Battlefield 3

[Bad^Hat]

But I think you guys are being unfair. Is it stupid because it's rails-y? Yes. Is it stupid because it's not the most realistic war game ever? No. BF1942 wasn't, and neither was BF2. Why should BF3 be?

I'm more put off by the rails-y thing. That's the one thing Battlefield has never been (not including the Bad Company games), so I don't think it too unreasonable to expect that they try and capture even a tiny bit of what makes the multiplayer so unique in the solo campaign. That said, if they're going to make it an on-rails, linear experience, they could at least make it a good one. I'd be happy for realism to take a back seat if it looked the slightest bit compelling or original, but like knut says it seems to be sliding into the same familiar crawlspace between "authenticity" and Baysplosions that CoD has been occupying for years.

Oh well, maybe they're just holding the best till last. Doubt it though.

 

[Krynn72]

But I think you guys are being unfair. Is it stupid because it's rails-y? Yes. Is it stupid because it's not the most realistic war game ever? No. BF1942 wasn't, and neither was BF2. Why should BF3 be?

Because BF1942 and BF2 didn't have singleplayer campaigns that tried to look realistic. BF3 does.

 

[Ennui]

You guys would whine about anything. We're on a Half-Life forum and you're complaining about scripting and linearity. Let's all moan about how modern games attempt to be cinematic and have realistic dialogue and even make cursory attempts at having themes. The fact that Call of Duty is cinematic and scripted doesn't mean that any other modern-era shooter is automatically also bad for taking that path.

edit: LOL. BF3 is trying to at least give the impression of authenticity, so automatically it is disqualified for not being the "real" thing? Do you need a disclaimer or something? It seems like you guys wouldn't be satisfied by anything less than a singleplayer campaign where you spend 24 in-game hours training followed by 40-50 hours of waiting around and talking shit with your army buddies until you reach the climax, a brutal 3 minutes of utterly confusing firefight where you don't even see a bad guy. God forbid a video game be pretentious enough to advertise as realistic.

 

[Krynn72]

cinematic and have realistic dialogue and even make cursory attempts at having themes.

I take it you didn't play BC2's singleplayer? Because it attempted those things, and was awful awful awful regardless.

edit: LOL. BF3 is trying to at least give the impression of authenticity, so automatically it is disqualified for not being the "real" thing?

Since when has trying something and failing at it not been mock-worthy around here?

I'm not going to address the other parts of your post, because they're silly points and you and I both know it. Stop being a fanboy, the game can speak for itself.

 

[Stigmata]

The only failure here is your and others' failure to see anything but COD where there are soldiers and guns.

 

[Krynn72]

The only failure here is your and others' failure to see anything but COD where there are soldiers and guns.

A wonderfully unfounded assessment. Let me name some shooters with soldiers and guns that aren't COD clones. The obvious one being ARMA2, but off the top of my head I can think of the OpFlash: Dragon Rising which wasn't a COD clone, neither were the new Rainbow 6 games, the Red Orchestra series, Vietcong, etc. Those games are all fundamentally different from COD. BC2 SP was not, and BF3 looks to follow suit.

I honestly dont know how you can't see it.

 

[Stigmata]

>taking my argument literally for the sole purpose of making a strawman

Enjoy the thread. I'll enjoy the game instead.

 

[Krynn72]

>taking my argument literally for the sole purpose of making a strawman

Enjoy the thread. I'll enjoy the game instead.

Your point was that I was mistaking elements inherent and in military fps games as "COD" features. I told you that you were wrong, and pointed to several examples where the inherent elements involved do not result in COD rip-offs; that gameplay can be fundamentally different from COD, and that I don't think BF3's SP will be different in such a way.

If that was not your argument, then please explain your position more clearly.

 

[Vegeta897]

It seems like you guys wouldn't be satisfied by anything less than a singleplayer campaign where you spend 24 in-game hours training followed by 40-50 hours of waiting around and talking shit with your army buddies until you reach the climax, a brutal 3 minutes of utterly confusing firefight where you don't even see a bad guy.

Ahaha, jesus this is stupidity.

 

[Stigmata]

Your point was that I was mistaking elements inherent and in military fps games as "COD" features. I told you that you were wrong, and pointed to several examples where the inherent elements involved do not result in COD rip-offs; that gameplay can be fundamentally different from COD, and that I don't think BF3's SP will be different in such a way.

