On first pass, Battlefield 4 seems depressingly like business as usual for the next iteration in the Battlefield series; a franchise that has notably been awarded its own, gold-crusted bi-yearly spot on EA’s FPS conveyor belt. With the exception of those explosions. Those explosions look mighty nice and all fancy looking.
In all seriousness though, the newly announced Frostbite 3 Engine is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Those aforementioned explosions look like grand, fiery satanic orgasms, while hundreds of the tiniest pieces of detailed debris can be seen in a skyward flourish as they’re thrown upward from newly destroyed buildings and domiciles. It’s not just the shock and awe stuff that engine depicts with such staggering aplomb either; this engine is seemingly capable of rendering some rather decent faces too, boasting higher levels of fidelity, facial animation and detailed touches that quite easily sticks it in the PC Crysis 3 high-detail ballpark.
Explosion sex. Welcome to Battlefield 4.
But we expected that right? We expected knock-down, John Carmack trouser-ruffling visuals and aesthetics with a side-order of JJ Abrams lens-flare didn’t we? The confirmation that the footage was running on a ‘roided PC rig came as little surprise (alongside DICE’s skittish response when confronted with next-gen questions) given the nascent state of next-generation console hardware. Equally, the game skipping out on the Wii U, but still showing its face on other current gen consoles, shouldn’t come as much of a surprise either given the reluctance of third parties like Crytek and DICE to engage Nintendo’s console with complex middle-ware dependant first-person shooters.
In regards to the single-player stuffs that the seventeen minute trailer showcased, EA/DICE remain predictably hellbent on chasing Call of Duty’s minted mirage with their campaign and again, you wouldn’t be too far off base on your initial assumption that this is the same old shit in a shinier packaging; with the usual vintage 2007 mixture of OTT set pieces, bro-humping bravado and stock military radio chatter all present and accounted for.
Yet, despite what such cursory first looks may tell us, especially those of us who live in Europe and whose half-lidded eyes and sluggish morning cerebrums fail to calculate even the most rudimentary of things, the Battlefield 4 GDC reveal is more than just a glimpse into a Frostbite Engine 3 powered future, its also a very definite, albeit limited, read-between-the-lines affirmation that DICE is changing things up in its newest Battlefield excursion for the better.
At least I think it is anyway.
Open-world freedoms, the likes of which Halo players have enjoyed for years, find themselves creeping into BF4′s campaign. ‘Bout time too.
You see, despite all the whizz-bang action, set-piece indulgence and oodles of shader sex that was on display, the discerning eye can start to pick out little things that the game is doing differently. Outside of the numbing din of its bro-tastic set-pieces it becomes apparent that destructibility in the single player campaign is no longer reduced to being just a cover-erosion tool; instead enabling a much wider spread of flanking moves as seen in the demo where the player hammers through a row of walls to flank, and kill a jeep turret gunner.
The ability to flank foes in such a manner is seemingly just the beginning of DICE’s desire to remove themselves from Battlefield 3′s labourous linear corridor theatres, since just like Halo games have been enjoying since the year dot, players can now choose how they want to approach a battle or situation. Indeed, in the demo, that very same jeep didn’t have to be commandeered at all and could have been destroyed completely instead; forcing the player down a different route and prompting a different gameplay experience.
Another way that DICE hopes to distance itself from BF3′s campaign is through squad orders and tactics in which you dish out to your gun-toting mates; allowing you to get them to lay down supression fire, meet you at a specified waypoint or fire-at-will, among other commands.
All of these things serve to open up new opportunities for the series’ campaign, not only bringing it closer in line to the freedoms enjoyed with the multiplayer experience but also to create a much needed gulf between Battlefield 4 and its uninspiring predecessor.
DAT FACE.
I’m sure the genre-trolls will continue to wank on about how its more of the same and partially they’re correct; there are bespoke and explicit similarities to Call of Duty and the previous Battlefield still on display here, but at the same time its presumably a lot easier for such folk to not look a little deeper and acknowledge the thoughtful improvements that DICE are trying to make here since it fits their manifesto of cretinous stupidity/delusional ideas that all military FPS games are identical down to the last pixel.
Fans of Battlefield should at the very least, find themselves mildly placated in the sense that DICE are making some fairly decent strides in crafting a single-player portion of the game that doesn’t make them want to punch and scream through the internet.
Most of all, they should probably take away from it that the strides that have been made with the single player campaign is indicative of a work ethic that will likely be matched by equal progression on the multiplayer side of things too; arguably the perennial cornerstone of the Battlefield experience and the one thing that the fans truly care about.
But how about those explosions eh?