Interview: DICE geeft antwoorden

IGN heeft een groots interview afgelegd bij ontwikkelaar DICE, de studio achter Battlefield 3. IGN is een van de weinige die zo'n uitgebreide antwoorden heeft gekregen, dus dat is al een goede reden om het even door te spitten. De antwoord zijn trouwens van Karl Magnus Troedsson, de producer.

IGN: How does the difference between 64 players on PC and 32 on console influence map design?

Karl Magnus Troedsson: We're dedicated to making sure each version of Battlefield 3 makes the most out of the platform it's running on, but there are some changes we need to make, especially with consoles compared to PC, naturally, the PC being more powerful. But we have a good grasp of this. Those who've been following the series for a long time know that in the old Battlefield games you could play it with 64 players, but also a lower amount of players, meaning that we then scaled down the maps and the amount of vehicles, and these kind of things. And it's a natural way of thinking about it when you then play it with less players on console as well. We have a lot of history of knowing how to do this, so it's more of a technical challenge to get the most out of that platform when it comes to visuals, audio, animation etc, and putting each console's technical features to best use.

IGN: How do you guys feel about EA's Origin service and Battlefield 3 not appearing on Steam? I would assume that you guys would want your game to be available in as many places as possible.

Karl Magnus Troedsson: First of all, I like the idea of Origin. I like the idea that EA is dedicated to creating a service that actually latches onto the games, lets us have a direct communication with our players. It makes it easier for us to get updates to them, it adds that social layer of having your friends in one place. There's a lot of cool stuff in there. I can understand that people are a bit reluctant towards this in the beginning, but I would ask people to give it a shot and have a look at it. There's been other services out there that are now very established that have had perhaps a harder time in the beginning as well.

Our ambition with this game is to make it available in all channels possible, retail as well as e-tail, of course. In some cases, business terms get in the way, and it's sad when this happens and I really hope we can sort this in the future, but right now we're not on Steam.

IGN: It must be pretty cool getting Frostbite 2 out there and into the hands of other teams.

Karl Magnus Troedsson: Naturally, we're very flattered by this, that other teams within EA want to use the engine, but it's also a bit of a challenge. We have a separate team - the Frostbite 2 team - that handles this, so it's quite a big difference from them supporting one game to supporting more games within EA, but it's also very cool for us on the game team for Battlefield 3 because when [multiple] teams are on the same engine they can really share a lot more things, so we're starting to see things coming back into the engine from the various teams that really can help each other out, and that's a really cool experience.

De rest van het interview kun je hier vinden.

Battlefield 3 komt 27 oktober uit voor PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 en pc.