[StarSlayer]

Debut Teaser

Gameplay Teaser

The bass registered on the richter scale. 

Is that a single player campaign that Dice is cooking?

[General Battuta]

Yeah, there's a ton of info already, including a full single player with co-op. Jets are back too.

Very pumped.

[Mongoose]

I think just about every mostly-realistic war-themed shooter blends together in my head to create one big blob of brown textures and generic grunt voiceacting.  I couldn't tell you the differences between them if you paid me.

[General Battuta]

I think just about every mostly-realistic war-themed shooter blends together in my head to create one big blob of brown textures and generic grunt voiceacting.  I couldn't tell you the differences between them if you paid me.

You know when someone says stuff like this about something you can appreciate and enjoy, and you get annoyed? Like how anime is all a bunch of effete ladymen with spiky hair screaming Engrish and charging their moves for three episodes?

Don't be that guy.

[Mongoose]

No, I'm not trying to be "that guy"...I've just never had it demonstrated to me how fundamentally different these games may be.  Like, I watch my youngest brother play multiplayer Black Ops (blech), and I look at gameplay of older Call of Duty titles, and I look at that gameplay teaser you posted, and I just see a ton of samey-ness.  I dunno, maybe this sort of game just isn't for me at all.

[General Battuta]

The trailer you saw was actually pretty CoD-ish because it didn't show any of the ways Battlefield is (enormously) different from CoD (which is ****).

Allow me.

In CoD you have ~sixteen players at most running around a small space primarily firing guns at each other and working as lone wolves. You mostly run in circuits around a small network of streets or hallways.

In BF you have 32/64 players organized into squads, sometimes with a commander, running around a huge map with all sorts of pilotable tanks and helicopters and crap, cracking up at the hilarious hijinks or actually making some kind of concerted teamplay with medics, snipers, and engineers working together. It's a sandbox - you can play it straight or do silly stuff like throw all your C4 on a friend's jeep and let him go Jihad Jeep into enemy tanks. You can kill people with power tools or just act as a spotter and throw down smoke to cover your teammates.

In CoD the maps are the same and people camp in predictable hiding spots or strongpoints.

in BF buildings are destructible and if a squad is camping in a building you can bring the whole building down.

In CoD you get pounding rock music and the soldiers are very serious like they're in some ultra hardcore GI Joe unit. You can get killstreaks for doing well.

In BF (Bad Company at least) soldiers swear like sailors and have their own wacky personalities based on what class you're playing. You can get into a vehicle any time you like, no matter how well you're doing.

In CoD a great moment is 'I got all my killstreaks and went 64-3'. It doesn't have much to do with your teammates.

In Battlefield a great moment is 'oh my god, I shot that helicopter's pilot with my tiny pistol and he died and the helicopter crashed into a building and took the whole thing down and crushed 14 of my teammates, hahahaha that was amazing'. Or you could have had a really good round without firing a single shot because all you did was act as a medic.

Watch this. For that to happen in a Call of Duty game it would have to be a scripted single player event. But all of those events, including the chatter, could totally happen in the course of an utterly normal BC2 multi game.

[Ghostavo]

I actually enjoyed spending time driving a jeep in the desert in Battlefield 1942. Not firing at anything, just watching the bombers and tanks go by and coordinating the computer's actions. Also, driving.

[sigtau]

Battuta pretty much hit the nail on the head.  Battlefield is lightyears ahead of Call of Duty in terms of engaging gameplay.  To me, Call of Duty represents an ingame dickwaving contest between the players based on who can make the most kills (and gain resulting killstreaks, which does nothing to help in balance--it only makes you more uber to the other players, which is essentially a balance killer).  Battlefield, on the other hand, is a representation of a combat sandbox, where--given some very wide-open constraints--you are able to create gameplay for yourself and your teammates that may differ entirely from the round you were playing ten minutes ago.