If that was not your argument, then please explain your position more clearly.

You named games, not gameplay elements. From all the posts that claim this is just a carbon copy of Activision's bullshit, I haven't seen a compelling argument that makes the comparison. Scripted scenes? Big deal, every game has them. Minor incongruencies with reality? Big deal, every game has them. Infantry tactics that aren't straight from war tapes and military handbooks? Well, this isn't ARMA. You seem to want a military sim from a series that has you capturing flags, magically appearing on the battlefield beside your teammates, piloting any vehicle you want to (and giving you infinite parachutes)... I can go on, but I won't, because you should understand what I'm getting at.

This all started because someone misinterpreted DICE's statement that they're "going after Call of Duty" to mean they're "copying Call of Duty", because that person hates COD, and then everyone jumped on the bandwagon of hate because the game wasn't "realistic" enough. Well, I hate COD too. I hate shitty games. I've been on this forum for seven years. You and I both know that we both have no patience for shitty games. But I'm not going to deride BF3 based on an ambiguous sentence and cherry-picked comparisons that paint BF3 as closer to insipid arcade bullshit than a merely imperfect attempt at linear story-based warfare immersion that isn't realistic enough to make the game boring or impossible to play.

I don't want to turn this into a flame war, so just understand that I'm really frustrated at what I perceive to be surface-similarity hate bias.

 

[Bad^Hat]

The only failure here is your and others' failure to see anything but COD where there are soldiers and guns.

Could you describe one way in which it's different from other modern shooters without mentioning the animation system or earthquakes?

Obviously, keeping this all in perspective, we only have these trailers to go by. But this is how DICE have chosen to represent their game, so I don't see what's wrong with a bit of scrutinizing.

 

[Krynn72]

You named games, not gameplay elements. From all the posts that claim this is just a carbon copy of Activision's bullshit, I haven't seen a compelling argument that makes the comparison. Scripted scenes? Big deal, every game has them. Minor incongruencies with reality? Big deal, every game has them. Infantry tactics that aren't straight from war tapes and military handbooks? Well, this isn't ARMA. You seem to want a military sim from a series that has you capturing flags, magically appearing on the battlefield beside your teammates, piloting any vehicle you want to (and giving you infinite parachutes)... I can go on, but I won't, because you should understand what I'm getting at.

This all started because someone misinterpreted DICE's statement that they're "going after Call of Duty" to mean they're "copying Call of Duty", because that person hates COD, and then everyone jumped on the bandwagon of hate because the game wasn't "realistic" enough. Well, I hate COD too. I hate shitty games. I've been on this forum for seven years. You and I both know that we both have no patience for shitty games. But I'm not going to deride BF3 based on an ambiguous sentence and cherry-picked comparisons that paint BF3 as closer to insipid arcade bullshit than a merely imperfect attempt at linear story-based warfare immersion that isn't realistic enough to make the game boring or impossible to play.

I don't want to turn this into a flame war, so just understand that I'm really frustrated at what I perceive to be surface-similarity hate bias.

You've taken several missteps in interpreting my post as well as others.

Firstly, most of the COD comparisons have NOT come from the developers saying they want to match COD's success, but from the "gameplay" videos we've seen. What we've seen so far is a corridor shooter, something those games I mentioned did not have. What we've seen so far is a lead-by-the-nose navigation through these corridors from one scripted event to another by your team where you're constantly following your AI leader, and given more entirely scripted sequences where "you take it from here soldier buddy." Something those other games either didnt have at all, or only had in key plot points rather than 30 times per level for no reason. The AT4 bit in this video is a perfect example of what I am referring to. The player wasn't given any choice on how to handle the situation, and for no good reason. I guarantee you that the sniper wont play a part in the plot, and that hitting him with a rocket launcher will have no impact on the story at all. So why force the player to do it? It simply takes away from the experience, and is exactly the kind of shit COD pulls. I could go on, pointing out several other areas of gameplay similarities between the videos and COD, but I don't feel like writing a massive post at 2 in the morning. If you want more, I'll revisit it tomorrow or something.

