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The Battlefield series seemed like a
strange fit for consoles, given its rich heritage on the PC side -- that is, it
did seem like a strange fit,
until
Battlefield:
Bad Company came out and became one of Electronic Arts' larger hits of this generation.
Here, senior producer for the series at EA's Stockholm-based DICE
studio, Patrick Bach, discusses how the philosophy behind the series has
evolved as it has made the transition to consoles -- and how that transition
has fundamentally shifted the way the developers think of the series as a
whole.
Bach, who "make[s] the quality decisions on
what should be in or out of the game" is the perfect person to discuss
these shifts, as well as the evolution of the gaming audience on both PC and
console.
How long as your development
cycle been?
Patrick Bach: We actually
started right after, or actually a couple months before, we ended Bad
Company 1. It's been 18 or 19 months.
And how big is the team?
PB: The team has of course
been scaling up and down depending on where we are, but I think we peaked at 70
or 75. One of our big focuses in the studio is to have the team as small as
possible at all times.
You get more focused, you get better traction, and you
have high quality if you have the right people. We talk about ownership a lot
-- owning the quality in the end.
Coming onto this right from Bad
Company 1, did it feel like a direct continuation? Were there big things
in particular you wanted to change or retain, based on lessons learned during
that project?
PB: [When] building a Battlefield
game, we have a lot of history. Since Battlefield 1942, we've kind of
known what the formula is and what the strengths are, but when we went out to
consoles, the audience changes. You know, the PC audience is much more
forgiving in some ways, but they're much more demanding in other ways.
I'm a PC gamer, so I know what
you mean.
PB: Yeah. You know exactly
what I'm talking about.
I always see PC gamers as
more forgiving when it comes to certain types of technical polish, but not as
forgiving of certain design aspects that they find very important to the
platform.
PB: Yeah, right. That's of
course a balance. Going over to the console, we had to take it to that console
audience but also retain the values of what Battlefield is.
When we added destruction to Bad
Company 1, we were actually thinking, "In five years, what will every
game have? We need to build that now." Then five years later, no one had
it. We were the only ones who had destruction. So now, that's of course one of
the things that we've said, "We can do this even better."
Another thing we brought with
us from the first game is all of the tweaking and tuning of Battlefield.
Even if you're a console gamer, you still want that high-quality, fast-paced
action. I think console games are starting to be more like PC games, and PC
games are starting to be more like console games.
You still want the usability
of console games on a PC, and you want the nitty-gritty detailed action of a PC
game on a console. We learned a lot about that from the first game to the
second. It makes it more hardcore in a way, while also more accessible.
We focused a lot on
variation. [Bad Company 1] was a good first try. It was a good game, but
not more than good. There are a lot of things that we've improved -- for
instance, you have the variation not only when it comes to visuals but also the
gameplay variation, game modes, multiplayer, and so on.
For example, for the
multiplayer "hardcore mode," we changed all the game modes into
something else. That's a nudge towards the PC audience, and that will be a part
of the PC package as well.
It's hard to point specific
things out. The goal was always to focus on quality, and achieve more of what
Battlefield stands for.
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Eric - here's my guess on what happened with 1943. The Frostbite engine is still complete new to the PC. At the time of 1943's release, perhaps the engine wasn't ready for PCs yet. If you look at the Bad Company 2 early PC beta versus the final Bad Company 2 release, the performance drastically increased especially for users of dual-core processors.
By the time the Frostbite engine was maturing on the PC, getting to a release-ready state, it was getting closer and closer to the date of Bad Company 2's release. At the same time, Battlefield 2 and all its add-on packs were released on Steam, and over the holiday sale, got some massive discounts to only $10 or so.
So at that point, they're left with an engine that might not quite be ready, and the ability to purchase the far more substantial Battlefield 2 for only $10 instead of 1943 for $10-15 - was it still really worth bringing 1943 to PC anymore?
Maybe it'll still come to PC, but at this point I kinda doubt it.
The original Bad Company [ especially the multiplayer mode ] was a real highlight of '08 on X360 and I must've spent about 100+ hours playing it. Maps were just fantastic in terms of level design and the tuning, game balance was tip top with alot of memorable locations and the innovative "Rush" mode. Coming from PC BF2 the scaling down of players and lack of "Conquest" initially felt quite different though the impressive LD and concentrated lane style of play turned out brilliant.
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Flash forward to BF:BC2 and I kind of wish DICE hadn't focused so heavily on producing a PC version of this game since from about 20 hours play its evident that the design of multi-player in the PS3/X360 versions was compromised in favour of the PC SKU. If the PC is going to get BF3 anyway then I wish DICE would have really spec'ed out BF:BC2 a bit better in terms of both graphics and gameplay modes. I still really enjoy the game but get the feeling that alot of the MP stuff just wasn't designed with console players or that there was a big compromise to make great strides with the PC fraternity in this iteration.
