… And those six minutes speak for themselves. Lately, the industry has seen a trend: merging the single- and multi-player game-play dynamics into one, connected experience. Red Dead Redemption’s Posse mode, GTA Online, Payday I & II, and many others have tried to create the most dynamic possible experience, bringing together the narrative quality of a single-player and the dynamic flexibility of a multi-player experience. Battlefield: Hardline is the latest foray into this trend, and from what we’ve seen, is poised to make some serious waves.
As you’ve likely heard, Battlefield: Hardline is a heavily-media inspired title, structured episodically and informed by works such as Heat, The Wire, and similar crime epics. The new direction allows the team at Visceral Games – that’s right, the developers behind the Dead Space franchise, and Dante’s Inferno – to jump the military ship in favor of a world of crooked cops, and brutal criminals and everything in between.
This direction also allows for some fascinating flexibility in the multi-player – below is a completely in-engine 32 player match in ‘Heist’-mode, or something titularly similar. I’m pretty sure this is what every other developer meant to do when they developed similar modes, achieved with the near-limitless resources of EA and the creativity of Visceral, and in the remarkably flexible Frostbite Engine.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex1GlZS-t7c[/youtube]
When environmental destruction was first touted as a game-play mechanic, the above was what I imagined. Whether it will be enough to win over the non-FPS crowd remains to be seen. Battlefield: Hardline will release on PC, PS4, and XBONE this fall. Stay tuned to Pixelated Geek for continued coverage of Visceral Games Battlefield: Hardline and E3 2014.