Your second mistake is confusing criticism against the SP as criticism against MP. I don't want a sim from a game that has you capturing flags, magically appearing on the battlefield, and piloting any vehicle, but those elements are all MP from what we've seen. SP lacks all those things, so I expect something in return. Be it more realism in the gameplay (iron sights for all weapons, back blast affects, bullet drop, weapon mounting, range adjustments, etc) or something else to make up for all the features the SP lacks. By the way, you want a good example of a strawman argument? Look no further than this:

It seems like you guys wouldn't be satisfied by anything less than a singleplayer campaign where you spend 24 in-game hours training followed by 40-50 hours of waiting around and talking shit with your army buddies until you reach the climax, a brutal 3 minutes of utterly confusing firefight where you don't even see a bad guy. God forbid a video game be pretentious enough to advertise as realistic.

Which provides a good segue to your third misunderstanding. You mistake us joking about the sniper shooting rapid-fire and shit for "hate bandwagon." Such things detract from the game by breaking immersion, which by the way, is bad. It is, however, excusable if they counter it with something "fun." However, as I pointed out it probably wont have that counter balance, because its balls to the wall scripted, which isn't fun. Realism has its place, you know it, I know it, Ennui knows it. But unrealistic things in a realistic setting, in a realistic narrative breaks the immersion, ruins the emotional impacts of anything in the story, and can only be offset by having "more fun" be the purpose for the break in realism. My argument boils down to that very point. BF3 doesn't seem to have any good reason to be making that sacrifice. Thats why I compare it to Modern Warfare, because that games does the exact same thing.

 

[Viperidae]

These videos are beyond just 'linear,' Stig. You saw yourself: all you do is follow what the AI does and click mouse 1 when you're told to. What would happen if you just started shooting at the sniper as soon as the door opened? Would your AI buddies change their plan? Is it scripted enough to take into account everything the player might do? I doubt it. I bet that, just like CoD:Rails, they would stand around waiting, continually shouting at you to get into position.

Again, I don't have a problem with the lack of realism. I just wish the missions were more open ended. Like 'go into this zone and do x and figure out how to do it yourself.' Instead we get shown 2 videos which are inarguably glorified cutscenes. Really, I want you to prove to me how it's not just a cutscene where you press a button at a certain point. Sure, you're in control of your movement, but not your destination. It's a first person war movie, where you enact key 'scenes' at dramatic 'moments.' Even HL2 avoids this, for the most part. Most of the time you're not forced down a corridor waiting for the AI to keep up with you, you're free to backtrack and can approach most (but not all: see problems with strider/chopper battles) situations in a manner that you wish. HL2 wasn't nearly as good at this as HL1, but there was the gravity gun, which made it a lot more varied.

There's a difference between setpiece, where there's usually a single situation that needs to be resolved, and cutscene, where the situation can only be resolved in ONE way and it's impossible to even MOVE to the key position in more than one route.

Remember Gonarch's Lair? You start in one spot, and you always end in the hole beyond the cave, where you can finally kill him. It's scripted. No matter what you do, there's no way to kill him before you reach that second cave. But in the meantime, you have all the weapons from the game that you've collected before, whatever current health you have, the superjump, and a huge arena to fight him in. There's a regen pool hidden behind a rock if things get tough, but it's slow and out of the way. You are allowed to pummel the crap out of him in any way you choose, should it be egon, grenades, rockets, snarks, whatever. If you got hurt bad or used a lot of explosives before getting to him, the fight can be very hard. Is it tense? Yes. Is your success (and, to a smaller degree, the pacing) determined by your skill and choices? Yes.

Remember the airboat battle against the chopper in Route Kanal? Big space. Oh, but you say, you had unlimited ammo. True, but the chopper also did things you'd never seen it do before, like spam the shit out of its bombs. That was probably the only 'oh shit' moment I had in HL2. I sat in wonder as I watched it rain death on me. Sure, it had predictable patterns that you could adjust to quickly, but you could still MOVE. AROUND. While attacking it.

