What Is So Special About Bad Company?
It has been said by some, including people at DICE, that they don’t understand the appeal of Bad Company. Battlefield:Bad Company 2 had limitations and flaws, especially on the PC compared to previous Battlefield games, but it was and remains popular (games are still played on PC at least). The choice to make it for the consoles might have contributed to its limitations, but it opened up a lot of new possibilities for Battlefield.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/06/24/dice-reveals-why-theres-no-battlefield-bad-company-3
For many Battlefield players, this was their first taste of the series. Is it just a matter of our memories being clouded by a good first experience?
Bad Company introduced two big new things to Battlefield. The Frostbite engine with its fantastic destruction. And an actual single player campaign, with a decent, funny, replayable story. Like a good movie, a good campaign story can be worth playing over, just to see it again and also to look for things you missed the first time.
It also introduced the Rush game mode, with maps well designed to work with it. A final, small but critical element, was that its storytelling was open to humor. This carried over to a small degree to its multiplayer as well.
The map scenarios suggested smaller actions, not critical battles but something involving regular soldiers, or even far less than elite forces, fighting just another typical small battle as part of the larger war.
War movies can be divided into two types: serious dramas and action comedies. You can mix the two elements a bit, but most fall into one or the other. If Battlefield 3 and 4 are serious war dramas, and the campaigns definitely had lots of pain and angst, then Bad Company 1 & 2 were the funny, irreverent action stories. The group of bad, misfit soldiers assigned to the worst unit, given the dirty, dangerous assignments no one else would do, who still don’t take their war all that seriously.
We get bad one liners, funny and possibly stupid actions, and all kinds of interactions and events which are, dare I say it, a gold mine (or Rush) for campaign story development. It also opens up the possibilities for the multiplayer experience to include a faster, funnier outlook on war.
Turning It Up To Eleven
Bad Company 2 has some elements of this. But it can be made even better, stronger, faster, in Bad Company 3. We can rebuild it, we have the technology…
OK, maybe not all lines should be “shout outs“, referencing movies, TV shows, other games and media. Those are quick and easy, and often quite funny, but not the only sort of humor which can be fitted into the multiplayer dialog and animations. We see some of this in Battlefield: Hardline, but Bad Company 3 could have even more.
The maps could have more strange destruction and “easter eggs” for players to laugh at. The spray tags (“Kilroy Was Here“) could fit in nicely as war graffiti done by less than serious soldiers. The vehicles could get music — as BF Vietnam had — just as Hardline has. The special, fun animations could be tossed in, just because it fits the theme.
The prevalence for lighter, faster vehicles, and environments open to more destruction, would appeal to all those who love fast action and blowing stuff up. Rush is a special example of this. Because the forces will not fight over a given region for the entire round (unless they lose quickly), there is no need to worry about the consequences of massive destruction leveling the buildings and terrain. We can afford to allow for far more devastation without impairing playability. Maps can be optimized for Rush and high destruction, or as more rigid Conquest arenas with less destruction, without having to compromise to make them ideal for both modes.
Blasting a new path through the obstacles can become part of the strategy of the game. Do you want to reduce cover for both you and the enemy and reach the destination faster, or would you rather retain structures which block line of sight and fire in order to offer paths for a stealthy approach?
That leads to another element – game modes and maps with a focus on fast action and lots of close quarters combat. Battlefield 3 and 4 do offer some maps with good close quarters engagements, but most don’t combine that with lots of small and large scale destruction. We don’t need to be able to level the structures on every map. We just need lots of things which can take damage and explode, or otherwise react in strange and funny ways to bullets and explosives. This helps create the whole high energy, action comedy movie battlefield experience. While Battlefield 4 does a wonderful job of creating intense firefights with a true war movie epic scale and intensity, the shock and power of battle is definitely of the serious, hard, gritty realism side of warfare.
The success of The Expendables (mercenaries rather than soldiers), classics like Stripes and Kelly’s Heroes, and many others shows that there is room for both comedy and serious takes on war. Allowing Battlefield to have both serious and humorous games takes good advantage of that. Plus, hey, we have another place for Battlefield Friends to hangout and contribute.
