Developer DICE and EA recently pulled the curtain back on the long awaited Battlefield 3, and suffice to say that the game looks simply jaw dropping. DICE describes it as a next generation game running on current generation hardware, and a look at early gameplay footage suggests that this may not be an exaggeration.
However, DICE has taken it a step further, with general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson telling Official PlayStation Magazine that their competitors, aka Treyarch and Infinity Ward, are “getting lazy”.
“They’re using the same engine, the same recipe for building a game. At some point you need to take that leap. I haven’t seen them take that leap since a long time ago.”
“We are doing that now,” he insisted. “They had better watch out. We are coming for them.”
“Our competitors keep building very, very high tempo games,” he added. “We want to tell a story with more drama curves. It’s not about pumping round after round for six hours.”
Many gamers would tend to agree that CoD has been on steady downward slump since it peaked with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Troedsson has a point, and leaps in terms of narrative, gameplay and even technology have been few and far between in this space over the past few years.
We are keeping a very close eye on Battlefield 3, and if early impressions are anything to go buy, the game looks set to blow everything else out of the water. In Treyarch/Infinity Ward’s defence, it is difficult to raise the bar when you are working on a tight development cycle of two years per sequel. Battlefield 3, in contrast, has been in development for years.