Remember the second-to-last end battle of Ep1? Where you stayed in the same area and fought Combine spawning from the same areas over and over while hustling civvies across the street? Yeah, that was awful. Infinite ammo (iirc AR2) box. Health everywhere. Guys spawning from the same sides of the rooftops with such regularity that you could get out the crossbow, aim at the spot where they start repelling, and wait. A painfully constrained setpiece bordering on cutscene where no matter what you did, the same triggers always happened at the same timing, the same number of guys, the same spots. Was it tense? Certainly, the first time you played it. Do you want to replay it over and over, and over and over, and OVER AND OVER, for, let's say, an ENTIRE GAME? I sure hope not.*

Because that's the kind of gameplay CoD is made of, and that's certainly what the shown BF3 is looking like.

If they wanted to wow us with SP, they should have shown us something new, something we hadn't seen before; a new twist on an FPS: Battlefield series meets singleplayer. Maybe a campaign where your army has a limited number of guys and you can choose what zones to go into and conquer piece by piece. A dual gameplay story where half the time you're commander and the other half you're a soldier. I don't know, something. Instead it is looking just like what we had seen before and played to death and gotten sick of.

*And for the record, I play the entire HL1SP about once every 3 years, and enjoy it. I don't ever feel the urge to play the HL2 episodes. There's a reason.

 

[Evo]

My 2 cents? This is a trailer of a 'prologue' level, will it set the scene for the rest of the game? Who knows!

 

[Vegeta897]

Very good post, viper. You bring up things I've never even thought about before but have went into what makes me enjoy a game.

 

[Stigmata]

I see what you guys are saying, but these appear to be moments chosen to highlight the cinematic qualities of the game. Open-ended combat sequences with multiple routes make a great game, but it makes for terrible first-impression advertising to anyone but a hardcore gamer. There's a reason why gameplay trailers are controlled sequences, and it's the same reason why HL2's E3 gameplay trailers were scripted out the ass.

None of you have concretely addressed the question of, if not this, then what could the singleplayer really be? It's linear, it's story-based, you are not the leader of your squad, and you do not get to decide what your mission is. Do you want the entire campaign to consist of free-tactics engagements? Then the campaign will either be poorly balanced or incredibly short. Do you want every action a soldier takes to be by-the-book? Then you can't take artistic liberties for the sake of a tense moment. Do you want to be able to choose your own path to the objective? Then remember that we've seen a total of six minutes of gameplay, and extrapolating this to the scope of an entire campaign is simply not logical, especially given the first impression advertising angle they need to positively capture if they want BF3 to make a truly significant impact on the market.

Furthermore, Viper, it's not entirely fair to compare the campaigns of HL2 and what we imagine BF3 might be. HL2 is a futuristic dystopia with far more room for creativity than BF3's modern day desert city war themes. When you pick a setting and a theme, you constrain yourself. HL2 has room for lots of cool and crazy setpieces and combat sequences, and it's part of the reason I love the series. But BF3 does not. The tone and setting make absolutely no allowances for it. I mean, yeah, it's a little silly that the rooftop sniper doesn't manage to headshot anyone, or that the RPG'd van doesn't kill you outright, but it's also silly that Gordon's flashlight drains his oxygen underwater, or that he can enter City 17's trainstation square by coming through a dead end and passing a Metrocop, who should have immediately realised that this guy either appeared out of nowhere or escaped from a Combine interrogation. It doesn't make either one a bad game. It just means they're imperfect representations of their creative ideals.

Do I want to play the rooftop sniper sequence over and over for ten hours? No. But I want to experience it once, because it looks fun, and I don't believe that DICE is dumb enough to make an entire campaign out of quicktime events.

 

[Viperidae]

I concede your point in paragraph one, except for your last bit. If you think back to E3 2003, they were advertised as gameplay trailers. That's what you showed at E3 back then, raw footage. People genuinely thought those videos were bits of dynamic and freeform gameplay. Remember when the source code was leaked, and people discovered that the door on Traptown always broke every time, at the time same, with or without an npc_combine behind it? There was rage, there was severe disappointment.

Your second paragraph doesn't move me. 'It's linear, it's story-based, you are not the leader of your squad, and you do not get to decide what your mission is.' You're wrong: there are many unique, interesting, and believeable things you can do to the FPS genre that don't require cutscene gameplay. What says you can't be the leader of your squad? That's part of the core of Battlefield gameplay. With hundreds of millions of dollars, they can't make gameplay that has squadmates?

