The animation was smooth, fluid and detailed with the slightest movements putting the characters well beyond the slightly puppet-like movements you could accuse much of DICE's competition of still exhibiting and closer to human replication than ever before.
The best bit is that the briefing followed not with a fade out and a loading screen but with the jeep arriving at its destination and the CGI cutscene quality squad standing, leaving the vehicle and stepping onto the streets of Iraq, beginning the mission. There wasn't even the slightest of pauses in the flow of the scene as control was handed to the player, those cutscene quality graphics doubled up as in-game visuals with a shrug of the shoulders and a "What of it?" from Frostbite 2.0.
A TOUCH OF FROST
That lead us into the opening of first gameplay trailer released at the beginning of March, only this time our tour guide took a little bit more time to look around. It gave us the chance to really drink in the incredible draw-distance and the surrounding detail. The war-torn city was brought to life as fellow soldiers stood watch, searched civilians and generally got on with tasks that the player wasn't involved in at all - it felt like the player was just a small part of something much bigger, and largely unnoticed, really adding to the feeling of authenticity.
What also added to the authenticity was the absolutely stunning scenery which, on a big HD screen, looked as close to photorealistic as our brains could comprehend any in-game graphics ever doing.
If you were to take away the character models which, while also impressively sharp and detailed, obviously can't match the fidelity of a largely still background environment, you could tell us the dusty, sun-drenched, washed-out urban surroundings were photos and we'd believe you like a dog believes you really did throw that ball for a few seconds.
Another addition to the gameplay we've seen so far was an extended briefing from who we're calling 'the chap with the map', who set the player the task of finding a group of stranded brothers in arms. While his movements were just as fluid and detailed as what we described in the jeep, it was here we realised that the Battlefield boys looked better with their helmets and shades on. Don't get us wrong, the facial animations and hair rendering was as good as any other, if not slightly better, but when everything else surpasses "any other" by some way, it just reminds you that developers still find natural faces difficult to pull off, despite all their wizardry elsewhere. Perhaps Team Bondi could lend a hand?
Skulking down the narrow alleys showed off Frostbite 2.0's amazing ability to handle light. Beams of sunshine scorched exposed sections of wall and shot through openings as the player passed, it actually made us feel a bit warm.
Then, moving into one of the buildings we came to that darkened room with the high-up windows letting in perfect, penetrating shafts of light. It's our most memorable bit from the videos on the net, oddly, and it was an even more effective set-up on the big screen, clearly designed to really accentuate the lighting effects.
Eventually we came to the car-park ambush which, as you know, soon escalates to an all out fire-fight. A team-mate is quickly taken down and as the DICE dev went over to drag him out of the line of fire (it's clearly not something he thrives in afterall) the quality of animation and level of detail was again brought to the fore.
As he got right up close to his fallen friend, every detail in his clothing was shown to be stark and solid. The player's arm didn't snap out with some quick, snap animation either, there was a lot of deliberate movement - some of it wasted (as it would be in real-life) - that went into just taking the injured soldier's arm. The player's hand reached out and curled around the soldier's left arm until gun fire caused him to make a jolt reaction before continuing to pull his friend out of danger.
The extended footage continued at this point in a way that the internet videos don't, as the player props the injured troop up against a wall. Again everything is smooth and detailed, it almost looks like a cutscene in itself.
The battle outside played out similarly to what you'll already have seen, the difference being that we weren't cut off prematurely when the RPG blows the player across the car park. He was ok, obviously, and picked himself up to take cover before chucking a grenade onto the balcony where the enemy was nested.
We were slightly disappointed to see that the RPG soldier didn't react to a grenade landing by his feet, but we'll give DICE the benefit of the doubt since this is pre-alpha code and there's a good chance that we wouldn't notice a small explosive landing in our vicinity in such chaos. It'd be nice to see some sort of attempt to escape from the balcony dweller in the final build though.
FIRE IN THE HOLE
What didn't disappoint though was the damage that the grenade did, blowing the best part of the balcony wall clean off and spitting out a massive black cloud across the car park. With the threat neutralised, our player turned into the curtain of smog to show off that golden sun again. It seared through the cloud with a deep, angry orange. We're not sure how many times we can reasonably pour compliments over what's essentially a ball of gas and flame before it becomes a bit weird but we were more than a little impressed once again.
