EA: New Battlefield will "change the way you play shooters"
- December 12, 2007 10:37 AM PST
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Battlefield: Bad Company will change the way we play games, according to EA. GamePro speaks with Karl-Magnus Troedsson, the senior producer for Battlefield: Bad Company, due out this March.
How similar is Bad Company to a typical Battlefield title? If I'm a Battlefield veteran, what would make me want to play Bad Company?
Experienced Battlefield fans will feel very much at home with Bad Company. The core mechanics, the sandbox game play experience that's the pedigree of all Battlefield games, is present in the new online mode as well as the singleplayer campaign. Think huge environments with tons of weapons, vehicles and gadgets and then combine this with your own imagination to how to solve the problems at hand. Seasoned Battlefield players can also stay tuned for a Veteran program.
I understand DICE recently added a single-player portion to Bad Company. How does this work differently than multiplayer?
The singleplayer campaign in the Battlefield: Bad Company(tm) has a lot of common things with playing online. The difference is that the player is grouped together with a squad of three other soldiers which go on a story driven adventure within the war. The game style is otherwise very similar to multiplayer i.e. anything you find on the battlefield can be used and no objective has only one solution, it's up to you how you want to go about it. The story is told with in-game cut scenes, controlled voice over moments and hours of idle talk between the characters. To hear it all you probably have to play the game more than once.
Bad Company uses destructible environments, but how do they affect strategy and gameplay?
I've said this before and some people are skeptical but the tactical destruction in Battlefield: Bad Company will change how you play shooters. It fundamentally changes how the second to second action between players plays out. E.g. there is no more cover. An enemy shooting at you in a window and then taking cover behind the wall when reloading can be taken out by tearing down the whole wall. All you need is the right tool for the job. Tanks can drive through forests and hence stay off mine littered roads. Stay tuned for the demo to get some hands on experience to see what I mean.
What's the basic storyline and premise behind Bad Company?
You play as Preston Marlowe, an ordinary soldier in the US army, just transferred into B Company due to a prior misconduct. In his new outfit he meets three other rouge soldiers, Sarge, Haggard and Sweetwater which all ended up in this high-turn-over-outfit for their own reasons. As the story unfolds they run into clues leading towards a fortune in gold bullion, horded by a turncoat mercenary which is fuelling the ongoing world conflict. The chase of their own personal ambitions will take them upon a road trip covering Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East, fighting off all sides of this conflict in their private endeavor.
Will players be able to customize their characters, earn upgrades, or anything along those lines ala Battlefield 2142?
There's a rich unlock tree in Battlefield: Bad Company similar to the one in 2142. It will be kit based and focus around new weapons and gadgets. As you progress up in rank by earning points, awards, dog tags etc. you'll get unlock points to spend.
Finally, will the game support big-team online battles? How are these different from a match in Battlefield 2?
The new online game mode in Battlefield: Bad Company will support 24 players. Even though the large scale fights known from the PC experience occasionally can be cool in an overwhelming kind of way, it wasn't what we wanted for this game. We want all people to be able to play even on slow connections and in order to support this we'll be supplying all the stand alone servers on which to play. This together with the fine tuned maps, weapons and vehicles will cater to all people that are serious about online play on consoles.
