**OFFICIAL** AT Battlefield 3 FAQ and News Thread

[uclaLabrat]

If that's in game, my wife will be one sad, angry woman this fall.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Can't wait for all these tech-oriented interviews to start giving way to gameplay revelations.

 

[GullyFoyle]

We're ALL waiting for details...

 

[zerocool84]

The Technology Behind Battlefield 3

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Frostbite 2 picture from NVidia Tech document.

Holy F*ck! Credit Jlippo@ NVNews forums.
Is that supposed to be New York?

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This doesn't look that good. Give me something more zoomed in and I'll say it looks good.

 

[GullyFoyle]

This doesn't look that good. Give me something more zoomed in and I'll say it looks good.

To maintain performance in an FPS game, you have to balance level of detail, and depth of vista. What's impressive to me about the picture is how much of both are present.
I'm pretty sure at somepoint the actual buildings end and the rest is just a background picture. It still looks like a large "playable" area.

 

[RavenSEAL]

This game can't come out fast enough, i'm so freaking sick of call of duty. I still play BC2 now and then, but i've lost my interest in playing with a bunch of randoms.

 

[GullyFoyle]

BF3 Demo off site from GDC just ended. Pic

twitter.com/RollieThePollie: "BF3 goodness will be available at 8 am Sweden time (GMT+1) on Battlefield.com!"

RollieThePollie is a video editor for DICE.
8 am Sweden time is apparently 2:00 AM EST.

 

[Baasha]

omg.. freaking EPIC video from GDC:

http://www.ea.com/battlefield3/videos/faultline-ep1

This will most definitely be one of the, if not THE, best game this year!

 

[GullyFoyle]

New Battlefield Blog Post: Battlefield 3 rocks San Francisco -- Episode I of new gameplay video series live!

* BY: H Brun
* POSTED : Mar 01, 2011, 09:40AM

Hit the pic for "Bad Part of Town", Episode I in our new Battlefield 3 gameplay series "Fault Line"!



Tonight marks the premiere of our new Battlefield 3 gameplay series "Fault Line"!

In a completely related event, tonight was the night when 200 games journalists in town for Game Developers Conference were invited to get their first look at Battlefield 3.

During the 15 minute live demo by Executive Producer Patrick Bach, the invitees were treated to a knock-socking surprise as sub-floor mounted subwoofers accentuated the action onscreen to make them feel the battle in earth-shaking detail.

"It's fantastic to have that feeling of being jaded go away!" said Adam Sessler, host of the X-play show at G4 after the smoke settled. "Best effing game I've seen!" noted one distinguished Swedish journalist.

Prey of the evening: Battlefield 3 Executive Producer Patrick Bach.

For an idea of what the press was treated to in San Francisco tonight, stay tuned as the first online coverage from this event will start hitting the web in just a few hours. And to see the whole picture with your own eyes, make sure to follow the episodes in our new Fault Line gameplay series, detailing one of the single player missions in the game. The first episode is live now on www.battlefield.com


For more info on Battlefield 3, visit the Official Site.

For the latest news on Battlefield 3, follow us on Twitter: @battlefield.

Youtube link for video

 

[GoodRevrnd]

hooooooooooollly shit...

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Holy shit is right, but as in, holy shit no multiplayer details.

A lot of people kept saying to stop speculation on a lot of things until MArch 1 but now that none of that has been revealed what's the new date that people will use to throw in the face of people speculating?

 

[GullyFoyle]

Holy shit is right, but as in, holy shit no multiplayer details.

A lot of people kept saying to stop speculation on a lot of things until MArch 1 but now that none of that has been revealed what's the new date that people will use to throw in the face of people speculating?

Well, the video says Part II coming March 16th...

I told you this was just gonna be Single player...well, let's see what else comes out today, via interviews and stuff.
This is just like them. Now they can set up a seperate Big Date for everyone to anticipate the release of multiplayer details in the future.
I'll bet that Patrick Bach guy spent weeks mapping out a detailed plan on what details they will release, week by week, from now until release. This shit aint random.

 

[GullyFoyle]

IGN: GDC: Battlefield 3 is Beautiful

No more spin-offs. Finally, a true sequel.
March 2, 2011
by Charles Onyett

EVENT COVERAGE GDC 2011

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was an amazing first-person shooter. But with every Bad Company release and spin-off, I couldn't help but wonder what DICE was doing with its main Battlefield franchise. As it turns out, it had something to do with earthquakes.