The footage moved on to that sniper scenario that sees your group slithering across a rooftop under fire. The main thing to add to what you've already witnessed is that with proper surround sound engulfing your ears that sniper shot is flinchingly snappy. It really adds to the tension, making sure there's no doubt that if one of those bullets hits you it's going to rip you in half.
We've already talked about our admiration for the little bits of damage on show for this section; the splinter plant-pots throwing soil everywhere, the dust flying off the walls, but the original video cut just after the player took the sledgehammer approach to the sniper by firing a rocket propelled grenade at the hotel he was firing from. We never did get to see just how much damage Frostbite 2.0 was capable of and the cynic in us pondered whether DICE had chosen to cut the video short because, despite all the dust and debris, the damage sustained by the hotel wasn't all that spectacular.
Thankfully the cynic in us got a stinging slap in the face at the showcase as the dust cleared to reveal a gaping hole covering in the side of the building with flames pouring from pockets of destruction. Frostbite 2.0, we yield.
The final section we were allowed to peek at is, of course, the scene where the player is tasked with locating and disarming an improvised explosive device. The key part of this section for us was the fist-fight that ensued between the player and an interrupting enemy. It was quick, blurry and still difficult to tell exactly how well the melee system will work in practice.
FACE FACTS
We did have another facial issue at this point, however. As with our commander previously, there was a discrepancy between the quality of NPC faces and the surrounding environment. While we have to stress that the problems we have with Battlefield 3 faces probably owe to the fact that we've been spoiled by its environments more than anything, we couldn't help but feel that the bloke punching us in the head looked almost cartoony. At least, he looked like a game character in a photorealistic world.
In any other title it wouldn't be an issue and indeed, it was quickly forgotten once we were back outside, battling on the bridge over what was once probably a busy main road. Battlefield 3 was back at its finest with a seemingly endless draw-distance, scorching sunlight flooding into every possible space and even the leaves on the palm trees bowing ever so slightly in the gusts of wind expelled from grenade blasts.
And it's those little details that impressed us throughout. The snap of the sniper bullet, the slap of your boots on the concrete floor, the way strong beams of virtual sunlight somehow managed to tamper with our real-world climate. There's so much more to be had from DICE's FPS and the stunning Frostbite 2 engine that really shines through under the right conditions.
You already know that Battlefield 3 is beautiful but, trust us, until you've seen it on the big screen, with some big sound, you don't know the half of it.
Tom Pakinkis
By Martin Gaston - 08/04/2011 - 5:39pm GMT
'There's always competition to build not only the best game but the best technology,' says DICE executive producer.
Battlefield 3 screenshot
So far DICE has shown tremendous-looking Battlefield 3 running exclusively on PC. How will it look when it makes the leap to console? "What we're showing on PC might look better than on console," said DICE executive producer Patrick Bach to VideoGamer.com in an interview, "but what we'll show on console doesn't look worse than any other game out there. It's probably even better than every other game out there on console."
Bach explained how he feels people will react when they finally see Battlefield 3 running on 360 and PS3. "Most people will be very positive because they might be afraid that it won't look as good as other games and it will, and some people will of course be disappointed that it doesn't look like the PC version."
What will the console versions lack, then? "The higher resolution, the higher framerate, the anti-aliasing, the motion blur, stuff like that. We can't have it to the same quality on the console," says Bach.
Bach also explained the predicament for the Swedish studio. "The problem if you're setting a new bar is you're pushing yourself up. Of course there's a challenge by showing something that looks amazing on PC and then something that just looks great on console. I think the challenge is to beat ourselves. Of course, it's hard to do that because of the practical limitations of the consoles."
How does DICE feel about rival engine technology, then? "There's always competition to build not only the best game but the best technology, the best features," says Bach, "and you want to be the best at everything, of course, that's how things are being moved forward."
"We are not trying to build any of our old games, and we're not trying to build any of our competitors' games: we're trying to build our own Battlefield 3."
For more on Battlefield 3 check out our impressions of a recent demo.
Battlefield 3 is due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in November.
y Martin Gaston - 08/04/2011 - 5:00pm GMT
'We have a very solid foundation,' says DICE executive producer.
Battlefield 3 screenshot
While Battlefield's staple multiplayer modes of Conquest and Rush have always gone down well, most other shooters simply focus on Team Deathmatch. Does DICE executive producer Patrick Bach think Battlefield 3 could support the world's most popular multiplayer gametype?