[PsychoLandlord]

Echoing Battlefield's praises. It is THE ultimate Military shooter, and has been since 1942. And Battlefield 3, if it delivers, may very well become the ultimate FPS period. 

[StarSlayer]

FPS can come in many different flavors.  Medal of Honor vs Black Ops are a recent example.  Medal of Honor went for a more realistic direction on its game play and the story was modeled on real world invents in Afghanistan.  Weapons where select fire (semi auto always makes Slayer a happy player), you could lean out of cover and your objectives where realistic and mission specific.  Black Ops was like a Rambo/Bond film, it had some nifty twists but literally Sly Stalone could have stared in it.  Nearly every weapon is full auto and recoil is nearly non existent, tactics involved running forward hoping you kill everything till you hit the next checkpoint since enemies infinitely re spawn. 

There was one segment in the Medal of Honor where my character, two other Rangers and a USAF forward air controller, after guiding CAS on a dug in DShK position that had been suppressing other elements of our Regiment, had to secure an alternate landing zone for the Chinooks.  This involved advancing down a ravine.  We bounded.  My character armed with the always fun M249 SAW would cover the advance of my fellows and they in turn would cover me while I advanced to the next hard point.  We made it down this twisty turny death trap because we used real tactics.  Something CoD has never done, it would have been you on point while your AI partners ran forward like dopes and died like flies.

Now even better games like BFBC2 and most likely BF3 will allow you to do the above, in multi unscripted (depending of course on the quality of those you play with).

[Mongoose]

I see.  I guess there is a lot more variety and depth out there than I'm giving the sub-genre credit for; a lot of what you're talking about never really makes it past the sheen of general "brown-tinged war shooters" publicity.  I don't know that I have much personal interest in this particular style of games even after learning more about them, but it's still nice to know.

[Scotty]

Every time someone says "Battlefield," I immediately imagine Battuta screaming "OGOD LET ME DIE" as the medic keeps reviving him and he is insta-auto-killed because the server settings hated whatever weapon he had equippped.

 It was a good story.

[Mongoose]

Every time someone says "Battlefield," I immediately imagine Battuta screaming "OGOD LET ME DIE" as the medic keeps reviving him and he is insta-auto-killed because the server settings hated whatever weapon he had equippped.

 It was a good story.

That seems like more of a bug than anything else.  Still hilarious though.

[Scotty]

Nah, it was the gun he was using being prohibited by that particular server's settings (presumably to keep people from douching it up with the thing), and it would instakill whoever was using it.  He just kept getting revived before he could spawn with another weapon.

[General Battuta]

Not a bug, just people scared of my Hot Carl

[Mongoose]

I...see.

[General Battuta]

The server was set to autokill anyone with the Hot Carl equipped and I died when I pulled it out and this medic kept rezzing me and I was like some kind of horrible involuntary Jesus stuck on Groundhog Day Easter and he wouldn't LET ME DIE and I kept rezzing and dying and PLEASE GOD LET ME DIE

[StarSlayer]

even dead tuttas dream

[IceFire]

I just got back into Battlefield with Bad Company 2 on my PC... wow what a game. The multiplayer experience as everyone has mentioned is lightyears ahead of Call of Duty. Actual teamwork is sometimes found on these servers... you're rewarded for it. I love how I get points for spotting enemies, tagging tanks with tracer guns (so that my teammates can lock on with guided missiles), reviving people, tossing ammo around. It's great. Technically I can support my team without firing a shot... Although I do lots of that. The destructible environment is a huge advance for Bad Company 2.

I hear everything is amped up another notch with the Frostbite 2.0 engine.

[Mongoose]

Hmm...maybe I should try giving one of these thingies a shot sometime.  The legitimate-teamwork thing is what I find most appealing about Team Fortress 2, which I love the hell out of.  (Well, that and black Scottish cyclops.  And hats.)  I know people who used to make a big deal out of that Desert Combat mod.