The core games, including Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2, helped define what's possible in multiplayer first-person shooters. It's been more than five years since Battlefield 2 on PC, and now DICE is finally getting ready to deliver the next numbered entry. Battlefield 3 has a release date for this fall on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, and from what's been shown off, it looks incredible.

That's because Battlefield 3 is being built using all-new technology developed in-house at DICE. It's the next version of the Frostbite engine used in the Bad Company games, appropriately called Frostbite 2. It allows for a range of advanced graphical effects and destructible terrain. "We actually started with the engine three years ago," said executive producer Patrick Bach. "When we finished Battlefield 2 and 2142 we talked about what's the next big step that changes gaming. We're good at technology and we wanted to create something that scaled better than Frostbite 1 did. The PCs were already -- three years ago -- starting to get ahead of the consoles. How could we make good use of that?"

The result was, at the end of a demo recently shown to members of the press, a detailed scene of a US Marine unit getting tossed around on a quaking bed of asphalt in a war-torn city on the border of Iraq and Iran. Buildings crumbled into pieces, sending up plumes of smoke and dust as the ground fluttered like a flag in the wind. One even toppled over onto an attack chopper hovering in mid-air. It looked strikingly realistic.

"We knew we could do better stuff with audio, we needed a core streaming system for the whole game," said Bach. "Everything from animations to objects to textures to audio we can stream. If you look at the consoles today they still have the same amount of memory, so how do you make a denser experience with the same amount of memory? You need to be able to flush things in and out of that memory that you have. Frostbite 2 was more or less a necessity for us to be able to build Battlefield 3. If we didn't build the engine we couldn't build the game because then it would just be an iteration instead of a big step forward."

So far DICE isn't showing off any gameplay footage of the multiplayer component, which is too bad. I really wanted to see jets streak across the sky and launch precision strikes against unsuspecting targets. But even without the spectacle of controllable vehicle sequences to gape at, the story mode still looks pretty good. The characters are in no way related to those in the Bad Company games. What you get in Battlefield 3 is a fresh start. It's set in 2014, and an early mission follows a squad of Marines as they charge through cramped, dangerous streets and take cover from sniper fire on rooftops. "It's based on a 'what if' scenario," said Bach. "We see the world as quite unstable. We see it as the shot in Sarajevo where a small event can create a butterfly effect to start a world war." Even though the mission was early in the game, it sounds as though the scale of the conflict shown is going to ripple out into the rest of the world.

Though the mission features a group of Marines, DICE notes that these characters won't necessarily be in subsequent sorties because it's not a squad-based game like Bad Company. You play as Sergeant Henry Blackburn who, at the mission's outset, emerges from an armored personnel carrier with an M16 equipped with an ACOG (that's a scope). The road ahead is packed with smoke and fire, cowering citizens, military humvees and an LAV reconnaissance vehicle.

According to Bach it's not possible to simply hop into these vehicles and start driving, as many Battlefield veterans may want to do. While there will be several vehicle sections in the single-player portion, the game makes it clear when you're meant to hop into a machine and when you're supposed to proceed on foot. "When you tell a story you need to control the player in some ways, even though we have very sandbox-y elements as well. We make sure you get to try out everything…so we pace the game as a tutorial so when you go into multiplayer you don't feel scared. If you play through single-player you will feel quite safe to go online because you tried everything once."

The PC version was beautiful even in its current pre-alpha state. DICE is focusing on using lighting and animations to create a more realistic look for Battlefield 3. For animation, DICE is utilizing Electronic Arts' technology called ANT, developed for sports games like FIFA. So what does that actually mean? "We can now more or less blend from any animation to any animation without any glitches. Some animation systems are very rigid. The cool thing with this is that you can blend from one animation to another at any time. You can see that with FIFA --, it's super quick and nimble."

The animations were especially impressive to watch during a first-person hand-to-hand combat sequence. Black was underground in a bunker attempting to disarm an explosive device when he was accosted by a waiting enemy. To subdue the assailant you need to hit buttons at specific times to deliver viscous strikes and chops. The attacker eventually crumples to the ground, but not without getting in a few solid shots on Black, which causes the perspective to tilt and whip appropriately with the force.

