17 minutes of single player Battlefield 4 *official*

BlitzKrieg

Well here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8HVQXkeU8U

Initial reaction?


Some good things. I like a return to a campaign like bad company 1 where it feels like a series of small open ended fights over straight corridor shooting. Vehicles can be taken and there is some form of limited squad command/support powers at play. So its thankfully not completely by the numbers.

Also throw in some of the few great elements from the recent failed medal of honour game shows that despite it selling poorly EA/Dice paid attention to what was positive about it, so I'm happy to see those driving segments make a return.

The last really exciting thing is this is very clearly an early mission in the game, so if it gives you that much freedom and control in the prologue then there is hope that as the game progresses so does the control and scale.


The bad? alot of huh, there wasnt a lot of mind blowing moments, just a fair few little improvements. There is still a set piece heavy motiff going on, though some are fairly badass, they will still be very little control and heavy on spectacle. I kind of liked the *cutscenes* but nothing to run home screaming about.

Here's to a multiplayer reveal soon!

Hank Scorpio

Looks like every other Battlefield game, what else is to be expected

Dcully

Campaign is a waste of time and effort imo, i havent touched it on either BC2 or BF3.
I play BF for multiplayer only, focus on that ffs Dice.
So this is Frostbite 3, it looks the exact same as BF3.
Looks like DLC to BF3 to me.

ktulu123

Everything you said there is correct. But you should of given the BC2 Campaign a go, it was great! Last decent Military Shooter Campaign I played

jonski

I'd like to see some multiplayer ingame footage

Umpalumpa

Whatd the release date?

Riesen_Meal

I think it looks bloody incredible, but mind you I will only realistically play the campaign once, it was a chore on BF3.....

ShadowHearth

Dcully wrote: »

Campaign is a waste of time and effort imo, i havent touched it on either BC2 or BF3.
I play BF for multiplayer only, focus on that ffs Dice.
So this is Frostbite 3, it looks the exact same as BF3.
Looks like DLC to BF3 to me.

I clocked in 170h in bf3 and still only on second mission in sp. They might skip it completely.

As for trailer it self. I could not agree more, it felt like I am watching a dlc for bf3. I just think they could have given us one more year of very decent expansions, but EA just wanted us to charge 50eu once more instead.

If they will add a lot more urban maps and with proper destruction this time, then I won't feel bad for paying 50eu extra.

Anyway, so far very disappointed .

ShadowHearth

ktulu123 wrote: »

Everything you said there is correct. But you should of given the BC2 Campaign a go, it was great! Last decent Military Shooter Campaign I played

Bc2 campaign was good indeed. In fact I would love to see bad company 3 instead of bf4. Thats multiplayer and single player wise.

Akrasia

I'm really pleased that they've decided to use Frostbite 3 for BF4

It's fantastic news for the current generation platforms that a next gen game engine will be capable of running on our systems, this will make it easier to release downscaled versions of next gen games for this platform while those non early adopters amongst us wait for the new consoles to come down in price and up in reliability

BlitzKrieg

battlefield has a weird history with its singleplayer.

Codename eagle (the prototype of battlefield of sorts) had a dreadful singleplayer.

Then there was no single player content in any of the games (aside from skirmish) for years until battlefield modern combat.

which remains the only battlefield game I havnt played so I cant comment, but it did come out in that period where console fps were becoming popular, but what is most commonly recognised as the modern war shooter had not yet been defined. So from what I've seen of it footage wise it has a strange mix of ideas both old (health bar!) and new at the time (squad ai)


Then 2008 Bad Company came out exclusively for consoles.

bad Company's single player is in some ways fantastic, it takes the open ended elements of classic battlefield multiplayer (large open areas, lots of opportunity to flank, mannable vehicles etc) and tries to replicate this over and over on a small scale in a single player scenario.