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Observations:
[1] Bad Company is all about the "Rush" mode and its the only way that you get a good sense of player density by focusing the objectives and still providing multiple lanes in the maps to create a feeling of anticipation, surprise, and back + forth flow. Often though, from real world BF:BC2 online experience you will end up in alot of 9-10 aside matches and "Rush" mode covers this nicely while new players drop into the game. More "Rush" mode maps please DICE! Its the superior mode by far for console players with the 24 player limit and you knew this already when you made BF:BC1 ..!
Sadly, the "Conquest", "Squad Rush", and "Squad Deathmatch" modes + maps seem a bit throwaway for console players as obviously they work better with the 32 player capacity of the PC version in mind. Its really not that much fun playing these modes and I get the feeling that the BF:BC1 "Conquest" add-on maps were a concession from DICE to the old BF2 players anyway -- though they too didn't really work too well and you just had alot of player circulation [ and camping ] without any of the cool situtational firefights and teamwork that occurs in "Rush" mode. Maybe there's potential for these modes to be interesting for clan squads w/ microphones and headsets to co-ordinate movement better but for the most part in the random jungle that is Xbox Live they tend to produce [2 vs 1] or [1 vs 1] encounters which aren't as fun; though the different sense of tension is interesting.
[2] The overall presentation in SP mode is fantastic as usual, however for the multi-player maps adding alot of the extra geometry in the cool dressing and props scattered about the levels must have hit some kind memory ceiling on PS3/X360 because some of the textures
[ especially indoors ] now look fucking awful [ yes it's a strong way to put it ] compared to BF:BC1 and it's flawless maps.
Made me check BF:BC1 [!] because I didn't think that the flat, repetitive, and frankly quite underwhelming interiors in BF:BC2 were such a dramatic step back. Whut huppen dudes? The sense of a unifying vision for the art direction seems to have not quite worked as well on the PS3/X360 as some of the PC DX11 footage shows. The clamped down range of bluish / green tones in the original BF:BC1 worked exceptionally well and for one really appreciated the grain filter in making an arguably more 'immersive' experience. At the very least you didn't notice the limitations of the consoles nor did it detract from being in the game world. It was understated but exceptionally well done.
In BF:BC2 its hard to not resist thinking that the PC version played a guiding hand in how the console environments + presentation would turn out and this is unfortunate for PS3/X360 folks and especially coming off how beautiful BF:BC1 looked. Its almost as if DICE took away the filters and such to once again cater to the PC prediliction for cranking things up to ridiculously high resolutions [ hence grain = not good ] and unfortunately the HDR look in the MP maps seem to have some weird colour clamping where there's like 1 shade of bright green that pops [ distracts ] and just plain looks like a VGA asset teleported itself into the game.
There's also nothing wrong with having subdued colours as in BF:BC1 as it benefits players cognition + visual acuity and helps the UI and markers to stand out. Please, please patch the ridiculously textured green and blue bins that are in the game as they look *bad* and detract from being in the scene and setting. I'm sure that you guys know this stuff already
but I question the decision to 'spice' up the colours in the maps. "Inocentes" is a great take on an autumnal orange / fire colour palette and "Nelson Bay" is really awesome with the reduced colours in the snow but maps like "Panama Canal" have great LD but really suffer from poor textures and clashing colour [ contrast ] ..
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Was going to write up all this stuff as player feedback in the BF:BC2 forums however it just came out. It is an exceptional game but I really don't understand why DICE had to make everything the same across console and PC platforms. I question whether it was a good design decision or not since PS3/X360 users seem to have to put up with bad textures, super-agressive LOD on game objects, and a couple of useless game modes. Again, *please* make more "Rush" maps DICE! All the other modes on console are just folly ..
Thanks,
-- Chuan
...Maybe with Bad Company 3, go Patrick!
This is probably part of my complaint because Battlefield 2 is FAR superior in gameplay terms. Maybe that is because I am a conquest fan, and I also prefer the larger battlefields in BF2. BC2 maps are just too small for me to enjoy them, and I think the anti-vehicle weapons are too overpowered, in a word it is too infantry focused. I also dislike the shooting mechanics, but that is another story.
So Yes I agree with Chuan they are trying to appeal to the MW crowd, but in fairness it isn't that much different from BC1, and it is MUCH more polished.
It's a great game and it's great to play a new BF on PC considering the last one was 4 yrs ago...but most PC gamers are just playing BC2 while they wait for a proper sequel to BF2 - i.e. BF3.