If there was one game I enjoyed more than most others it would be Battlefield 1942 so I have been following Battlefield 1943 with great hopes. Some things excite me about this next gen game but it seems some of the games original charm have been lost. Basically I was reading this interview over at AtomicGamer with DICE producer Gordon Van Dyke (who has apparently had to censor his name in some forums!) and there are some bits I am less than happy about.
At its core it’s a Battlefield game, an accessible game that we’re delivering in an arcade fashion. We wanted to emphasize the accessibility, so you’ll access it through a download, jump in, and everything just comes to you… it quickly gets you in the action. They’ll be a ranking system, awards, all the stuff you’d get with a Battlefield game, like you got in Bad Company and 2142, all delivered in an arcade fashion.
What I picked up on was the arcade fashion statement which scares the hell out of me as a PC gamer. What I loved about Battlefield 1942 was its lack of arcade. I know this game is multiplatform and is being released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in June but where does it leave us PC gamers and what can we expect in September? Battlefield Heroes was a huge disappointment to me and I really don’t want to see BF1943 go the same way.
That said there are some aspects I am excited about, firstly being the mention in the interview that this isn’t a true successor to BF1942, they wanted to leave that open. Could be good news for us hardcore fans but the wait could be long, if not endless! Secondly it is good to see that they are quite focussed on capturing the Battlefield moments, this is where my heart is and if they could pull this off then I might be tempted to look over the other omissions (and wait patiently in a mollified state until a true successor comes along).
Well, with this game we’re not trying to make a true successor to 1942, so we wanted to leave that open. The main goal with 1943 was to make a Battlefield game that really highlighted the essence of Battlefield, which are these great Battlefield moments — these crazy scenarios you can create… the sheer volume of things that can happen and what you can do in the game: You can fly an airplane, you can parachute out of the airplane, you can shoot someone while you’re parachuting. Or you can drive a tank, jump out right before someone destroys it, and go get the guy who destroyed it by hitting him over the head with a wrench. The amount of things you can do is endless.
So I guess we will wait and see, I am not ruling this out nor I am waiting with bated breath. Cmon DICE, show me you can make something great again