A lot of work is being done at DICE on the moment-to-moment mechanics of gun fights too. When you open fire the screen shakes, your weapon effects dominate the speakers, and the bits of user interface flicker when . "The challenge with weapons is actually not to get them to look realistic or record sounds, the research is quite easy. The hard part is to transform the emotion when you fire a gun and turn that into picture and sound."

The user interface shown off so far is not final, but it's clear DICE is hoping to minimize its appearance during play. Displays for ammunition and grenades are down at the bottom of the screen and take up only a small amount of space. An objective listing pops up only briefly when a goal is completed or added. There's a small compass in the bottom left that points you towards your current objective, and onscreen there's a single, unobtrusive icon to designate the fellow Marine you're supposed to follow into combat.

The UI will also let you know what's possible with any selected weapon. With the M16 you can switch between three firing modes – single shot, semi-auto, and full-auto – and can flip on a flashlight. At certain points there are also button prompts when, say, a teammate falls over and you have to drag him back to safety. According to Bach, dragging bodies will not be a feature in the multiplayer component.

DICE is also putting significant effort into tuning the artificial intelligence in Battlefield 3. There will be no respawning waves of enemies here. Every encounter has a finite amount of hostiles that react dynamically to the demands of battle. "I think the core to any AI is a good sensing system where you prioritize on vision but also sound. And then of course they need to exchange information between them. So when they scream and yell, that is actually stuff that is happening on the scene. We don't have random chatter. Some games do that quite a lot, but it doesn't reflect what's actually happening." In Battlefield 3 when enemies scream they're reloading or taking cover, that's exactly what they'll do. The idea is for DICE to create enemies that are challenging because they're smart instead of numerous.

The presence of smart enemies means you can expect to get shot quite often. DICE isn't yet confirming what type of health system will be implemented. It might be regenerative, it might be a hybrid style, or something else entirely. "We know there are pros and cons. We want to make sure that when we talk about that, we take it seriously. For some people that's a very important part [of the game]."

One aspect of video games that gets less attention from the press is the audio. DICE knows what it's doing in this department based on the sound design in Bad Company 2, and is hoping to improve on that tradition with Battlefield 3. This includes making sure every weapon is not only recorded accurately, but also recorded accurately depending on whether it's being fired in an indoor setting or outside. DICE is using what Bach calls HDR audio. "It's not about volume anymore, it's about decibel. If you go from 10 decibel to 120 decibel in real life, you would not hear the whisper as the explosion went off. Our brains are adapting to the audio landscape at that moment."

"What we're doing is we give all sounds a decibel and then we have our sound engine move your digital ear through that spectrum in real time. That's why we don't have to mix audio manually because the game engine does that for us." Essentially that means while enemies fire their weapons, they'll be loud up until the point where you fire your weapon, which will dominate the audio and drown out other lower decibel sounds, such as footsteps. "It's not that we cut out the footsteps, they're still there, but your ear doesn't pick that up because there are so many loud sounds."

I can understand if some are reading this and already worrying how expensive a system they may have to craft to take advantage of all these features. According to DICE, the demo shown was running on hardware that can be purchased in stores today. Considering the game hasn't been optimized yet it ideally means the game won't require a preposterous setup to look nice and run well.

Some may not care as much about a single-player experience given Battlefield's multiplayer-only roots. DICE has already said that there will be jets, the ability to go prone, support for up to 64 players specifically for the PC version (24 on consoles), as well as a tweaked unlock progression so you can customize your class in a bunch of ways. It doesn't sound like the Commander mode from Battlefield 2 will return in the same form, which hardcore PC players may be a little ticked off to hear. "This is not Battlefield 2, so people might not love all the choices that we've done," said Bach. "The world has moved on, so has DICE. We are changing stuff for the better, but you never know what the fans will say."

There's little quite as satisfying in an online match of Battlefield as dominating the map through expert manipulation of the in-game vehicles, specifically those that take off into the air. It sounds like, for the jets at least, there'll still be a bit of a learning curve so not everyone will be able to hop into a plane and instantly turn the tide of a match. "I think the goal for all the Battlefield games and all the vehicles is that it's easy to control but hard to master. Everyone should be able to take off and fly, but not everyone should be an elite pilot. We're not building a simulation, but also we're not trying to make a stupid, dumbed down experience for vehicles."

