Straight Shooter

Even without the song, it sounds like Battlefield: Bad Company is going to rock.
5/21/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

Despite failed attempts to the contrary, the Battlefield franchise is best known as a multiplayer-driven shooter series for PCs. If the hands-on time we got with the game at a recent EA event in San Francisco is any indication, that all might change with Battlefield: Bad Company, a single- and multiplayer-driven, console-only version of the game due out June 23 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. We spoke to Dice's Karl Magnus, the game's senior producer, about how the game will work, how Dice is listening to longtime Battlefield fans, and why the game doesn't feature a rather obvious rock classic.

Crispy Gamer: Given that most of our readers will have a passing familiarity with the Battlefield series, what is Bad Company and how is it different?

Karl Magnus: There are quite a lot of things we kept from the old Battlefield games, but there are also quite a few new, big ones. The biggest one is that, even though we have a multiplayer mode, we're focusing as much on a single-player campaign.

Crispy Gamer: What prompted you guys to do a story-driven single-player game after doing so many multiplayer games? Or have I just answered my own question?

Magnus: Well, we see it as being 50/50 single- and multiplayer kind of game. But the reason we wanted to do a single-player mode had a lot to do with this being a next-gen console-only game, and that audience wants a strong single-player game as well as a strong multiplayer one.

Crispy Gamer: Do you not think this kind of Battlefield would work for the PC crowd?

Magnus: No, it could've worked, we just wanted to focus on doing a great console game.

Crispy Gamer: The Battlefield series has covered World War II, the modern era, and the not-so-distant future. In what era is this one set?

Magnus: It's a modern setting. When we listen to our fans, we get the sense that the modern setting is what people like the best.

Crispy Gamer: The story in Bad Company isn't a serious war drama like Call Of Duty 4. How come?

Magnus: Battlefield, from the beginning, has been almost silly. When you throw a grenade at someone, they don't explode into blood and gore; they fly away, waving their arms, "Aaaaaaaa!" Battlefield 1942, for example, took a lot of inspiration from the movie "Kelly's Heroes." So when we wrote this story, we wanted it to have an irreverent tone and some black humor.

Crispy Gamer: Was "Kelly's Heroes" a big influence on this game's story as well?

Magnus:Yes, but we looked at a lot of movies, especially "Three Kings." Crispy Gamer: What's interesting is that the single-player mode plays like a multiplayer one, just with the other characters being bots instead of other people. Why did you decide to go this route?

Magnus: That was actually something we decided to do early on. What's fun about the Battlefield experience? Well, it's the sandbox experience, do whatever you want. If you see a vehicle, jump into it. If you find a weapon, you can use it, but then we added mission objectives, a story and cut scenes, and it just felt very natural. Sure, we have times when we direct a player to a certain point so we can progress the story, but most of the time we give them the freedom to do what they want.