Other Elements Of Play
Could we grab the Zipline and Grappling Hook from Hardline and incorporate it into Bad Company 3? Would it fit into the playstyle of the game? It some ways, Hardline is like a descendant of Bad Company, so the new BC3 could inherent elements back from it.
One other thing we can showcase is the diversity of the military forces present in the world. Battlefield 4 focuses on the elite forces of the USA, Russia, and China. We don’t see nearly as much of the regular line army equipment even of those forces as could be shown. A more diverse, allied company could perhaps show more factions (with some shared equipment to keep resources in line). The campaign story, of course, could use even more of this.
All in all, this could open up the franchise to new fans, and help keep the old ones happy.
Is There Room In Players Hearts For Another Battlefield Series?
Battlefield: Hardline shows both the positive and negative aspects of this issue. Many people like the new concept and can’t wait to play it. Many others reject it, just as strongly, and won’t buy it or consider it to be a “real” Battlefield game. Another segment, possibly larger than both of the others, is unwilling to pay full price for an interim game installment. After all, they can just keep playing Battlefield 4 while waiting for BF5 to get here.
Right now, we have Battlefield 4. A 2013 release, which took a long time to stabilize and is still in development with new patches (March 2, 2015 saw the latest) and the Community Test Environment (CTE) working to do even more.
We have upcoming:
- 2015 Winter (March 17 ) — Battlefield: Hardline
- 2015 Fall — Star Wars Battlefront
- 2016 Fall — Battlefield 5
This is pretty close to one new release per game series per year. Too many new games risks saturation, where players simply can’t work up the excitement for a new entry because they are still playing the old one, and aren’t done with it yet. The Battlefield series isn’t like some games, where they are made and then abandoned once new versions become available. There are still people playing BF1942 even now, BF2 remains in play, and BF:BC2 is still popular and active. And of course, there are many players still active with BF3. Most of these also have Battlefield 4, so this isn’t just a matter of refusing to upgrade to the latest and greatest game in the series. The old games have fine maps and features, tend to have the worst bugs ironed out, and are still just as much fun as ever.
Activision has done this with some success with the Call Of Duty series. The releases have tended to alternate genres, but since COD:MW2, have all been modern era (or near future for COD:AW), and some have found the annual release schedule producing games which end up being, in essence, pretty much like the previous ones with very minor improvements or changes. Of course, there are differences, but not in ways which create the excitement of opening up new game styles or environments. COD 4 (MW) remains actively played, but some of the others since then have little online presence. One positive of this “same old game” is that the game engine is fairly well tested and stable.
Players of Battlefield 4 can appreciate that advantage. But we also can appreciate the appeal of a game maker trying to innovate and push the limits of what is possible for the hardware and the network, as well as to try new ideas and elements to incorporate into their games. In part, Battlefield 4 suffered from sticking to the schedule, to make it a launch day release for the new consoles. But we’ve seen with Hardline that they are not rigidly stuck to fixed release dates, and can give the developers time to make each title in the series with all the time and attention it deserves. With three series in development and a three year cycle, this should avoid the overly-rushed development issues which hit BF4.
So where does Bad Company 3 fit in? It is an alternate modern military game to Battlefield 5, and that means its release really shouldn’t overlap that very much. With a three year cycle, it could fit in around the halfway mark (Spring 2018), assuming we see Hardline resume in 2017. It would parallel the Star Wars series, but as that is Sci Fi action it wouldn’t necessarily be in conflict for players, who would either only play one in any case or have no problem having both. We should expect a good two years of active play life for any game in the Battlefield series, and this would give it space without clashing strongly with its more serious counterpart, Battlefield 5 (and 4).
In Conclusion
Does Bad Company 3 sound like fun? That is the core thing, and I believe that there is a strong place for comedic action games in our world of serious Battlefield warfare. The key is to make its identity even stronger, to make sure that it isn’t just a cheap knockoff of BF4 (or BF5), without enough character to be more than just an oversized DLC. If it is just the equivalent of new map packs, we may as well see more than 5 DLC sets per year rather than whole new games, with new engines and bugs to fix. No, it needs to be its own game, with its own style of soldier advancement and its own choices about weapons, vehicles, playstyles and game modes.