The result is mixed. The gameplay itself is good, it just feels very awkward with how the game struggles to keep you on path or to set up memorable sequences and was very prone to a player being able to break what the developers intended by taking an odd route or using a vehicle not the way it was intended. There were also some cases of the game trying very hard to get you on the right path by laying huge lines of mines in the directions it didnt want you to go.

Still had health bars though and the story was a lot of fun.


But I think it was unfairly compared to the much tighter modern warfare campaign and as a result when bad company 2 rolled around

All the open ended elements of the campaign were chucked for the same set piece flavour as modern warfare. Though there was still some unique flavour with how the firefights rolled out. BC2 didnt have the same design philosophy as the modern warfare games so there wasnt that annoying need to push forward all the time to move the damn enemy spawning point back. This meant that BC2 for the most part rewarded more careful, accurate players more as you could clear out an area from a secure position somewhere in the back of the firefight and move up slowly.

Throw in an actual interesting collection system another fun plot, some nice set pieces and you got a solid single player campaign.

Though not as interesting as the bad company 1 single player in how it was delivered.


Battlefield 3 pretty much uses the exact same set up as bad company 2, but has sucked a good chunk of the fun out and lacks the same level of collectables. A few of the set pieces are nice. Thunder run in particular is quite good and there is one level where the game briefly opens up kind of like bad company 1 (but not to the same scale). And it is pretty. But the lack of charm that bad company 2 had and the fact that it was a campaign style that was already getting very stale at this point meant it was never well received.


I am a small bit hopeful from the above video that there is at least a small move back towards how bad company 1 did the single player, which I think would be seen as very refreshing if they did. The ability to man a vehicle in the single player like you would in multiplayer and get in and out at your own will is a good sign that they are possibly doing this, that has not been an option since bad company, both bc2 and bf3 only allowed mannable vehicles at key set pieces. Though there was still *alot* of corridor shooting ala bf3 in the opening segment and the end segment is pretty much one big set piece.

Its a watch and see scenario.

mozattack

Played over 600 hrs on BF3, played less than 6 hrs on single player.

I seriously dont see the point in playing single player anymore, I never will play it again. Even playing GTA single player seems boring after playing BFBC2 and BF3 multiplayer so much

Dcully

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

battlefield has a weird history with its singleplayer.

Codename eagle (the prototype of battlefield of sorts) had a dreadful singleplayer.

Then there was no single player content in any of the games (aside from skirmish) for years until battlefield modern combat.

which remains the only battlefield game I havnt played so I cant comment, but it did come out in that period where console fps were becoming popular, but what is most commonly recognised as the modern war shooter had not yet been defined. So from what I've seen of it footage wise it has a strange mix of ideas both old (health bar!) and new at the time (squad ai)


Then 2008 Bad Company came out exclusively for consoles.

bad Company's single player is in some ways fantastic, it takes the open ended elements of classic battlefield multiplayer (large open areas, lots of opportunity to flank, mannable vehicles etc) and tries to replicate this over and over on a small scale in a single player scenario.

The result is mixed. The gameplay itself is good, it just feels very awkward with how the game struggles to keep you on path or to set up memorable sequences and was very prone to a player being able to break what the developers intended by taking an odd route or using a vehicle not the way it was intended. There were also some cases of the game trying very hard to get you on the right path by laying huge lines of mines in the directions it didnt want you to go.

Still had health bars though and the story was a lot of fun.


But I think it was unfairly compared to the much tighter modern warfare campaign and as a result when bad company 2 rolled around

All the open ended elements of the campaign were chucked for the same set piece flavour as modern warfare. Though there was still some unique flavour with how the firefights rolled out. BC2 didnt have the same design philosophy as the modern warfare games so there wasnt that annoying need to push forward all the time to move the damn enemy spawning point back. This meant that BC2 for the most part rewarded more careful, accurate players more as you could clear out an area from a secure position somewhere in the back of the firefight and move up slowly.

Throw in an actual interesting collection system another fun plot, some nice set pieces and you got a solid single player campaign.

Though not as interesting as the bad company 1 single player in how it was delivered.


