“The biggest difference between the PC and console version of Battlefield 3 is that we have 64 players on the PC and 24 players maximum on console,” said DICE studio head Patrick Bach speaking to German site GameZone.
“The rest is more or less the same: we use the same engine, the same technology, the same animation system, the same lighting system. Our aim is to give the player the exact same experience and not try to dumb down the console version,” he continued.
If you want the same quality of game, I would say it’s really, really hard. We tried to get more players in [to the console version] but then you need to scale down all the graphics, scale down all the destructibility, and sometimes you need to scale down all the map sizes. Everything is a compromise on: where do you cut?”
Bach reckons that having more players in a map does not necessarily make for a less enjoyable gameplay experience, so this seemed liked an obvious area to cut back for the console version. Despite the difference in player count, the maps will be “more or less that same” in terms of size.
“When we say they are smaller, it’s not that we have cut them in half,” he explained. “But we tried to compact them slightly to keep the action up. If you compare it to Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the maps weren’t really small on console. We actually had huge maps even for console. We have the same kind of angle on it right now. We want to create the same experience for PC as for consoles.”
Of course, he doesn’t mention that the console version will run at 1280×720 at 30 frames per second, as opposed to the PC version in which the frame rate and resolution will be dependent on your hardware.
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