Battlefield: Bad Company Preview

Taking the battle to single-player.

To this day, the Battlefield series remains one of EA's most successful franchises. Sweden-based development studio Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE) showed they are more than capable of delivering a kick-ass multiplayer game. If you can believe it, in their latest project, Battlefield: Bad Company, DICE intends to move away from the standard multiplayer form. Actually, this is the first time a Battlefield game is being developed strictly for consoles from the ground up. Also, unlike any of the previous titles in the BF series, Bad Company was designed to depict a cinematic single-player experience. Yet, several trademark elements from earlier games served as building blocks for this new addition to the series. (Circle-strafing n00bs? - Ed.)

Inspired by the customary sandbox-style gameplay, the developers strive to keep things familiar to previous titles. The freedom is given to players to experiment with various styles of play, as they move through open-ended and highly destructible environments.

Battlefield: Bad Company is set in the near future and drops players into a dramatic conflict that takes place across territories of Eurasia. Think you'll be playing a righteous hero? Think again. As the subtitle "Bad Company" suggests, players find themselves part of a squad that chooses to disregard their duties. This time, you won't be putting your life on the line for Uncle Sam. Rather, the entire squad goes AWOL in the pursuit of riches and vengeance - the whole backdrop, obviously inspired by movies like Three Kings. Anyway, the protagonist of the game is called Preston Marlow. Accompanying him on his little expedition are characters like the Sarge, Sweetwater and Haggard.

Characters act according to their nature and have their own quirks. For instance, while the Sarge is essentially the leader of the group, he rarely likes being referred to as "Sir." Haggard, on the other hand, is the comic relief in the whole story and will often put a smile on your face with his one-liners. (I bet. - Ed.) Haggard is also very good with explosives, even though he's a bit short on brains.

As far as the gameplay goes, DICE explained a number of times that they mean to focus on destructible environments. Although destructible environments were seen before (think Red Faction), it seems the developers are pushing that particular facet to the limit. Objects and buildings can be damaged or blown up practically every step of the way. Walls, trees and such, can either sustain damage or be destroyed. There are other aspects you'll need to consider as well. Bullets cannot penetrate the wall of a building, which means you can use it as cover. At least until the enemy starts using missiles or grenades.

Such elements change the gameplay significantly and may force you to alter your combat tactics on the spot. This time around, hiding behind a wall won't always be the best solution during battle. Of course, this also means you can obliterate objects that provide potential cover for enemies.

The possibility of destroying or damaging structures plays a vital role in choosing a route to your objective. In most action games, going from building to building seeking cover would be the most obvious strategy when players want to reach their objective. In Bad Company though, instead of taking things slowly and going the long way around, you can use a shortcut by blasting your way through walls. To pulls this off, you'll obviously need more destructive weaponry, such as grenades, rocket-launchers and so on. Next to that, the game features an assortment of firearms like shotguns, snipers, knives, machine guns, etc. Other nifty additions were noted such as remote-controlled mortar strikes or laser-guided missile strikes.

Like I said, hiding inside or behind buildings is often a bad idea. The AI reacts according to your movement and position, so if an enemy tank sees you lurking behind a wall or building, it will keep attacking until the structure is blown to smithereens.

Decisions you make on the fly will drastically affect the gameplay. Thanks to the open-ended spirit of the game, which defined the Battlefield series, players will be able to use various approaches to achieve their goals. Blowing up a bridge during a battle may give you a tactical advantage in a certain situation, but could also make things difficult later on. Destroying the bridge means you have to find an alternate way of crossing the river beneath it. While you can always cross on-foot, you can also choose to fly over the river with a helicopter, if that's your style. By the way, besides choppers, players will be able to ride in different vehicles including tanks, jeeps and the like. Mounting anti-aircraft guns is also an option.

To make all this happen, DICE is utilizing their in-house Frostbite engine, which apart from ensuring a high level of destructibility, also makes for fairly detailed surroundings and cool-looking character models. According to the development team "sandbox environments are 90% destructible," on top of which the usual next-gen bells and whistles have been promised. To further add to the in-game realism, DICE incorporated, what they like to call, HDR sound. This feature means sound-effects like gunshots, explosions and voices change according to your whereabouts. In that respect, indoor sounds are different from those made outdoors. It works pretty much the same way as HDR lighting (light changes as you move from indoor to outdoor areas).

Battlefield: Bad Company stays true to the tradition of the series and is going to feature a multiplayer mode. Not much is known about it at this point, aside from the fact that it supports 24 players and most features from the single-player will also be available in the multiplayer mode.

EA is evidently determined to make a worthy tribute to the Battlefield series. BF: Bad Company marks DICE's first attempt on the single-player front, but whether or not BF fans will appreciate this switch remains to be seen. If nothing else, it promises to be a decent console action game.

Expect the game to hit stores in March 2008 for the Xbox 360 and PS3.