It seems DICE has decided to shift priorities in its aim to overtake Call of Duty as the number one FPS franchise. The Swedish developer has revealed to Edge that Battlefield 3 will be a more focused, scripted experience than Battlefield 2: Bad Company. Battlefield executive producer Patrick Bach believes that most sandbox games are “boring” and “hard to get into.”
“I don’t see it as an absolute goal for all games to be sandbox games. We’ve been building sandbox games for quite some time and we’ve got pretty good at it, but I don’t see that as the only way of building games, because then we wouldn’t build campaigns at all,” said Bach.
“In some cases they aren’t, but in most cases sandbox games are hardcore, boring, hard to get into and they are not very popular.”
DICE’s new Frostbite 2 engine is powering Battlefield 3, but Bach notes that new technology can also cause new problems.
“Just the fact that the environment can change dynamically creates a huge challenge for us when it comes to AI,” he explains. “[It] puts a lot of challenges to our AI code when it comes to finding new cover, reacting to the fact that it has disappeared, moving and flanking based on the new situation.”
Battlefield 3’s third quarter 2011 release date could put it in direct competition with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the first Call of Duty to come from the newly-rebuilt Infinity Ward. Will a newfound focus and a new engine be enough to dethrone the king?
1 Comments
April 5, 2011
It's simply harder to do an open world game right than a linear game. Some game structures don't even compliment having a large open world, especially if they're very focused and narrative driven. I'd rather have a short, linear, engaging game than a large, open world, boring game.