Even though only the single-player has been put on display so far and DICE didn't want to talk about co-op at all, it's hard to be anything but excited for what's sure to be one of the most talked-about games of 2011, don't you think? It sounds like DICE is going all-out for Battlefield 3.

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Ars Technica: Battlefield 3 first footage: the humans move like humans

By Ben Kuchera

EA's Battlefield 3 event was everything wonderfully terrible about being someone who writes about games. I waited in line, herded like a cow until I put on a name tag, was shown the open bar and was handed a piece of meat on a stick to eat until the game was shown. The crush of people was fantastic, EA seemed to have underestimated the amount of people who would be interested in the game. At one point they separated those who were press and those who weren't, those without a press badge were asked to leave the main floor, and they had to be content with a lesser seat while still enjoying the free drinks.

"Ears plugs are not a bad idea," I was told before the trailer began. There is a reason they wanted those of us who wrote about games on the floor, it was part of the sound system, bashing the bottom of our feet with the rhythmic sound of gunshots and explosions. My ears began to ring instantly. The screen was large and the graphics were overwhelming. We learned nothing about the game.

The best part of the demo was the fact that every control on-screen was a mouse, and we were told that the PC was the lead platform for the game. Seeing such a high-profile game shown to the press at an event on the PC is a rare thing these days, and it made me very, very happy.

The game looked great, the character models are amazing, and the environments crumbled and were blown away in a very satisfying manner. The game looks absolutely astounding, well above what we're used to from first-person shooters, and it may give gamers the excuse they've been looking for to upgrade their systems.

So go ahead and take a look at the trailer, tell us what you think, and get out the Motrin... I have a terrible headache. The event did what it was supposed to do, we were rocked by the video and everyone left suitably impressed. Now I just wish we had the chance to play the damned thing.

The event was mostly flash with very little substance, but the flash is enough to get us excited. There will be time for more information, and we're sure to know more around E3, but for now the hype trains continues. We saw a little more than than the trailer shows at the event, but we won't ruin the rest of it. Enjoy, and tell us what you think!

I want this so bad

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Mercury News: Battlefield 3 raises the visual bar (quick thoughts)

Posted by Gieson Cacho on March 2nd, 2011

I’m a little bleary-eyed after my first real day at GDC. Most of it was spent with Electronic Arts and their partners. The highlight of the night was this Battlefield 3 demo. Much has been made about the title ever since it graced the cover of Game Informer. The pictures looked too good to be true. There were some instances I wondered whether I was looking at a video game or real life.

Whatever the case, I was impressed by what I saw of the game moving live tonight. Executive producer Patric Bach showed off what EA’s technology and the Frostbite Engine 2 could do. One of the interesting things is that the game uses the ANT animation sytem that’s also incorporated in FIFA Soccer. This makes movements more realistic. I saw soldiers sliding to a stop in the dirt. There are a few other scenes in the video above that shows players being tossed around like a rag doll by explosions and getting up as if they were pain and they had weight.

As for the lighting, it was gorgeous. The way it catches the dust makes the scenes on the Iran-Iraq border feel real. There’s so much that DICE captured in the details that it’s almost unbelievable. But the most impressive thing in the game is the next-level destructible environment. Battlefield 3 seems to emphasis urban warfare, and DICE up the ante allowing players to destroy whole buildings. There’s a scene that I saw where soldiers were pinned down by a sniper, and they had to go prone and crawl across the rooftop. Then your squadmates provided covering fire so that you could launch an RPG at the source. The explosive obliterated the side of the building. It even lit a few fires here and there.

When it comes to the mood, the tension and the danger reminded more of The Hurt Locker than anything else. I say this a lot, but there’s a grittiness to the game. Maybe that’s how EA plans to take away that shooter crown from Activision.

Anyway, I have no idea how this will run on a console. The game is reportedly coming out for Xbox 360 and PS3, but after watching the demo that ran off a gaming rig, I have my doubts. Maybe the PC is the only platform that can show off what Battlefield 3 can really do. And that makes some of the console-ish parts of the campaign look weird. To be more specific, there’s a quick time scene, where you’re in a fistfight after trying to defuse a bomb, and seeing mouse clicks instead of button presses threw me off a bit. But I figure that’s a minor quibble compared to the potential the game has to shock and awe the gamers at large.

