I was at last night's GDC preview event for EA DICE's Battlefield 3, and holy sh*t, does it look insane. DICE showed off the PC version of the game, and I can say without a doubt that this is the best-looking first-person shooter to date. Sadly, they didn't let us play it ourselves.
DICE's Karl Magnus Troedsson talked a little about the game and really wanted us to know that DICE is all about "quality, innovation and fun." The studio didn't want to just make another simple sequel here. They wanted to "surpass what [they] did last time" and "challenge [themselves] to go further."
Battlefield 3 (PC [previewed], PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)
Developer: EA DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
To be released: Fall 2011
The demo began with the footage released in the recent trailer. You can easily see just how great the visuals are, but perhaps most impressive of all is the audio. Bad Company 2 had amazing sound design, and Battlefield 3 goes beyond that -- to the point that it damn near blew my ears off.
Battlefield 3 is making use of the Frostbite 2 engine, and DICE has spent over three years working on this title already. The studio has obviously busted ass here, to the point that I know for a fact that I'll be converting to playing shooters on the PC once BF3 launches this Fall. There's just no way the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 versions will look anywhere near as good.
Battlefield 3 takes place in 2014, with the US military maintaining peace on the Iraq/Iran border. There's been a recent spike in terrorist activity from the PLR insurgency group. The PLR are suspected to have engaged a group of soldiers that haven't reported in, and your squad is ordered to investigate.
After the carnage you see in the trailer, the group makes its way to a rooftop, all while the sniper continues to shoot at the squad taking cover. Every time the sniper rifle is fired, the screen blurs just a little bit; it's a nice touch that gives a real sense of urgency.
The squad belly-crawls to the furthest point on the roof, where the player is given a rocket launcher and takes down the hotel across the way, where the sniper is holed up. Boom, no more sniper. Multiple stories of the building explode; it looked really impressive, but I'm not sure that it wasn't just a scripted scene. The Frostbite 2 engine may very well be able to pull this off, but I want to get my hands on the game and just go crazy taking down buildings with rockets to see if the game can really handle it.
Later on in the mission, the player has to defuse a bomb. While doing so, he's jumped by an insurgent, and a quick-time event kicks in. The two trade blows in a mostly scripted scene with a few QTE prompts popping up.
After this part, the player is thrown into a large-scale fight, where he has to man a .50-caliber gun and mow down waves of terrorists rushing his position. A helicopter is providing cover, and there's just complete carnage everywhere.
Then, all hell breaks loose when an earthquake hits. The ground cracks wide open. The player falls down. A building collapses on him, taking a helicopter down with it to mark the end of the demo.
The credits kick in, and we're teased with some more footage of the game, including vehicle combat in tanks and jets. The jet footage was maybe three seconds long, but good god, did it look badass.
Aside from some uncanny-valley facial features, BF3 is just insanely detailed. You can even see reflections in your gun's scope.
It's still early, but Battlefield 3 is shaping up to be one amazing-looking ride. The only nuisance I want to point out is the overuse of slow motion. Seriously, there were at least a half-dozen times the game slowed to a crawl for that unnecessary "cinematic effect," and that was in a mere 20-minute demo. That aside, I can't wait for BF3.
Contest:
3:20 AM on 03.02.2011
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I have KZ3 on my tv right now, and it is so much more impressive than it ever looked on youtube. I assume that this would look even better on my TV as well. So, it is really hard to compare, but I would say right now that the edge goes to Killzone 3, even if its the art design that plays a big part in that.
This looks great, hopefully it plays as good as it looks.
Yes, but will the SP be longer than 4 hours for once? DICE does many things well, but releasing games with the anywhere near amount of content as their competitors isn't one of them. Mirror's Edge was about 4 hours long, while Bad Company 2 was about five hours long and came with only ten maps and three game modes, both for full price. In contrast, Modern Warfare 2's campaign was twice as long, it had three times the game modes, and two or three times the number of maps. Had it actually been properly beta tested, Modern Warfare 2 would have been the better game.
I don't think I'll be buying this new unless it comes with a bare minimum of eight hours of campaign time and several more maps than Bad Company 2.
But this looks pretty good.
Isn't this in a number of shooters? Why is it noteworthy?
Again?
You mean like photos of stuff made of plastic right?
This looks tits. Fucking tits.
@Tactix - Grey is the new brown, y'know!
@SullyE - MW2 was also a 4-5 hour campaign.
Thats what I was about to say. MW2 was short as hell!
agreed, although I enjoyed the shit out of BFBC2, The lack of maps made it boring quick. I logged in 170hrs, but could've easily sunk more.
"Had it actually been properly beta tested, Modern Warfare 2 would have been the better game."
nah, quality over quantity. cod is shit compared to BF games (gameplay wise).
@TurboPhoenix: He means ACTUAL reflections, not these canned/generic reflections we get with other lesser games. Imagine it this way: A room is created, it has boxes/sand/dirt/etc.; but it is a very small room or "map", THAT is the truth behind what you see in weapon scopes. A little behind-the-scenes developer trick for ya. Seeing as how this will probably be a new benchmark in graphics, I truly believe that the reflections in BF3 are truly reflections of every bit of the map/environment you are in and not just smoke and mirrors.
BF3 PRE-ORDER GET!
At least it's not as bad as in Counter-Strike.
"A building collapses on him, taking a helicopter down with it"
I hope it doesn't turn out very Hollywood-sque, we already have Call of Duty for that. I'm still not looking foorward at the campaing as much as the multiplayer.
Same shit, different title.
This. This and oh yes this.
Unless we are in bizarro world this is a sequel to the main series of Battlefield not Bad Company so no one should have any illusions that even half the game's focus is single player.
Hell all the preceding main Battlefield games did not even have a single player mode except a skirmish with dimwit bots.
"Same shit, different title" does not apply to BF if you've been following the series. ;)
Been waiting so long for this game. It is going to be EPIC.
"It's all cool and stuff. Then I saw the first two reload animations... "
wat? 3 minute long video of awesome stuff and this is your comment? Well I even went back and watched the reload animations. And of course, they're fine.
They're absolutely not fine, but it's not like they won't be fixed. And props to the functionality on the last magazine change, where the bolt wasn't touched and the round count properly read 31 rounds to account for the remaining one in the chamber.
That said I'm not convinced this video isn't a 'bullshot' on many levels.
my GOTC right here, lol.
Uncanny valley? "I'm scared, get me out of there!"
So far, I'll have to put with only 24 players.
and the Crysis 2 demo doesn't even have the DX11 features available, so i'm waiting for release of that to judge.
So few seem to "get it" these days.