'Tone and setting' creating allowances in BF3 setting? You do realise they could have chosen anywhere in the world for a conflict, yet they went the safe route with an iraqistan desert country? Remember how BF2 took place, in addition to the ME, in China and the States? One third of the maps took place in ME, and it was a welcome change to play in China or the Armored Fury maps (As a note, I really hope they've made more than one setting in this game. If not, my point is proven). Your statement 'BF3's modern day desert city war themes' reveals how utterly brainwashed people are about contemporary warfare. You really think the only possible location for a conflict is the middle east? You know what would be a kick ass, ****ing amazing place to set an FPS that's also a modern setting? South Ossetia, 2008. Russia vs. Georgia. Special ops. Tank vs. tank warfare. Civilian killings. Temperate, forest setting. A poor, ill-equipped but zealous army against the mighty Russia. Oh shit, Americans weren't involved in that war. No Generation Kill to rip off. Darn, back to Iraq, everybody.

And again, it has nothing to do with the realism. If the game doesn't portray itself as milsim, I won't care if there's a sniper battle between ****ing Osama Bin Laden and George W. What I want is the ability to do things at a pace that isn't 100% the decision of the level designer, and make my own decisions. You know why no one cares that Gordon's oxygen depletes faster with flashlight on? Because people are too busy thinking 'oh shit I have no idea where the surface is here I hope I find it before I drown.' There's no guy on a radio telling you where to go, and certainly no arrow on the HUD pointing you to the exit. It's a game where you can go underwater, or drive a jeep across an open beach. It's scripted and linear, but it does its darndest to give you as many choices as it can within its constraints. It has gameplay outside of executing quicktime events with your mouse and following a dot on a minimap; if Gordon's drowning, usually it's because the player got himself in that position through exploration, not because the map designer dragged him down there in an unavoidable manner and then said 'THERES THE EXIT I HOPE YOU MAKE IT THERE BEFORE THE HELICOPTER FLIES AWAY LOL.'

You can (and SHOULD) have freedom in military games, and the fact you think you can't shows how closeminded this genre has become.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Basically what Viper said. Honestly I'm trying not to make too many assumptions, my main worry with these trailers is that this is how they're choosing to market it. This is who they're trying to cater to, people who already like this kind of stuff. There's every possibility the core gameplay outside of these highly scripted sequences will be much more involving, but I don't really see why they'd present it in this way if these scenes are just the exception to the rule.

Really though, my biggest objection is that it's in no way identifiable as a Battlefield game outside of having a military theme (ignoring the as yet unseen multiplayer). They could quite literally have marketed this as Medal of Honor 2 and I wouldn't know the difference.

(As a note, I really hope they've made more than one setting in this game. If not, my point is proven)

They have. Paris, New York and Tehran (presumably where this footage is taking place) have been confirmed.

 

[Vegeta897]

Do you want the entire campaign to consist of free-tactics engagements? Then the campaign will either be poorly balanced or incredibly short. Do you want every action a soldier takes to be by-the-book? Then you can't take artistic liberties for the sake of a tense moment.

Well, this is absolute bullshit, because the campaigns in Operation Flashpoint did this exceedingly well. You had an unrestricted map to play tactics to your heart's content. You never felt like you were following a pre-defined path, because of how open everything was. Even when most of the missions could only end one way, you still had the all-important freedom in gameplay to (try to) reach that end how you wanted. One of the most well-remembered levels from Operation Flashpoint is the one where your forces are heading to the extraction point without you, and you've got to make it there on foot with enemy patrols roaming around and a ****ing gunship scouting around, hunting you down. That's a tense and cinematic experience that takes no control over the player's freedom. You choose your path to try to make it to extraction, you choose whether to engage any patrols you encounter, you choose how to engage them.

And who said anything about doing anything 'by-the-book'? I feel like you and Ennui are seriously misinterpreting when we bring up games like Arma to explain what we mean. We don't want BF3 to be a mil sim, and we're not complaining about the player or anyone else in the game doing shit 'by the book'. But there's some things that just don't really make sense, whether you happen to know proper military tactics or not. Send a small arms fire team up an adjacent building that the sniper already has full view of to shoot a ****ing rocket at him? Come on. Practically the only thing that made sense in that video was when they gave suppression fire so you could shoot it.

