Another slew of new Battlefield info has landed. PC will be the lead platform for the DICE's upcoming FPS. More level locations have been revealed, and a co-op mode has been confirmed. There will also be character customisation and more unlocks than Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Read on for more details, including news on a kill cam, mod support and comparisons to the console versions of the game.
The new details were spilled in Game Informer , in which DICE said that they consider the PC version to be the lead version of the game. The 64-man multiplayer that we'll be enjoying when the game's released in Autumn will be shrunk to 24 players on consoles. DICE say that multiplayer will contain four classes, and there will be more unlocks than there were in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. There will also be a degree of character customisation for players, though DICE are cautious about letting items get too outlandish.
"How do you personalise a uniform? Giving the pink rabbit hat to someone would make it fun, but if you're running around and you don't know what you're shooting at, you don't take the professional gaming seriously in my book. There's a challenge between personalising and keeping it uniform. We will do more in that area, making sure that you can get your character to be more personalised both in a visual way and more specifically in the way you gear up. We did a good job I would argue with Bad Company 2 with specialisations, different scopes and different weapons – you can kind of find your way of playing the game.
Battlefield 3 will feature a kill cam, similar to Call of Duty's, and players will be able to turn it off. DICE are also looking into implementing some form of the theatre mode for the game. If they do, expect plenty of videos of mass destruction. The Frostbite 2 engine will allow for complete destructibility. To make battles feel more authentic, DICE have even recorded their own weapon and vehicle sounds at different distances, so the distant boom of an RPG slamming into a tank two miles away will sound just right. The new animation system has been borrowed from EA sports games to allow for adaptive movement, cutting out instances of characters gliding in and out of locked postures.
Sulaymaniyah and Iraqi Kurdistan have been confirmed as locations in the game, joining Tehran, Paris and New York. There will be a full single player campaign which will be completely original, so don't expect any characters from Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to return. It's not yet known whether the co-op campaign will be a separate campaign.
Though the PC is the lead version of the game, there won't be any support for modding on release. DICE say that the Frostbite 2 engine is complex and the tools would have to be dumbed down for general use. This doesn't rule out a release of some form of mod tools in future.
The game's due out in Autumn, check out our other news posts for everything we know so far about Battlefield 3, or head over to the official Battlefield 3 site.
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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.
