DICE and EA have made a big splash for the next instalment of the Battlefield series of games, showing off the new Frostbite 3 engine in a seventeen minute trailer for the game. It's very, very pretty indeed, but as usual the focus is on the single-player portion of the game, which becomes redundant a couple of months after launch when everyone has moved on to the multiplayer.
For those at work or not interested in watching the video, it begins with the player under water in a slowly sinking jeep that seems to have crashed. We're given our first look of other NPC soldiers, with very realistic looking skin and animated movements. The entire trailer is fantastic looking and it makes me excited for the potential Mirror's Edge sequel which could see development with this engine.
Throughout the video we see much more in the way of destructible environments and lots of debris, with the player - who happens to be a horrible shot, making me think this must be the console version - creating new pathways through certain parts of the level, without prompts, by blowing through random sections of wall.
There's vehicle driving that looks about the same as previous offerings and the shooting mechanic all seems pretty par for the course.
Ultimately despite this being a beautiful game engine, it's difficult to see anything new here. As usual, this FPS trailer focuses on big single player set pieces and not on Multiplayer at all, which is what the majority of gamers want these sorts of FPS games for and while what we see seems pretty standard, there's nothing really of note. It's a Battlefield FPS game. It's basically the same as before.
There was a nice immersion breaking "you just broke your friend's record" message that popped up halfway through though. That's what I want in an immersive single player experience, high score notifications .