"I definitely think so. Absolutely," Bach told VideoGamer.com at a London event earlier this week. "We have the core shooting mechanic, and we have the weapon layout stuff that, in theory, could support any mode. I think that's the core of Battlefield - that we have a very solid foundation that, in theory, we could build any game mode."
Bach explained: "The biggest challenge for [DICE] is that we can't really use someone else's engine to build Battlefield, because no-one has the same versatile toolbox in their engines to do vehicles, and 64 players, and huge open landscapes and great indoor lighting at the same time. You can do parts of it, but you can't do the whole package. That's why we built the whole Frostbite engine from the start.
"Frostbite 2 is a huge package when it comes to Battlefield-focused technology. The good thing about this is if you can build Battlefield you can probably build any game. Setting the bar that high with the technology creates a great kind of toolset for us to build whatever we want in Battlefield."
"Our biggest enemy is ourselves," he concluded.
VideoGamer.com got to see Battlefield 3 running on PC earlier this week.
Battlefield 3 is due for release on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 in November.
Posted in Featured, News on April 8, 2011 4:03 pm by Rob
Still reeling from Battlefield 3’s ‘Fault Line’ trailers? Incredibly, you haven’t seen anything from this FPS game yet. At the recent EA Spring Showcase in London, we got treated to the full 15-minute gameplay demo (which we reckon will be the ‘big reveal’ on April 17th) and in terms of visual pomposity and technical swagger, it leaves every shooter out there in the dust. No, scratch that – every other game. Even the gorgeous Crysis 2 pales in comparison.
DICE have not been shy in their assertions that Frostbite 2.0 is the best engine around, and from what we’ve seen, we’re finding it hard to disagree with them. So how exactly does it work? Well according to Battlefield 3’s Brand Manager, Frostbite 2 can be broken down into five pillars. PR guff? Certainly, but then it rams home the point that Battlefield 3 is streaks ahead of the FPS game competition in pretty much every area.
Animation
As soon as the demo beings and we follow a squad of marines running through starkly lit Iranian alleyways, the quality of Battlefield 3’s animation becomes apparent. DICE have utilised EA Sports’ Animation technology – ANT – for the soldier movement, and while it sounds an odd choice, the results are there for all to see.
The squad move with a smooth, lifelike gait, their torsos heaving realistically as they push onwards. The marines look weighty and grounded, their feet making solid contact with the ground with each step – a far cry from the light and floaty movement of other FPS games.
Similarly the transitions from standing to crouching and then crouching to prone are smooth and seamless, dynamically fused with reloading animations. Of course the EA Sports tech is being modified slightly – bullet impact animations are being spliced in for instance – which will hopefully prevent squad members from cracking out Ronaldo-style step-overs mid fire-fight.
Destruction
Blowing stuff to bits has been a Battlefield staple since the initial Frostbite tech was introduced in Bad Company. With Frostbite 2’s muscle behind the destruction physics however, we can expect the explodey stuff to be that much more impressive. And it is. Not just with the big stuff too (we’ll get to that in a sec), it’s the little details that set Battlefield 3 apart. The way dust sprinkles down from the ceiling as a mild tremor rocks a building’s interior, or the way shrapnel is torn out of the scenery by vicious sniper fire.
It adds a level of realism and immersion that we simply haven’t seen anywhere else. And nothing is exempt from these mechanics. Shoot anything, be it a plant pot, a car or a skyscraper, and it will fracture and break in precisely the way it should.
And then there’s the big kahuna. If you saw Fault Line Episode 3 – Get that wire cut, you’ll have seen the brief snippet of footage at the very end of the road-tearing earthquake. It looks ridiculously impressive, the street buckling in an astonishing wave of stunning destruction, before an entire building collapses on the hapless insurgents. Boom.
Scale
Good news if you’re a PC gamer – Battlefield 3’s multiplayer maps will be huge. And they’re going to need to be – accommodating 64 players plus multiple vehicles is no easy task. It’s been confirmed that jets, tanks and water-based vehicles will appear in the game (and also in the console version), so that’s a lot of on-screen clutter. Frostbite 2.0 will ensure it all runs silky smooth.
Sadly console gamers are going to have to make do with just the 24 players, and DICE have confirmed that maps will be altered to accommodate the lower player count. We’re hoping that means they’ve been redesigned, and not just had swathes cut off them.
Other concrete details on the multiplayer are scarce, but we have been told there will be more than one playable character for the campaign – so far we’ve only seen the marine, Sergeant Black. Does the inclusion of jets mean we’ll get to control a fighter pilot? We do hope so.