 

[Krynn72]

To be fair, im pretty sure that in the video the team didn't know the sniper was there when they got up top. They were probably going up there for another reason.

 

[knut]

nope, they were aware. the same sniper nailed one of their team in the first video, and i recall reading a press release saying they were headed to the roof to clear him out.

 

[Krynn72]

Right, nevermind.

 

[Lucid]

ITT: People complaining about the optional singleplayer campaign that they (hopefully) won't be forced to play.

But then again, we still haven't seen the MP.

 

[knut]

are you really implying that we, as possible consumers, cannot speculate, discuss, debate or critique footage we have seen so far?

because otherwise yes, that is what's happening in this thread.

what of it?

 

[Bad^Hat]

ITT: People complaining about the optional singleplayer campaign that they (hopefully) won't be forced to play.

Wow that's actually a great way of putting it. "It looks completely optional so why even play it." Gosh, what was I even complaining about again?

 

[Anthraxxx]

So aside from all of the complaining of the past few pages....

One of the neat things I noticed in the video was how the "view" of the player seemed to flinch every time the sniper took a potshot. Also, the sound of the sniper shot echoes quite realistically.

 

[Bad^Hat]

For sure. If there's one thing we can count on from DICE, it's excellent sound design.

 

[YROC]

I'm already sold, honestly. Just from what i've seen here. The game is already more than I ever expected. Those animations, man.

Has there been any news on maps yet? Map sizes? Anything.

 

[Stormy]

http://www.ea.com/battlefield3/videos/bf3-teaser

website is up

 

[Ennui]

lol Stormy you're a little late. 3 trailers have been released since the one you linked and that EA BF3 site has been up for about a month Check out the Fault Line gameplay trailers if you haven't already.

I'm already sold, honestly. Just from what i've seen here. The game is already more than I ever expected. Those animations, man.

Has there been any news on maps yet? Map sizes? Anything.

64 players for PC. Maps are going to be larger for PC than for console (which has 24 player limit), similar to the map scaling in BF2. Jets will be present in all versions of the game. Conquest will return of course. No word on Rush mode. Commander mode confirmed to be NOT returning, and most likely squad leaders won't either.

There will be a Back to Karkand DLC that's free with the $60 "limited edition" preorder of BF3 that has 4 BF2 maps + BF2 guns and vehicles: Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman and of course Strike at Karkand.

That's all we really know about the multiplayer so far, other than that the maps will be MUCH bigger than Bad Company maps.

 

[Shakermaker]

Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman and of course Strike at Karkand.

Sharqi confirmed? That is good news. It was my favorite BF2 map.

 

[YROC]

Holy shit I enjoyed Wake Island in Battlefield 1943 (360). Gulf of Oman too.

 

[Viperidae]

Commander mode confirmed to be NOT returning, and most likely squad leaders won't either.

Yup, this will be shit.

Unless they meant 'we're replacing commander mode and squad leaders with something better.'

 

[Krynn72]

Yeah, I didn't know about that. That sucks. One of my favorite parts of BF2 was playing on a team that had commanders and squad leaders actually issuing orders and coordinating. It gave "grunts" direction and made teamplay more likely, rather than cluster****s of lone soldiers running around like

Spoiler

COD.

 

[Viperidae]

Maybe I should rephrase: this won't be Battlefield.

 

[Zephos]

Oh son of a bitch.

 

[TwwIX]

This doesn't surprise me at all. Features like the Commander Mode and other management tools are too complex for the console tards.

 

[Unfocused]

No commander doesn't bother me that much, but no squad leaders sucks big time. SLs forced squads to regroup and encouraged teamplay.

 

[jimbo118]

Wake, pfft, again?

Gimme Zatar Wetlands. Don't act like you didn't love it!

Also, no Maashtur remake? FUUUU. No destroying a Mosque, then.

 

[knut]

This doesn't surprise me at all. Features like the Commander Mode and other management tools are too complex for the console tards.

>implying that battlefield 2 was a deep, complex game with no issues or retards at all

bf2 is next to counter-strike in terms of cluster-**** unorganized bullshit, and this is long before the COD games took that crown. don't you dare try to make an argument saying otherwise; there is nothing that anyone couldn't understand in bf2, the game was shit-simple easy. also: bad.