 

[GullyFoyle]

Examiner.com: GDC11: Battlefield 3 first-look preview

March 2nd, 2011 2:33 am ET

On Tuesday night, Electronic Arts held a press event in San Francisco to officially unveil Battlefield 3, which is currently in development by DICE for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Though there was no hands-on time with the game, the press in attendance was finally able to see the game in action, which showed off the all-new Frostbite 2 engine that ups the graphical horsepower while adding the 'ANT' animation system, currently found in EA's FIFA titles, which adds more realistic and fluid movements of in-game characters.

Destructible environments are also found in the game, which vary from blowing up walls, to leveling entire buildings. Even vehicles show physical damage when fired upon before blowing up.

Offering both multiplayer and single-player modes, the brief demo that was on display, showed a squad entering a parking lot that quickly turned into an all-out firefight with enemy forces. After a teammate was shown taking one in the chest (in slow motion, no less), our lead character is forced to drag the wounded soldier into a building before opening fire and trying to avoid heavy artillery. It's a pretty tense moment that catpures the essense of what Battlefield is all about. Of note, was also the exceptionally high quality audio that was pumping through the speaker system. Not because it was loud but because of the level of detail and clarity in the voice acting, the weaponry and the background noises.

Another area had the lead character entering a basement to try and investigate a mysterious red wire that ultimately leads to an explosive device. As the character disconnects one of the two wires, a shadow along the wall suggests that he is not alone. As he turns around, a melee takes place between the two men that turns into a sort of quicktime event, though only the two buttons on the mouse are used to swing away at the enemy.

Towards the end of the demo, we're shown another heart pounding scene that takes our squad to the roof of a building where they are being shot at by a sniper. After crawling around to the far end of the roof, the team opens cover fire to allow the player to pick up an RPG and fire a missle at a taller building a few blocks away that literally blows half of the building's front side and creates a massive fire that takes up a few stories. In the final scene, a huge building is leveled by missles that causes the edifice to collapse onto the main player - ending in a black screen and a Battlefield 3 logo.

The demo was all too brief for the battle hungry media but was enough of a teaser to show off the improved game engine that adds more realism and intensity than ever before. A short compilation video played afterward that gave a taste of other aspects of the game, such as massive, city sized maps, sweat-inducing fighter jet battles and plenty of gut busting explosions.

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DigitalTrends.com: Battlefield 3 first-look

By: Ryan Fleming - March 2, 2011
Trailer: EA and DICE kicked off GDC with a bang and a boom, thanks to the first look at gameplay footage from the upcoming Battlefield 3.

When you get a group of video game journalists and industry insiders together, and you can make them all gasp in surprise at how awesome a particular game looks, you can pat yourself on the back, high-five your coworkers, and immediately ask your publisher for a raise. With the (possible) exception of the raise, that is exactly what happened tonight when DICE took the stage for an EA hosted event at Game Developers Conference, and showed off gameplay for the upcoming Battlefield 3.

To begin the presentation, members from DICE explained the engine they have created that will debut with Battlefield 3, the Frostbite 2 Engine. Now, while that might not make much of an impression on non-gamers or casual gamers, to those that follow these things, it would be akin to Ferrari announcing that they have decided to reinvent the V12 engine.

The Frostbite 2 Engine is a big step forward for the series, as well as several other games that will be using this engine for the next few years to come. To put that in perspective, the original Frostbite Engine debuted in 2005, and is still going strong. Expect to hear more about this engine in the future, but the practical results are that the game will be able to render certain effects like fire and lighting much better, the sound (which uses a Frostbite audio engine) has been upgraded, and in terms of actual gameplay, expect the destruction of surroundings to be improved. A lot.

Where in Battlefield Bad Company 2 most houses can be destroyed with effort, and walls can be picked apart, expect entire buildings to fall, and rockets to decimate the whole front of skyscrapers. In a word, it looks epic.

As for the trailer below, it was a small part of the presentation from DICE, which showed off the first few sections of the game. Battlefield 3 takes place in 2014 as the Iran/Iraq border has become a global hotspot, and a group of insurgents calling themselves the PLF are gaining strength. Your squad is sent to help out another squad that hasn’t checked in, and on the way you are ambushed by ground troops, rockets and snipers. The ambush is shown in the video below.

Not shown below is what happened after the ambush. After a quick detour through a school (to show off the new lighting effects), your squad emerges on top of a building where a rocket ends the resale value of the neighborhood, and also takes out a sniper (along with the front half of ten-ish story hotel). A fast jaunt to a street sets up a climactic battle against enemy forces, when an earthquake hits, and suddenly everything goes to hell.