Rendering
You’ll forgive us for stating the bleedin’ obvious, but Battlefield 3’s lighting really is top-drawer. Sharp sunlight slices through gaps in buildings, and bounces off puddles with a glorious shimmering effect. Shadows are solid and deep, with not a single jagged edge in sight.
The ‘deferred rendering’ technique allows for dynamically changing light in real time – so for instance if you shoot out a street light or car headlamp, the entire scene changes instantly to match the new lighting.
Those white globes in the above shot are lighting probes, each one containing information on how specific parts of the environment are to be lit. Incredibly, each probe contains as much lighting information as an entire level from Bad Company 2, which gives you some idea as to the raw power behind the new Frostbite 2.0 tech.
Audio
The final cog in Frostbite 2.0’s impressive clockwork powerhouse, is the audio. Sound design is already one of DICE’s strong points (BC2 won them multiple audio awards) and Battelfield 3 ups the ante. Naturally.
That above shot is a screen grab from the desktop of Audio Director, Stefan Strandberg. No, we don’t understand what the hell it shows either. What we do understand though, is pin-sharp gunfire in 5.1 surround sound, and the gameplay demo does a lovely job of ripping our eardrums to shreds.
It’s not just loud though. Each environment has been specifically tailored to alter the way a sound is portrayed, so inside a concrete building our squad leader’s shouts echo crisply around the walls, whereas outside they’re drowned in the cacophony of battle. Each gun has its distinct sound too, which alters depending on their location and how far away from the player they are. In one section of the demo (which you’ll have seen in Fault Line episode 2) our squad is pinned down by a sniper across the street. The echoes from his rifle reverberate through the air, giving a sense of not only the gun’s power, but also how far away it is.
It all combines to create an experience that’s at once beautiful, intense and incredibly immersive. Battlefield 3 isn’t even out until the autumn, but is already looking like the shooter of the year, and we really can’t wait to get our greedy mitts on it.
E3 reveal for Battlefield 3 multiplayer looking likely as brand manager tells us to "keep your ears open".
Written by David Scammell, 08 April 2011
An E3 reveal for Battlefield 3's multiplayer component is likely to be on the cards, with DICE telling GamerZines that "E3 is probably a good time to keep your ears open" for news on the game's multiplayer.
The news came via Battlefield 3's brand manager Kevin O'Leary at an EA Showcase event in London earlier in the week. But when we asked the game's executive producer Patrick Bach to confirm whether an E3 reveal for the multiplayer was indeed coming, he told us that he had "no information to give".
Download PCGZine Issue 52PCGZine Issue 52 GamerZines Magazine For our latest Battlefield 3 coverage, click here to download PCGZine Issue 52 for free.With the game due out in autumn, E3 seems the perfect time to reveal what will likely be Battlefield 3's most impressive asset. So far, DICE has only chosen to show off a single level from the game's single-player campaign, which promises to "make you feel the visceral warrior's experience like no other FPS".
E3 kicks off on June 7th, and we'll be reporting on all the latest news from the show right here.
Battlefield 3 launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in November. EA anticipates it being "the strongest" game in the shooter space this year.
Battlefield 3 coverage available in PCGZine Issue 52 - click here to download it for free!
Anyone know if bf3 will be taking advantage of 64bit OS/processor? I read about vista or win 7 64bit being recommended.
Focusing on the PC is the future
APR 8, 2011
Patrick Bach, like a lot of the DICE team who are present at today's EA showcase in London, is looking as pleased as punch this morning. And why wouldn't he be? Battlefield 3 looks absolutely storming from what we've seen of it so far, with the kind of trendsetting level of visuals and audio that separated Crysis from the pack four years ago, so the DICE senior producer has reason to be just a wee bit enthusiastic.
The PC's evolved along plenty since Crysis days, but we're still playing on the same consoles as we were back in 2007. We ask Patrick about how the balance between PC and consoles has affected development of the latest Battlefield, and also about how the studio has learnt from the single-player experience it crafted in the Bad Company series. Oh, and we vainly inquire about Mirror's Edge.
You've been talking a lot about how Battlefield 3 is optimized for PC. Is PC the lead platform?