Battlefield 3 pretty much uses the exact same set up as bad company 2, but has sucked a good chunk of the fun out and lacks the same level of collectables. A few of the set pieces are nice. Thunder run in particular is quite good and there is one level where the game briefly opens up kind of like bad company 1 (but not to the same scale). And it is pretty. But the lack of charm that bad company 2 had and the fact that it was a campaign style that was already getting very stale at this point meant it was never well received.


I am a small bit hopeful from the above video that there is at least a small move back towards how bad company 1 did the single player, which I think would be seen as very refreshing if they did. The ability to man a vehicle in the single player like you would in multiplayer and get in and out at your own will is a good sign that they are possibly doing this, that has not been an option since bad company, both bc2 and bf3 only allowed mannable vehicles at key set pieces. Though there was still *alot* of corridor shooting ala bf3 in the opening segment and the end segment is pretty much one big set piece.

Its a watch and see scenario.

Good points but would you not prefer to see them put ALL resources into what BF is all about? Multiplayer !

karma_

Dcully wrote: »

Good points but would you not prefer to see them put ALL resources into what BF is all about? Multiplayer !

Exactly, Single player in Battlefield is completely superfluous, it's just not needed.

MajesticDonkey

I agree about the single player. Never liked the BF campaigns - a bit too far fetched. COD on the other hand is the opposite - great single player campaign and ****e multiplayer. Obviously not everyone will agree - just my honest opinion.

Nuri Sahin

Well I enjoyed it but I've always been quite accepting it of such on the rails, Michael Bay-ness from COD. Quite enjoyed BF3's campaign too, to be fair I didn't get the bad rep it got but that's just me. Only wish was for them to incorporate multiplayer co-op into the story but that's maybe asking for too much. Instead, they'll no doubt have their own co-op and single player campaign thing going as per the norm.

Anyway, looks very pretty does the Frostbite 3 engine which is a given I suppose, more than just simply polished which I thought it was going to be originally. Dual sights looks interesting on guns, though if it's anything like COD and it's attachment in multiplayer, I'm honestly not sure how much I'd end up using it.

Seems I need to give BC2's campaign a go reading comments. Only bought the game last week.

Snowie

I thought it looked good.

Sound effects are good to I thought if anything it they were a little on the high side.

But ultimately I think it looks fantastic I never thought 20 years ago would i be so amazed bye a game, quite like I am today.

I first started gaming at 11 i got a sega master system I played alex the kid for months years days because I couldnt afford a game, and even then it was very basic. before that I had an acorn electron I had to program my own games. My first pc game was prince of persia on a dos based system!

My point being that the jumps in the past 25 years is fvcking amazing look whats been accomplished, sitting in hear in amazed at what i looked at to day because gaming just seems to be constantly climbing in ways i never even thought or could of imagined when i was a 11.

yet its not enough, fine then don't play it.
Come on give some credit when due...


Yes I am excited and I am looking forward to blowing new stuff up...

BlitzKrieg

Dcully wrote: »

Good points but would you not prefer to see them put ALL resources into what BF is all about? Multiplayer !

Sadly as much as some might bitch about unnecessary multiplayer in single player games (Tomb raider bio shock 2 spec ops the line) there seems to exist a similar expectation that you can't do a multiplayer only full release game anymore. When battlefield first launched we were in the golden days of multiplayer. Both quake and unreal went multiplayer only and battlefield and tribes 2 were new big *it* titles.

But now... Quake went back to single player for release and unreal tournaments last release had a single player forced into its gameplay before being left to waste while epic focused on gears. Tribes has gone free to play. Clearly the industry has rejected full fledged multiplayer titles. Any attempt at bringing them back has flopped (brink) and the success of cod because of both its single player and multi player has set the expected contents of your standard fps today

B.A._Baracus

I too will agree I am not blown away by that trailer.

BF4 is just an update. Like any Call of Duty game. Heck, like most games. But within saying that I just loaded up BF3 on my xbox... Played online for 23 days, 10 hours and 31 minutes since October 2011 God makes me feel like I have no life and I know alot of other people here have logged similiar hours too.

