Battlefield 3: War Stories

By EVAN SHAMOON - Stars and Stripes

Going up against Activision’s "Call of Duty" series is no easy feat.



If any game stands a chance, however, it’s EA’s "Battlefield 3," the third title in a series that has gained a loyal following for its intense multiplayer action. This time around, however, expectations are sky high. Early footage of the game revealed a spectacular degree of realism and fidelity, and EA’s offering has become arguably the most talked-about title of the year.



"Starting a completely new franchise is difficult, no matter how much time you have," says David Goldfarb, lead story designer of "Battlefield 3." "If there’s one thing I’m proud of above all else, it would have to be the tone of the game. Frankly, it’s really hard to walk the tightrope of the fantasy that players want and the uncompromising realities of war—and ultimately we are still making entertainment, not a simulation. It’s exceptionally hard to do something different and even harder to do it well."



Goldfarb believes the team has distinguished its game as something unique, with a pace and tone unlike anything else. "And it’s not just the emotion and pacing of the single-player or the scale and depth of multiplayer, it’s across the whole game."



The campaign is set near the Iraq/Iran border, where the U.S. Marine Corps is fighting the People’s Liberation and Resistance (PLR). It tells the story of four characters who know each other well, an element the team was familiar with.



"We have experience with four-man squads with ‘Bad Company’ and ‘Bad Company 2’," says Goldfarb. "As far as the premise goes, we were definitely interested in exploring a what-if scenario that was plausible and closer to contemporary reality than those we have done in the past."



Where the two previous titles were told in linear time and players controlled a single character, "Battlefield 3" goes a step further. The story is non-linear, and you play multiple characters within a frame narrative, which is a series of interrogations of a U.S. Marine. What you are actually playing are the Marine’s memories, or the events they intersect.



Choosing such contemporary subject matter upped the ante for realism across the board, and this problem was attacked on a number of fronts.



"Combat for us is serious business," says Goldfarb. "The entire audiovisual experience, the way the guns sound and handle, the way the world sounds and looks, the physicality of your body hitting the dirt, of seeing enemy fire rip away at the jersey barrier in front of you—this was at the core of our ambition for ‘Battlefield 3,’ to get people to feel the chaos of a firefight."



This was helped along by the immensely powerful Frostbite 2 engine the game runs on: Not only does it look remarkably realistic, but also it can portray the destruction of buildings and scenery with a stunning degree of clarity, even in dense urban areas. Not that there won’t be limits, of course.



"In ‘Battlefield: Bad Company 2,’ you could more or less destroy everything with a 40mm grenade launcher, which was fun but doesn’t really fit the game we’re making now," says Goldfarb. "What we’ve done this time out was ensure that when you have a destructive weapon, you can expect it to be destructive in a more realistic manner."



The team’s approach to realism was assisted by bringing in Andy McNabb, the pseudonym of a noted English novelist and former SAS operative and soldier.



"I was first asked by DICE to help weave together the different storyline strands which make up the levels of the game," says McNabb of his work on the game. "I worked with the team by providing ideas on how the action might play out and, just as importantly, giving possible reasons as to why the action might go in a particular way. I gave advice on how soldiers talk, act and think."



McNabb uses the example of phrases like "maybe I can" and "we will try to" as immediately foreign to a soldier’s dialect.



"We use words like, ‘you will,’ ‘I will,’ ‘we will.’ All dialogue is progressive, because soldiers in the real world must be positive in everything they do." McNabb says he would sit for hours talking with the game’s artists about how men and machines move tactically, and how they look, even down to making sure that the soles of their boots were dirty and worn.



McNabb also says that the developers at DICE knew their subject matter well; his job was to make sure any lost details were put back in. In scope, his tasks ranged from simple things like correcting magazine changes on the M4 or making sure grenades weren’t being thrown without their pins having been pulled, to more complicated changes like redesigning a desert camp that’s attacked by tanks.



"Now it’s an exact replica of a camp on the Iraq/Iran border that I flew over four years ago [in the game]," says McNabb. "Authentic detail is so important because our brains are very good at telling us when something isn’t just right." He also stresses the importance of making sure soldiers onscreen weren’t crossing one another’s arcs of fire, and getting the actors and stuntmen to look as if they had been handling weapons all of their adult lives.



Of course, "Battlefield 3" wouldn’t be complete without a fantastic multiplayer mode, and on this front the team is also aiming high.



"In multiplayer, we really wanted to capture the feeling of rounds in the air that we’ve been missing in so many shooters," says gameplay designer Alan Kertz. "Getting shot at is a frightening experience in real life, but in videogames, unless you take a hit, you’re not afraid."



The team has introduced suppressive fire in an effort to capture that fear, but this was only one small part of the challenge.



"Battlefield’s stand-out feature has always been large maps with all-out vehicle warfare," continues Kertz. "That means we don’t just focus on infantry, but we work with the entire Combined Arms, including boots on the ground, jets, choppers, and a full range of land combat vehicles."



"Battlefield 3" represents the developer’s largest range and depth of modes, including infantry-focused modes like Team Deathmatch and Squad Deathmatch.



"‘Battlefield 3’ is able to scale from a 4-on-4 squad skirmish all the way up to 64 players in all-out war on the PC," says Kertz. "Of course, we also include 24-player all-out war on the PS3 and 360, including full access to all the classes of vehicles, including jets."

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Copyright 2012 by Stars and Stripes