The video below is a shorter and edited version of the same video shown to the press, but it does give you an idea of what to expect. The clip is still being considered as pre-alpha, so the final results should look even better (especially with character animations and minor graphics tweaks).

Battlefield 3 is due out on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 later this year, and those that purchased the Limited Edition and Tier 1 Edition of Medal of Honor will receive an invite to the beta later this year. Expect to hear more about this game. A whole lot more.

 

[Castiel]

New Battlefield Blog Post: Battlefield 3 rocks San Francisco -- Episode I of new gameplay video series live!



Youtube link for video

Video is incredible. Any news if that's DX11?

 

[GullyFoyle]

Video is incredible. Any news if that's DX11?

It's on a PC, and it certainly isn't DX9...I'm 100% certain it is DX11.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Any words as to auto-aim? Because if the PC version of the game has it, i will nuke DICE to hell.

 

[96Firebird]

It's on a PC, and it certainly isn't DX9...I'm 100% certain it is DX11.

Its also on console, which are DX9... Who knows if they decided to code in both DX9 and DX11, or if they just went with DX9 and added some tidbits for DX11 like they did with BC2?

 

[Demo24]

Holy shit is right, but as in, holy shit no multiplayer details.

A lot of people kept saying to stop speculation on a lot of things until MArch 1 but now that none of that has been revealed what's the new date that people will use to throw in the face of people speculating?

Just chill out. The game isn't coming out for probably more than 6 months, they aren't going to reveal everything to us this far out. I'm somewhat impressed with how much we are seeing at this point.



And WOW! That demo looked great! Can't wait to go home and watch that again on better res. I'm actually rather surprised they released so much footage so soon after the teaser! Interesting how all the scenes were from San Fran, I look forward to seeing some other locations!

 

[Demo24]

Its also on console, which are DX9... Who knows if they decided to code in both DX9 and DX11, or if they just went with DX9 and added some tidbits for DX11 like they did with BC2?

PC will not support DX9. I assume they are changing items for the console. However it's been stated that you will need a dx10, but better dx11 card. I expect it to use dx11 extensively.

 

[GullyFoyle]

Its also on console, which are DX9... Who knows if they decided to code in both DX9 and DX11, or if they just went with DX9 and added some tidbits for DX11 like they did with BC2?

This guy knows. Comments by one of the Frostbite 2 Architects.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

What do you guys think about the idea of having in-game clans like guilds have MMORPGs? Only I'd rather call them Squads, or Battalions than Clans.

Anyway, it would simply be a thing where instead of typing in your clan name like you do now, people actually form a clan, invite you to it, and you can actually look at lists of your fellow clan members and click right through to their stats and whatnot.

 

[Termie]

The demo looks great - might as well be a movie, except for the first person view of the gun. That throws it all off, in my opinion. I don't know what it looks like to run around with a gun, but I don't think that's it. Maybe the gun should drop out of sight except while aiming.

By the way, the sound design is as per DICE usual amazing! I think they'll outdo themselves again.

 

[96Firebird]

This guy knows. Comments by one of the Frostbite 2 Architects.

Great to hear. :thumbsup:

 

[GullyFoyle]

PC Magazine.com: Battlefield 3 Shakes Up the Shooter Genre

March 2, 2011 11.06am
By Natalie Shoemaker

In a private meeting behind closed curtains, I met with DICE executive producer Patrick Bach, who took me through a tour of duty in the single player with the new Battlefield crew. A fellow reporter from Joystiq piped up, saying that it was a bold move for EA to to show off the single player, considering in the past it has been the weakest part of the Battlefield Bad Company Series.

Bach replied with a smile and said that the team wants to show its weakest assets, in order to prove how much they've improved. A bold move.

During the demo, Bach showed us how everything from a bullet to an earthquake can change the terrain of battle and how the micro and macro destruction has been pushed with the Frostbite 2 engine. "To us destruction is a part of the world, it's as natural as footsteps or gun sounds. If it looks like it can break, it should break," Bach said.

This demo was all shown on a Maingear desktop PC, so there's no doubt in my mind that this game needs to be experienced on a PC. Console versions will still provide the same experience, but it's likely certain aspects of the game will be toned down.