Yes, which is of course a challenge as we're [also] releasing it on the consoles. The interesting part of that is since we are developing for high-end PC features and really pushing it on the PC, we are actually learning a lot about the consoles. A lot of people think that we've hit the roof on the consoles because they're five years old but we're actually finding out a lot of things that you can do on the consoles that haven't been done before. To us, we're increasing what is possible on the consoles because we're aiming higher than the consoles. Usually you look at last year's games and try to the same but better, but since we're aiming way higher than the console specs we're actually finding new ways to get more out of them with the rendering engine and the animation engine and streaming technology and stuff like that. So it's really exciting to see what we can get out of the consoles.
Do you think that's going against where the industry's going? The audience share is much larger on consoles and a lot of traditional PC-based franchises are leading on consoles. Do you think that there's some risk in not leading on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3?
Yes, there is a risk, of course there's always a risk. I think the biggest risk is that people get scared is because it's not the sane choice when it comes to economy. We are game developers and we don't really care about that. If we make a good game we think that someone will be able to sell it. If we want to play it then other people want to play it. So us doing this is not based on a sane monetary decision, it's actually based on us being desperate to move gaming forward and you can't do that by trying to mimic the last game, no matter if it's your own or if it's the competition. We want to build the best possible Battlefield game. When we started design on Battlefield 3 we actually came up with all these cool things.
Again, we don't want to build Battlefield 2, we want to build a new game, so some people get upset because it's not a copy of the old game. It's like "But no, it's supposed to be new, it's new stuff. You can play the old game, that's fine - it's really cheap actually!" So when we started to design Battlefield 3 we said "Oh, we need to do this, we need to do that." We want it to feel more realistic, to be a more physical experience, immerse the player even further into the world. We want to keep the core pillars of what Battlefield is so don't screw with the sport [aspect]. We try to see Battlefield as a sport. We have a rule set that works - the whole rock, paper, scissors thing, so don't screw with that. And then we were done with that and then we realized, "OK, we can't build this, we don't have the technology to build this!" It's so much more than what we've seen before, and looking at other engines it's like no, no you can't build Battlefield games with engines other than our own because we have so many components, scale, big and small destructions, vehicles, 64 players and stuff like that. So we actually had to spend some time building the core of the engine before we actually started building the game, which was a bit frustrating because you want to be able to start Day 1 but we couldn't. So we have been building the engine for almost three years before even starting to build the game. We saw it as...if we do this now based on today's technology we can actually build on that for the future. We've seen what so many console generations and PC s have shown in the past so we know what you need, what kind of core technology you need to build games for the future. It's things like the streaming technologies, the DX11 features - if you don't start now you'll behind in a year or two. So we've actually worked very close with the DX team to set the bar on what we want and what we need for the future.
AMD said something recently about Direct X holding the PC back a bit. Is that your experience or do you find Direct X is still as useful as it ever was?
I think it's really useful. I am not working with rendering technologies myself, I'm not a rendering programmer, but I've not heard any complaints from our rendering team like it's holding them back. I think if you didn't follow the DX rule set you could probably squeeze something more out of it, but that's always the case with very specific hardware. If you didn't go through Windows or MAC OS you could probably have a more powerful experience. But the reason you have the DX there is because it's the standard. It's easy to scale it to more PC setups. If we removed it we would have a harder time scaling to different platforms and different PC configurations. I'm not too sure about this since I'm not working with it myself, but there's so much you can do with DX10 and DX11 that people still haven't even done, so there's still a lot to explore in that area. So I'm not too scared about the limitations right now.
Crytek has just released Crysis 2 and they've placed a lot of emphasis on how they've led development or at least separately for PC to give the PC the best sort of experience. EA Games President Frank Gibeau has also been talking about the PC as the way of the future. If Battlefield 3 is as successful as it looks like it's going to be, do you feel this could generate a switch towards using the PC as a lead platform rather than the consoles?
Oh yes, definitely. I think the reason why we and hopefully Crytek - I don't know if that's their kind of thinking - but because the consoles are so old now, honestly they're really old, the next generation of consoles, whenever they show up, will be based on what the PC's doing. It's always been like that. You look at what PC's doing and when you release you're probably 20% better than the best PC on the market just because you can ignore a lot of the operating systems and all the limitations of being a flexible platform. You just do your thing and probably sell epic hardware. The problem is that of course two years later and the PC's ahead. Like today we're three years past since the PCs came on par with the consoles and now the PC's so much more powerful. So to us, focusing on the PC is focusing on the future. Scaling it back to the consoles? We know how to do that. We want to create the same experience on the consoles but that doesn't mean from a technology perspective you'll get the same full-on hardware experience because the PC has more RAM, more CPU, more GPU. You can't beat that, it's impossible. Scaling that down, dumbing that down for PCs - that's just sad.
