Battlefield 3 weapons revealed: portable anti-air launchers, night vision scopes, claymore mines

Battlefield 3 - man down

Last week at Gamescom, DICE revealed a ton of information about Battlefield 3's armoury, including a list of the weapons they have added so far. MP1st have been trawling through the numerous odd bits of info DICE have been unveiling during the course of last week's show in Cologne, and have turned up some interesting facts.

For example, sniper shots to the body will never kill instantly, follow up fire be necessary to finish off enemies wounded in the torso. Distant victims will now stand more of a chance against long range rifles, thanks to directional scope glint that can reveal a sniper's position. Scope glint will be caused by sniper rifles and assault rifles that have high power scopes fitted.

You can see what scope glint looks like from the targeted player's perspective precisely one minute and 30 seconds into the spectacular Caspian Border map trailer shown at Gamescom last week. Read on for more details on night vision scopes, weapon mods and bullet drop, as well as a list of every weapon that's been confirmed for Battlefield 3 so far.

Some devices in Battlefield 3 will enable night vision. there won't be any gadgets that will enhance your entire field of view, but special "weapon optics" will be able to see in the dark. Night vision scopes won't have an ordinary vision mode to switch to, meaning you'll have to make an important choice when including one in your loadout. Night vision could be very useful in certain circumstances, like the underground subway zones in the Operation Metro multiplayer map .

If you don't want to commit to a night vision scope, new flashlight attachments will also help when navigating the darkest corners of Battlefield 3's huge maps.

Many of these details were revealed by senior DICE designer Alan Kertz on Twitter, where he also talked a bit about how bullet drop will work in Battlefield 3.

“Gravity is the same but velocity is different giving [bullets] different drops and travel time at the same ranges.” He says, “the distances are larger so the drop has been tweaked accordingly.”

For those precision distance shots, you won't just be battling gravity. DICE community manager, Daniel Matros has confirmed that there will be more weapon recoil in Battlefield 3 than Bad Company 2, though "it depends on what guns you pick.” He also confirms that we'll be able to fit silencers most weapons, but not shotguns (and presumably not rocket launchers). Pistols won't be customisable, but there will be a wider selection to make up for it.

Here's the full list of weapons, as seen on the BF3 blog . The list contains claymore mines and Stinger anti-air missiles to help deal with troublesome jets.

Assault rifles

  • M16A4

  • M416

  • G3

  • Ak74M

  • AN94

  • KH2002

  • AEK971

  • F2000

  • ASVAL

Carbines

  • M4A1

  • G36C

  • AKS74U

  • SCAR H

  • A-91

  • SG553LB

Light machine guns

  • M249

  • M60

  • M27 IAR

  • M240

  • RPK

  • Pecheneg

  • Type88

Sniper rifles

  • MK11

  • SVD

  • SV98

  • M98B

  • M40A5

  • M82A3

  • M39

  • SKS

Sub Machine guns

  • P90

  • P90TR

  • MP7

  • UMP-45

  • PDR

  • PP2000

Shotguns

  • 870 MCS

  • M1014

  • USAS-12

  • Saiga 20K

  • DAO-12

Rocket launchers

  • AT4

  • SMAW

  • RPG-7

  • Javelin

  • FIM-92 Stinger

  • SA-18 IGLA

Pistols

  • M9

  • M93R

  • MP443

  • MP412

  • Glock 17

  • Glock 18

  • M1911

  • T44

Misc

  • M67 Hand grenades

  • M18 Smoke grenades

  • C4 explosives

  • M15 Anti tank mine

  • Claymore mine

  • 60MM Mortar

  • M320 40mm launcher with grenades/smoke/shotgun

  • M26 MASS with shotgun/Flechettes/frag round/solid slugs

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.