So it's like having roast beef every day for ages. Then a new roast beef dinner is given to you. Your initial reactions will be "it's just roast beef again" - By that I mean maybe i've just played bf3 so long to not be blown away by bf4.

Think it's time to stop playing.

ShadowHearth

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I too will agree I am not blown away by that trailer.

BF4 is just an update. Like any Call of Duty game. Heck, like most games. But within saying that I just loaded up BF3 on my xbox... Played online for 23 days, 10 hours and 31 minutes since October 2011 God makes me feel like I have no life and I know alot of other people here have logged similiar hours too.

So it's like having roast beef every day for ages. Then a new roast beef dinner is given to you. Your initial reactions will be "it's just roast beef again" - By that I mean maybe i've just played bf3 so long to not be blown away by bf4.

Think it's time to stop playing.

Well we do know now that BF franchise will be a yearly release like FIFA and Cod. I honestly hate that. I really Loved to have BF3 for so long and getting expansion packs to keep it fresh and fun.
I would not mind waiting another year until BF4, but get an actual improvement over BF3, then just a polished version of BF3.

BlitzKrieg

Well we do know now that BF franchise will be a yearly release like FIFA and Cod. I honestly hate that

Battlefield has always been a yearly franchise.

2002 Battlefield 1942
2003 Battlefield 1942: The Road to Rome
2003 Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII
2004 Battlefield Vietnam
2005 Battlefield 2
2005 Battlefield 2: Special Forces
2005 Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
2006 Battlefield 2: Euro Forces
2006 Battlefield 2: Armored Fury
2006 Battlefield 2142
2007 Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike
2008 Battlefield: Bad Company
2009 Battlefield Heroes
2009 Battlefield 1943
2010 Battlefield: Bad Company 2
2010 Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam
2010 Battlefield Online
2011 Battlefield Play4Free
2011 Battlefield 3
2011 Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand
2012 Battlefield 3: Close Quarters
2012 Battlefield 3: Armored Kill
2012 Battlefield 3: Aftermath
2013 Battlefield 3: End Game
2013 Battlefield 4

its just some years its hidden by being a series of add on packs rather then 1 single new release. But battlefield has always had something new to the franchise every year since its creation, dont fool yourself to think otherwise.

Joe Hart

mozattack wrote: »

Played over 600 hrs on BF3, played less than 6 hrs on single player.

I seriously dont see the point in playing single player anymore, I never will play it again. Even playing GTA single player seems boring after playing BFBC2 and BF3 multiplayer so much

That is exactly why single player is so important.

I have a life so multiplayer games are no fun when you just get destroyed all the time by students/kids.

mozattack

Joe Hart wrote: »

That is exactly why single player is so important.

I have a life so multiplayer games are no fun when you just get destroyed all the time by students/kids.

"I have a life" = poor at FPS? I don't get it.

I only play 1 game and that is BF3 and whether or not I have a life is open to debate but what I do know is shooting some sim is not half as fun as shooting some player controlled sim.

mozattack

Is it coming to PS4 or not?

Why wouldn't Sony ride on the back of this train and declare "yes, BF4 coming to PS4". Its a worry

5uspect

So it's very pretty, that's nice, but the first thing they show is a bloody shooting gallery followed by lots of set pieces. FFS have they learned nothing?
Also why did the helicopter not just pick them up on the road side?

Why not make the campaign more like multiplayer with a big open map where a much larger battle is in progress and you are involved on some aspect of it, or have to work your way across it for some unrelated mission. You could script certain events depending on how you find your way through the map (not unlike L4D2 attempted with randomised paths and the AI director) and give the campaign replayability with the randomness of the open battlefield. For example you may find different vehicles levels of resistance in different areas every time you play. This would also allow co-op.

Also the demo appears to have been played using a controller which was equally funny and painful to watch.