Bach promised that "the experience should be the same, we won't remove the animation system from the consoles, we won't remove the structure from the consoles—all the components will be there it's just a question of the quality of the different platforms."

I think the video below speaks for itself on how much effort DICE has put in to rebuilding this engine from scratch for the past three years.

Battlefield 3 will be available Fall 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3

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PC Magazine.com: Behind the Scenes with EA's Battlefield 3 and Frostbite 2 Engine

March 2, 2011 09.00
By Natalie Shoemaker

Behind closed curtains at an EA event a few weeks ago, I received the opportunity to view one of the most hyped games and game engines of 2011—Battlefield 3 and Frostbite 2. At the super secret demo I had the chance to preview a new age of macro and micro destruction, gameplay, and lighting and audio effects that can only be experienced in order to understand—all thanks to DICE's new Frostbite 2 engine.

The Battlefield 3 demo was being played on a Maingear custom boutique tower that was most likely tricked out with liquid cooling, several graphics cards (Nvidia or ATI, they wouldn't tell), high-end processor—the works. Needless to say, Battlefield 3 and its Frostbite 2 engine are made for the PC.

I sat down with executive producer Patrick Bach from DICE to talk in more detail about the Frostbite 2 engine and why it makes Battlefield 3 one of the best shooters in town.

PCMag: What's changed from the first Frostbite engine?

Patrick Bach: I would say, actually, we rewrote it from scratch. Because we came to the end of the road when it came to that technology. We did some really, really cool stuff with the first Frostbite engine, like really cool tools, a lot of lighting solutions, and its destruction. We had to get that engine to build the Bad Company 1 and 2 games, but we had problems with taking a big step forward. Because of new rendering technology, we needed streaming for everything in the game, also a lot of the tool sets didn't quite work as they should.

So, we came to the conclusion, more than three years ago, that we needed to rewrite. Because we want to move into the next generation, because PCs are there, but there's no software to prove it. There's all these tech demos, but there's no "killer app" that proves what the PC can do today with the CPUs and GPUs. So we just said we wanted to do a sequel to Battlefield 2, which actually pushed the envelope quite a lot, we need to do the same thing again. The problem is that, though the world is getting much more complicated with the costs of [developing a game] now [they] are much bigger than what they were five years ago, so we just said if we have the money to do it, if we have the time to do it—let's do it. We've had some successful projects, so let's go for it.

PCMag: During the demo, on the rooftops, the vast expanse made me reminisce of Mirror's Edge, did you build off of that tech at all?

PB: Mirror's Edge was built on bought technology, that's Unreal.

But of course we like our own games and we get inspired; a lot of the physicality of Battlefield 3 comes from the thinking behind Mirror's Edge. So the fact that your hands are a part of the world—it's not just a gun on a stick—it's actually a character that moves around. You can see your feet, you can see your hands, you can touch stuff, you can interact with the world. A lot of thinking comes from Mirror's Edge and that's what you want.

We see [the Frostbite 2 engine] as an investment. The Frostbite engine can deliver quite a few games once it's done, and since Battlefield 3 is the flagship title that will more or less release the first version of the engine, we dictate what that engine is by designing our game. So we are in a very good position of having a great big technology team building the engine and a game team building the game and can work together very closely, so we sit in the same building, on the same floor.

PCMag: How have you improved the AI (artificial intelligence) from the Bad Company series?

PB: It's the classic stuff, you need to find the weak spots and get rid of them. It's a combination between actual—it's nav[igation] data, plus AI behaviors, plus animation, generally. If you get the nav data right you can generate and have dynamic destruction, and on top of that you need to have good robust AI behaviors that you can control and tweak. Then the animation system, which we are now borrowing from our friends at EA Tech, it's like FIFA and those animation systems, which is probably the best on the market and we built it—EA, so let's use it. So we took that and pushed it into the engine. And the AI, you could say that the AI looks good even doing stupid stuff (Laugh).

So you get away with more by having great animation, to be honest. AI, to be honest, has very little to do with AI in games, because it's a perception on humans rather than artificial intelligence. Because if it was really intelligence it would own you, it would make sure that it won against you, and that's not what want as a gaming experience. You want to have a controllable—

PCMag: So have you implemented more of a game director?

