Battlefield: Hardline vs Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare will not be duking it out this holiday season but this won’t stop EA and Activision’s PR machines from churning out media and walkthroughs of their single player campaigns.
Battlefield: Hardline SP Campaign Gameplay
I didn’t find the Battlefield: Hardline PS4 beta very entertaining and it looks like Electronic Arts and DICE have heard folks like me loud and clear.
Here are a few of the things the new timing will allow us to accomplish:
1. Multiplayer Innovation: Coming out of our E3 beta, internal focus tests, and work with our community, we have received a lot of great Multiplayer thinking. We’re going to be adding some new feature ideas direct from the community that will evolve the cops and criminals fantasy into a truly unique Battlefield Multiplayer experience.
2. Single Player Story Depth: In order to ensure our Single Player experience delivers on player expectations, we’re spending more time polishing our core features, as well as adding a few new ones that will support a deeper “crime revenge” story experience.
3. Stability: This has been a focus for our team since day one and we’re going to be using the extra time to continue to optimize the game for a stable launch. We have learned a lot from Battlefield 4, are continuing to learn from our Community Test Environment and will learn more from another Hardline beta. More time allows us to surface issues that the team can attempt to fix prior to launch.
The delay into Q1 2015 is welcomed and they’re saying all the right things but unless they’re putting out another beta/demo and demonstrate all the changes they’ve made, I will be keeping funds in my wallet.
I suspect this will be a March 2015 release which makes me wonder how much they could do to differentiate itself from Battlefield 4’s multiplayer. They’re not going to deviate from the vision of a smaller scale but more densely packed multiplayer game, are they?
I wish this was an expansion pack like Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam. They could have sold it for $30 CAD for current Battlefield 4 owners and I may have purchased it because it’s more than just maps. For a retail and digital store presence, they could repackage Battlefield 4 to include Hardline and sell it for $69.99. Then they could up-sell Battlefield 4 Premium and/or Hardline Premium.
I’m giving away free ideas, EA. Take them.
Yesterday’s info dump pales in comparison to today’s leaked internal video for Battlefield: Hardline. It’s a six month old video which explains the use of the “Omaha” codename and preliminary graphics.
First it sounds like my gut feeling was right: this game looks like it will be developed by Visceral Games and DICE. For a single player focused studio like Visceral Games to handle all those platforms and both multiplayer and single player duties was a tall order.
I was impressed with what I saw. It’s going to be a smaller scale game and it’s going to be a bit weird not seeing tanks, APCs and other vehicles rolling around but I’m sure it’ll be fine. We’ve seen smaller scale Battlefield games before in the guise of Bad Company. I just hope they go all out with the minor details. If they’re not going to have epic battles on a large scale, I expect them to nail smaller scale firefights with incredible detail.
A new Battlefield game was leaked and subsequently made official today. Battlefield: Hardline is being made by the folks who brought us Dead Space, Visceral Games. It will be “a cops vs. robbers” game and judging by the leaked details, it looks like it will have a much narrower focus.
It honestly doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I’ve always wanted to see Frostbite’s destruction employed with finer detail. I just hope it will emerge in a better state than Battlefield 4 did. It’s a cross generation game which makes me very weary. How Visceral Games will handle multiplatform, single player and multiplayer duties is beyond me. I hope for the best though.
I’m cautiously optimistic for the E3 2014 reveal. If Battlefield 4 wasn’t in a playable state today, I wouldn’t have mustered any hype for it. But DICE have begun righting this ship and I think I’m ready for some more Battlefield again.