When I got the call – or rather message – to interview the Battlefield: Hardline developers, I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into that interview.
I speak from experience when I say the Battlefield franchise is bar none the best multiplayer first person shooter experience out there. As I brace myself from the backlash of COD fans, I refer back to the history of the franchise, with the launch of Battlefield 1942 which was launched in 2002. Thirteen years on, the franchise is as strong as it was back then, and a growing fan base is testament to that.
Speaking to the Battlefield: Hardline development team – Scott Probst – Senior Producer; Evan Champlin – Senior Multiplayer Designer; and Jeff Zaring – Lead Multiplayer Map Designer – we got a bit of an insight into what the next game holds for us and when we can expect it.
Read on to find out more.
Absolute Geeks (AG): You’re not traditionally associated with a game like Battlefield. Obviously, Visceral’s past work speaks for itself, with the likes of Dante’s Inferno, Dead Space 2 and 3, but this is completely new territory. This is Visceral’s first Battlefield game from scratch, having previously developed the ‘End Game’ DLC for Battlefield 3. We know you’re working closely with the DICE team, but what kind of challenges did you go through during development?
Battlefield Devs (BD): When we kicked off the development, we started to see the extent of the Battlefield universe, the prospects and the toolsets. We started talking to DICE about concepts and eventually landed on the cops and robbers theme, and the game sort of wrote itself. The team at Visceral was very excited to take this on and it was just about how to continue working with DICE to make sure that we respect Battlefield’s tradition, pillars and history, and just bring a Visceral flavor to it with the cops and robbers aspects.
AG: How has it been working with DICE? There’s a legacy to continue, what have your learnings been working with them?
BD: They are true pros, experts and have been working on this franchise for 10 years. It was in our best interest to work with them to understand everything that’s gone into the franchise from the beginning to date. Because all these franchises have pillars and history, the only way to build the franchise is to work with DICE to understand how they arrived to what they have today.
From a conceptual point we worked with everyone at DICE, traveled to Stockholm and worked together with the studio there, had people fly in here [Editor’s note: Australia], and it’s been an invaluable process and experience to make an awesome game. There’s a lot of stuff that’s really proprietary to Battlefield, and it can hamper your progress if you don’t know how it works, so working with DICE was very valuable.
AG: You’ve already said that you’re using the Frostbite 3 engine, the same one used in Battlefield 4. Can we expect the same kind of visuals and destructible structures, or have you improved on those? What about actual warfare? Did the game’s development change given the urban setting, along with the focus on heavy armor and air warfare?
BD: It wasn’t limiting, it was actually exciting given what we can do with this new fiction. The focus here is more on transport vehicles, such as sedans and other fast vehicles, so now the game has changed a lot and is more about speed rather than one on one tank confrontations.
We kept the aerial aspect of it with transport and attack helis as well, but it was just a fresh approach to the traditional Battlefield formula.
AG: When it was first announced, everyone thought this was just another expansion being rebadged as a full game. As time went on, with lots of video previews coming out from the likes of JackFrags and LevelCap, everyone’s ideas seem to have changed. Can you tell us more about how you worked with the community to make this game stand out?
BD: We wanted people to see what the game actually is rather than just having an impression. We wanted them to live it and play it and give us suggestions about how we can change it and make it better. The company went to a real expense and a real effort to bring these people in, and it wasn’t just for PR, it was to just really find out what they had to say about the game and for us to implement these suggestions.
When you talk about people’s perceptions changing after the YouTube commentary, we felt this was a natural progression, and we had people’s doubts dissipate.
AG: Did it also affect the single player aspect?
BD: The first time we had the game changer about 18 months ago, the game was still early in development and we had a lot of work to do. We opened up the conversation and we asked people what they liked and didn’t like, what they would change, and these guys had a lot of great valuable feedback.
We also have internal play tests inside the studio from within EA, plus focus testing from studios or general Battlefield or first person shooter fans, and have them play the game. They give us feedback about campaigns and storyline aside from just the general gameplay, so it’s not just about the multiplayer experience.
This ultimately opens up the conversation with the community and players who will ultimately buy this game and allows us to create the best experience possible for them.
AG: Tell us more about the new game modes. Can you explain them in detail? [Heist, Blood Money, Hotwire, Rescue, Crosshair]
BD: Heist is a multistage mode where the objective advances as each stage is completed. There is huge potential to play a variety of different roles and use a variety of gadgets to interact with the world.
Blood Money is a mode where there is a money pile at the center of the map that each team is trying to get. Cops need to recover the money and bring it back to their location, while robbers are stealing the money and bringing it back to theirs. In addition to the combat that revolves around the central money pile, each team needs to also defend their vault in order to keep the money there. So as a player, you can go to the enemy location and raid their vault and take the money back to yours. You end up with three objective areas, with players getting a lot of leeway in terms of how they want to engage with each other.
Hotwire is the mode that has the most opportunities for “only in Battlefield” moments, that’s the mode that combines all the weapons, vehicles, gadgets, shenanigans and tactics, and the result is just the craziest most exciting moments in the game. When we were developing it and we couldn’t believe how fun it was, so the game changers and whoever saw it first really did confirm how fun it was and that was gratifying. We believe this will attract a lot of players as it’s very simple to grasp, like conquest, and it’s just really pure Battlefield.
For Rescue and Crosshair, both modes pit 5 players per side. There are no respawns in either mode, so if you’re taken out you have to wait until the next round to start.
With Rescue, you have five criminals holding two hostages, and five police are tasked with rescuing hostages or eliminating criminals. Player advance through the map, rescuer hostages and only have a single location to extract to, so in that case the enemy team has an idea of where to go and everyone can converge on that one spot for that final battle.
With Crosshair, the idea here is that the police are trying to escort the VIP to an extraction point at the other side of the map, and criminals are trying to eliminate the VIP before they reach their location or they are all eliminated. The VIP has a choice of 2 locations to go to in order to escape, so you get a lot of variety and a lot of tension.
Traditional modes such as conquest and Team Death Match are still there, and can pit up to 32 vs 32 players against each other.
AG: Will players earn weapon and dogtag unlocks via the single player game as they did with Battlefield 4?
BD: We’re not doing anything specifically, so there won’t be anything you can’t get in multiplayer if you didn’t play the single player game, but there will be some cross-over. [Editor’s note: more news to come in the future].
AG: Can you tell us more about the Battlefield: Hardline beta?
BD: The beta will feature three maps: downtown, dust bowl and bank job, as well as three modes: conquest, hotwire and heist.
What we learned from previous beta in June is that we had a huge list of stuff to work on, we dramatically changed the way Heist works so we changed the whole second half of that game mode, making it more randomized so there’s a different experience each time you play it, for example, drop off locations are now randomized.
We really doubled down on the cops vs. criminals fantasy, so we went asymmetrical to make each faction feel unique. Each side has different weapons and different progressions; it’s not a linear progression either so you can save your money to buy the last weapon in the chain if you want to.
AG: Finally, what are the beta and launch dates?
BD: The beta launches on February 3rd, and the launch of the main game will be between March 17-20, depending on your location. For the UAE and the region, we’re looking at March 20th.