ShadowHearth

mozattack wrote: »

"I have a life" = poor at FPS? I don't get it.

I only play 1 game and that is BF3 and whether or not I have a life is open to debate but what I do know is shooting some sim is not half as fun as shooting some player controlled sim.

He is just jealous of your **** bucket m8!

Will I Amnt

Joe Hart wrote: »

That is exactly why single player is so important.

I have a life so multiplayer games are no fun when you just get destroyed all the time by students/kids.

It works out a fraction over an hour a day if he got it on launch. Hardly life consuming.

ShadowHearth

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Battlefield has always been a yearly franchise.



its just some years its hidden by being a series of add on packs rather then 1 single new release. But battlefield has always had something new to the franchise every year since its creation, dont fool yourself to think otherwise.

Well i dont know how you can call expansion as a new game.

danniemcq

money on multiplayer character woman will be sniper model, seems to be the stereotype, instantly thought of Full Metal Jacket

BlitzKrieg

mozattack wrote: »

Is it coming to PS4 or not?

Why wouldn't Sony ride on the back of this train and declare "yes, BF4 coming to PS4". Its a worry

EA have been very close lipped in general about the next generation, they havnt confirmed any titles yet for either console, there are some rumours that microsoft has made some deal with them about battlefield 4 but I highly doubt they have any credibility.

Honestly I'd put it down to what I've been saying all along, EA will make more money off the final months of this generation then the first few months of the next, so they will keep tight lip about all next gen titles for as long as they can as they'll want to focus to stay on the current gen.

So it's very pretty, that's nice, but the first thing they show is a bloody shooting gallery followed by lots of set pieces. FFS have they learned nothing?

-mannable dynamic vehicles (i.e not setpiece vehicles) in single player (not seen since bad company 1)

-squad command mechanics (how far this goes is to be seen, but covering fire and ordering the helicopter to attack was clearly shown in the video

-online challenge mechanic and ingame leaderboard tracking (didnt spot this on my first viewing, just before the middle part of the video there is a highlight in the corner where another player challanges the current player to collect dogtags and later it highlights when the current player passed out his current high score and when he was close to passing out his friend.) though this has little interest to me it shows there is something *more* going into this over the bf3 campaign.

of those 3 things, I say the first two can possibly offer if DICE do actually run with it something fresh to the formula. I will admit of the three things they showed, only the middle bit had substantial content and yes the the initial bit in the building was very on rails, but I liked the middle segment and with something that open being shown in a level that is titled *prologue* (again can be seen in the top corner when player gets new high score) then in comparison to BF3's prologue (the train level and if you want to stretch it the pre earthquake iraq segment) then DICE are either setting themselves up for a really big fall if they never raise the bar after the opening level or the game is going to rack up further in this direction in later levels, which if you consider the scale BF3 went up between the train level and the big mission pushing through the valley. The scale on BF4 looks to be hopefully much bigger.

BlitzKrieg

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Well i dont know how you can call expansion as a new game.

4+ expansions = a new game? It equals more then 1 game if we go by cost (unless you bought premium).

The only year DICE did not deliver either a whole new game or a serious truckload of new content is 2007.

considering that is the year they moved development to consoles + pc & developed a whole new engine. It is understandable that they'd skip that year.

But otherwise it has been a yearly franchise since creation

2002 first game

2003 2 expansion packs (1 of which was a standalone pack with a whole slew of new weapons, vehicles, factions and game mechanics)

2004 vietnam

2005 battlefield 2 + add on pack + console port

2006 2 add on packs + battlefield 2142

2007 1 add on pack

2008 bad company

2009 battlefield 1943 and battlefield heroes

2010 bad company 2 + vietnam add on pack

2011 battlefield play4free + battlefield 3

2012 4 add on packs!

2013 1 add on pack and battlefield 4

the best you can argue is 2003 and 2007 not being yearly additions, but every other year we've had either a full new release or had a lot of add on content released.

Battlefield has always been yearly and will always be yearly, there is little ground to argue any other way.