The arrival of Battlefield: Hardline will be one year after the last entry in the series, Battlefield 4. Despite this fact, EA is not aiming to annualize the series, says EA Studios executive vice president Patrick Söderlund. Instead, Battlefield: Hardline is the result of EA letting its studios work on games that they have interest in. Söderlund stated on Hardline’s origins:
“Karl-Magnus [Troedsson], who runs DICE studios, and Steve Papoutsis, who runs Visceral, basically met in Barcelona almost three years ago and they came to me and said ‘Hey, we have an idea.’ Actually, the idea of a cops and robbers type Battlefield game has been with us — me and the DICE team — for more than ten years. There are early prototypes from, like, 2000 or 2001 of a game that we called back then Urban Combat. This has been lingering and we’ve been wanting to do something like this.”
For Söderlund, the idea of a police-themed Battlefield made sense. However, Söderlund had one condition for Visceral Games: “Make sure that Visceral builds an expansion pack before they do this so they understand what it takes to make a Battlefield game.” He continues:
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to annualize Battlefield and that’s the way it’s going to be forever and ever. I understand that some people may look at it that way but that’s what happened.”
He also stated at E3:
“The EA that I’m trying to help build isn’t an EA that needs to annualize everything.”
The work that DICE is doing to fix Battlefield 4 will benefit Hardline’s multiplayer. Söderlund said that the team in Sweden “has made significant progress” in terms of the game’s performance.
“We still have things to make it better. Everything that we’ve fixed with [Battlefield 4] will go into Hardline. Once people get their hands on the netcode patch, which I think is profound, that will take care of a lot of the complaints around Battlefield… and how responsive the game is.”
“The EA that I’m trying to help build isn’t an EA that needs to annualize everything.”
Battlefield titles have released from one year to the next a few times. However, DICE never made a habit to completely annualize the series. Though Battlefield 4 came out last year, Hardline seems like enough of a change to differentiate itself from the last installment. I myself am against annualization, but the changes being made between Battlefield 4 and Hardline look like enough to help keep me from easily growing bored. Battlefield: Hardline looks good, so hopefully it will meet expectations.
Battlefield: Hardline will release on October 21 on PC, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 3.
Published: Jun 16, 2014 06:01 pm