With regards some of the other large-scale shooters out there - we've just had Homefront, for example - we're seeing a lot of first-person shooters with traditionally smaller multiplayers expand into larger-scale multiplayer. If you take that and combine it with the fact that you have this community so attached to Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2, what are the challenges in going, "Well look, here's a new Battlefield game, and we're going to convince you to pick it up"?
Ooh, maybe we're not strategic enough at DICE because we might not think about that enough, to be honest. I think since we are building a Battlefield game, and with Battlefield 2 being a Battlefield game and Bad Company 2 being a Battlefield game , then take the best from both of these and imagine us having that in the back of our heads when we build Battlefield 3. We don't want to build a bad game. People will just have to trust us on that! We want to build the best possible Battlefield game and we'll take the components that we think will [let us] do that. In some cases, people will keep playing Battlefield 2 for any reason because we're not building the same game. Some people will keep playing Bad Company 2 because of other reasons. Our goal is of course to make sure that Battlefield 3 is so much better than both of them that you won't have a reason not to play it, and marrying those two communities would be amazing if we could do it. Of course, getting more people interested in the game would create a bigger community, and a bigger community in a way creates better games because you get more feedback, more telemetry on how things are moving along in the game and that helps us make better choices for the future. We are collecting telemetry from all our games and making sure Battlefield 3 is well balanced. Even though people are complaining we know that the game is balanced. People complain a lot about specific guns or specific classes in Bad Company 2, but when we look at the data it's like sorry man, it's actually working. You feel like you're losing but you're actually winning.
DICE General Manager Karl Magnus Troedsson has mentioned that Battlefield 3 isn't the only thing you're working on at the moment. I'm not going to ask you what it is since I know you're not going to answer that, but is it something that's brand new?
I can't answer that (laughs). We have more than Battlefield in the studio, that's for sure. Not everyone... a lot of people are working on Battlefield 3 but we have quite a few people working on stuff.
And... do you have any more clarity on the Mirror's Edge situation?
You said you wouldn't ask me about that! (laughs) We love Mirror's Edge, but that's all I can say.
We had to ask, sorry! Back to Battlefield 3: can you beat Modern Warfare 3, you know, if the game's released in November...?
If you're talking about sales I think that's other people than me to figure that one out. If you're talking about quality, I would argue that last year we probably had the best first-person shooter. Looking at Metacritic and Game Rankings and stuff like that we had the better game according to reviewers and consumers, but that's not enough, is it? There are other factors if you want to sell copies, there's marketing, there's the social behaviour of people, there are big communities playing other games. We think we have a more attractive game than the competition, not only the one you mentioned, but in general, and that there's no reason to not play Battlefield.
It's a more personal experience. You can create your own path through the multiplayer, finding your way of playing - it's not twitch skill only. That's a part of it, but not the whole thing. That's the beauty of Battlefield. Depending on your mood, you can play in different ways, so it's not only your personality but your mood. "Today I want to play more like this" So you find a map, you pick your kit, you add your specializations, and then go out and do you whatever you want to do. And it's not only about shooting people in the head, it's about helping your team, being more strategic, working together. You don't have to fire a single shot and you can still win the round, which is I think is a very attractive part of a first-person shooter. And then you have the whole vehicle focus, so you have some people who are like "I'm a pilot, that's what I do. I pilot helicopters and I do that really well so I'm helping the team by being the best possible pilot." That's a layer that most other shooters don't have. Then we want to be the best FPS... shooter (laughs) as well. So the whole aiming, shooting through the gun experience needs to be perfect. We've done this for quite some time. DICE has been building this game through every iteration so this is not a new studio building Battlefield. This is the same core group of people that have been working since 1942.
You're a studio that very much focuses on a multiplayer experience, but you've built in single-player over time. Randy Pitchford of Gearbox said recently that a lot of publishers and developers tend to shoehorn in multiplayer experiences because they think that's what people want. Do you feel that that's becoming the case in the games industry?