PB: Yeah you could say that, you can call it a game director, but it's actually different behaviors that read the whole sensing system of an AI you could say is the director of it. Because the sensing system is based on hearing and seeing, but also seeing and hearing other NPCs. So depending on what happens, it will change direction and change behavior, so it's not only you that can change the behavior of NPCs, it's NPCs affecting each other. AI is a very blurry thing to talk about since AI is...if you look at it from a chess computer worst case scenario, that's not what you want in games. You don't want it to be too clever, so you want to dumb it down in a good way, so it still feels natural.

You don't want a shooting gallery, it's a delicate balance on how you build that AI, because what I'm saying is it's not that it's easier to build something that has less AI, it's actually more complicated, because then it's more based on psychology. What are my expectations of a human behavior? And since you can't simulate that. So anyone that tells you 'Oh we have a perfect AI,' they're lying.

PCMag: I notice there's more concentration on the micro and macro scale of destruction, where as in the Bad Company series it was more: You shoot this wall and this pre-rendered section falls down. So how were you able to get that together?

PB: That's something we learned a lot from the Bad Company series and what is the most effective way to do it. Like all entertainment, it's a lot of different systems that help to create this illusion of things happening around you. So the destruction system is actually built up from different destruction systems where you can actually chip off pieces of stuff, but if you have a house falling that's not the exact same system, so you combine all these systems with the effect system, with the actual moving around polygons system together with sound and other tricks to create this illusion.

We were more or less alone in doing it. If you look at other games, having destruction is ... eye candy only where there's no tactical change in the gameplay, or it's more of a gimmick where it's about destruction. To us destruction is a part of the world, it's as natural as footsteps or gun sounds. If it looks like it can break, it should break. So destruction is definitely something were pushing the envelope on.

PCMag: Are you at worried about how consoles are going to be handle this, how do you think it going to translate?

PB: I think it's going to translate well, since we've built console games before, so we know what we can and can't do. The whole engine is designed to be scaleable from PCs to consoles, so I'm not too worried about it. It's just the question on where do you draw the line on the feature sets. The experience should be the same, so we won't remove the animation system from the consoles, we won't remove the structure from the consoles—all the components will be there it's just a question of the quality of the different platforms.

PCMag: Is there anything else I should know?

PB: Well, there's a lot you should know but I can't tell you (Laughs).

Audio is something that we are extremely proud of. Since we more or less invented what we call HDR audio system, which gives us a more vivid sound scape than in any other shooter. It's not only me, we're getting a lot of awards for it. Just compare any shooter with us and you will actually hear the difference. And the cool thing with the core of that system is that, like HDR lighting where you can only see a certain amount of light at one time. You have the really dark areas and you have the really bright areas and depending on where you look, your eyes will adapt to the situation.

That's the exact same thinking with the audio system where we [have] decibel zero and decibel 200, and we have a sliding scale of what you can hear at one certain time. So if everything is completely silent you can hear a pin drop, but if someone blows a grenade next to you then the decibel on that grenade is so much higher so then the whole scale moves up to a higher end on the spectrum and you can only hear the loud noises. That creates a very dynamic world and it also gives our sound designers freedom to design the world based on what it actually sounds like. So you don't have to spend time changing volumes dynamically as you play, because the game will do that automatically. [The sound designers] can spend more time with the creative stuff, creating the sounds or adding more artistic layers of music or video that everyone should hear that should be center speaker /mid-range for instance. So there's a lot of cool tricks we're doing that no one else is really trying to do...yet, which is weird because we've been doing it for quite some time now and we are getting credit for it, but no one is—I think the problem is no one is rewriting stuff. Because they are building on the old stuff, you can't do these things.

We are just setting all these values and you create a very natural and dynamic environment, so we are just doing the obvious I would say.

PCMag: So is there any rating on the game yet? I imagine it's going to be rated M for mature, since I counted two 'f*cks' in the beginning of the demo.

PB: We actually were talking about this before, asking for permission to not have any boundaries on what we are building, because we want to build a cool game. And if we need to adapt to a 13 or T then that starts to cut away stuff. We've done that before where it's like 'Oh you need to cut away this stuff and this stuff' and it's like 'Well, we want it to be like this, our audience can handle it' move it up to 18, whatever. So to us it's not like 'Oh we need to add more gore and cursing' it more about us letting us do what we think fits the actual experience. Again, we are trying to build a more mature game, as in a game for grown up, rather than a game for 13 year-olds. So I'm OK with that.

Battlefield 3 will be available Fall 2011 for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3