Yes, yes I do. I do think it's sad at times when someone shoehorns in multiplayer in a super-clear single-player game and it comes out bad and becomes more of a back-of-the-box feature. But then again a lot of people do think that "Now that I've finished the single-player game, I want the next step of this experience . I like this world, I like this universe, what more can I do in it?" So from that aspect a good multiplayer in a good game is great, that's something that adds a lot of value. Like you said, if it turns into shoehorning then it's always bad. But we've been building multiplayer for some time so we don't have to shoehorn in multiplayer at least!
But do you have the reverse problem? For example, we've just given Homefront quite a negative review because we thought its single-player was lacking and ill thought out. Because you've been such a multiplayer-focused studio, there's the possibility of the reverse occurring. Is that something that you've learnt to deal with at DICE with recent Battlefields in which you've introduced single-player?
Yeah, I think the reason we wanted to have single-player is not because we're trying to shoehorn it in, but because we think that the multiplayer experience has so much depth when it comes to how versatile it is, all the strategic elements, all the shooting. It feels like you have this epic core that you could potentially do whatever you wanted with. There is a lot of people in the industry who really love single-player, they only play single-player and they want to build the best first-person single-player game. So we have this game called Battlefield that already has all the tools - the toolbox is huge. So we can pick and choose and create a narrative around that and build what we think is a great single-player. We are getting better and better. Bad Company: not so good, but decent. Bad Company 2: much better. And now we know, we've been building the single-player for some time now.
So would you say it's easier to do the reverse? It's easier to superimpose a single-player onto a multiplayer game rather than superimpose a multiplayer onto a single-player game?
Yeah. I think the challenges are that a single-player game that's very tailored around the narrative in the single-player experience then you might not have balanced systems because you're building it based on that experience. So when you pull it apart and place it in a sandbox environment it's often quite broken. Since we're doing the opposite we [already] have a very balanced toolkit. When we put that into single-player we don't have to do anything. It's more what do we want it to be about, what gadgets, what vehicles, what weapons do we want to use and what story do we want to tell. The whole shooting and driving and flying experience, we already have, so we don't have to create that. We want it to be more or less a tutorial for the multiplayer. So when you play it through you've tried everything out once and you don't feel uncomfortable going into the multiplayer. A lot of people are scared to go online and want a tutorial before they go online. Well, play the single-player, it's a great tutorial. It's the longest tutorial you'll ever play in your life!
Barring Final Fantasy XIII, maybe. Many thanks for your time, Patrick.
My pleasure.
By Sinan Kubba
multithreaded on the CPU or SLI/CF?
Formats: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Released: Q4 2011
Battlefield 3 looks to be the biggest challenge yet seen to Call of Duty's dominance in the FPS market, Tom Hoggins takes a sneak peek at the weapons its bringing to war
It looks like Battlefield 3 will know when to slow the pace, serving up some atmospheric quieter moments
By Tom Hoggins
Monday April 11 2011
Battlefield 3 looks to be the biggest challenge yet seen to Call of Duty's dominance in the FPS market, Tom Hoggins takes a sneak peek at the weapons its bringing to war
Strike first, strike hard. EA have wasted no time in firing the opening salvo in a face off for supremacy of the military FPS.
For too long Call of Duty has had things its own way, dominating sales charts and disc drives almost by legacy alone.
Battlefield: Bad Company has always been CoD's closest competitor, and Dice have taken what they've learned from their rough-and-ready spin offs, using the knowledge to prepare their main series for the battle ahead.
A full-on campaign mode is the most radical addition to the traditionally multiplayer-focussed series, with Battlefield 3 now stepping into the breach to butt heads with Activision's goliath.
While we wait for the inevitable announcement of this year's Call of Duty, Battlefield 3 arrives with all the bluster and bravado you expect of the genre.
By its nature, the FPS market is an arms race, and EA and Battlefield developer Dice have come packing.
The Frostbite 2 engine --a significant technological jump over Dice's original bespoke FPS architecture-- seeks to utilise its sheer grunt to create blistering action on both micro and macro scale.
The light rendering techniques are super advanced. The "ANT" animation engine --borrowed from EA Sports titles such as FIFA-- allows more realistic, fluid blending of movement and nuance. "Look at all the wonderful things it does." say EA.
Talk is cheap, but the evidence --a 15 minute blast of live gameplay on PC-- is ... persuasive.
You will step into the weathered boots of Staff Sergeant Henry Blackburn for Battlefield 3.
Sent to the Iraq/Iran border in order to keep the peace, Blackburn and his squad are detailed to find a missing soldier. It's not long into this search that the US forces discover the insurgency making a nuisance of themselves are far more organised and dangerous than they first appeared.
After Blackburn's small squad hops out of their transport, you see a sun-baked square crawling with US soldiers, standing in rank and file.
It's an arresting sight in scale and detail. With Frostbite 2 apparently committed to both the broader strokes and tiniest details, the Battlefield 3 demo fluctuates in the scale of its pulsing staging and pacing.
Blackburn's squad creeps through an abandoned Iraqi market. Incidental detail is everywhere, discarded produce, a dog leaps at a gate, scrabbling and barking as they slip past into an abandoned school.
It's supremely atmospheric, shadows creeping across walls like spiders legs as laundry flutters in the breeze.
The calm is shattered, of course, by a sniper bullet shredding the shoulder of one of Blackburn's teammates, who he then must drag to safety before joining in the battle in a cavernous killzone, surrounded by high buildings.
The squad's shouts and weapon fire echoes around the concrete cocoon. Debris peppers the road as gunfire chips away at cover, demonstrating that dynamic destruction Battlefield is so fond of.
As Blackburn lobs a grenade into an Insurgent occupied balcony, the resulting explosion blows large chunks out of the surrounding walls. It's all very, very impressive from a technical standpoint. Call of Duty and Bad Company have always been big on bombast, but this is a step up.
However, we've seen so many scripted military rollercoasters recently that you wonder just how Battlefield 3 is going to address the creeping shellshock fatigue.
The sales success of the mediocre Homefront suggests that the appetite for such games continues unabated, but with such saturation, both Battlefield and Call of Duty will need to be careful to not to exert too much pressure, lest the bubble burst.
Throughout the Battlefield demo, though, there are glimpses of hope that Dice won't just rely on sledgehammer blows to pummel players into submission.
A rooftop scramble has Blackburn and his squad under sniper fire, scooting from cover to cover as plant pots skirting the building edge splinter and pop under gunfire.
Locating the sniper in a hotel across the street, Blackburn's squad lays down covering fire as he belly-crawls into a safe position to fire off an RPG, blowing a hole in the hotel, buckling it in the middle as if it was punched in the gut.
Dust and debris rain down, and the giant electric sign snaps free of its holdings and dangles precariously over the street. The single RPG blast is the only time Blackburn pulls the trigger in a section more about movement and timing.
Getting rather more claustrophobic, Blackburn is tasked with following a wire into a dark, dank substation, wriggling through vents with only the scattered glow of flickering lightbulbs to guide him.
Locating a destructive IED, Blackburn tries to cut the wire before getting into a brief, brutal QTE (uh-oh) fight. It's purely cinematic, but the thrum of the power generator and incessant beeping of the bomb turn it into a genuinely tense section.
So the intimate moments are well demonstrated. But Dice end the demo on a scale you genuinely won't have seen in a genre that thrives of being gigantic.
A pitched highway battle among the burning skyscrapers of the city, support choppers taking out enemy tanks, used bullet shells tumbling from the aircraft's underbelly.
Blackburn mans a turret attached to a US jeep, opening fire on the sudden rush of insurgents. There's a rumble and the building in front buckles and sways, a tremor ripples out, shattering the pavement beneath your jeep, flipping you into the air.
The building collapses in a belch of dust and debris, pitching forward, falling on Blackburn's position. As the dazed, prone soldier meekly raises his hand, the screen fades to black.
How very exciting. This glimpse at the campaign leaves little doubt that Battlefield 3 will pose the biggest threat to Call of Duty that we've seen in years.
And that's to say nothing of the expansive, vehicular multiplayer (64 players on PC, 24 on consoles) that the series is famed for.
With both EA and Activision committed to a $200m marketing battle, woe betide anything that stands in their way. Better take cover, there's a war coming.
- Tom Hoggins
© Telegraph.co.uk
"With regards some of the other large-scale shooters out there - we've just had Homefront, for example - we're seeing a lot of first-person shooters with traditionally smaller multiplayers expand into larger-scale multiplayer."
How many players is Homefront, and what other traditionally smaller multiplayers are expanding into larger scale??
Also, I checked out BFPlay4Free and it has BC2's 5 shot then reload mechanic for APCs. I quit after that but I heard it has a similar mechanic for jet cannons. That's not looking good for BF3. That might be worthy of a question line on Post #1 of this thread. IE: "Will BF3 have a vehicle reload mechanic like BC2/P4F?"