Battlefield 3 Prediction

Every few years a game comes along that is special -- no way to put a finger on why it is special because it is a combination of so many things. It is the alchemist's art of heart and vision, and catching the imagination of the gaming public in the right way, and in the right time. There are no rules you can follow to reach this goal -- if there were then every studio would constantly be pounding out the sort of games that capture player loyalty, and I don't have to tell you that that ain't happening, brah. Not by a long shot.

The next game coming down the pipe that has a chance to grab the brass ring and be The Next Big Thing is Battlefield 3 -- you heard that right. That is our prediction.

There is a combination of elements that come together in that confluence of IT, and we have seen that here. The first indication was at PAX East, where we saw a presentation that made us want that game. Then we got a little bootleg time with it -- which is how we know... What we know.

Industrial Magic

When we sat down in the Battlefield 3 Theater and watched the hand's-off demo we learned a lot, experienced some glowing moments of stunned silence, and we listened while the gamers in the audience with us cheered. We sat there in stony silence, busy making notes, and a gamer next to us leaned in and said: "This is awesome, why didn't you like it?"

When the presentation ended and we were outside, the same gamer came up, only now he wanted to know why we ignored him when he asked his question. He seemed upset. So we explained it to him -- he was sitting in the fan seats, we were sitting in the press box.

There is no cheering in the press box, because we are not there to be fans, we are there to cover an event, and to be honest, cheering would not have been appropriate. I then explained that the two blokes giving the presentations heard our cheers louder than theirs, because while they were cheering, we were busy writing -- and that only happens when there is something to report.

When you sit through a presentation it is the little things that jump out at you -- the details that may seem cool to the average gamer looking at the big picture, but are in fact the small details that, when collected together, are what makes IT. And IT was present in that preview.

The story boards above show you how the coders started out in creating the finished segment of the game -- a section that lasted only seconds, and yet had a major impact on game play. What are we talking about? Your buddy gets wounded, and you grab him by the shoulders and drag him to safety. It is a move that happens on the real-life battlefield all the time, but it doesn't happen very often in games.

The things that make IT happen are often not the things that gamers notice right away -- or even ever -- because they are the very environment itself, elements that are absolutely critical in the process if suspending disbelief, and getting the gamer through the critical stage of total immersion. To make that happen is not just using tricks to fool the eye, but rather it involves building environments right down to the tiny details of a mote of dust in the air, garbage on the ground, and how light filters through the industrial jungle of modern technology above you in that alley.

In the three images above you see how they went from a sterile and clean alley, inserted the light effects, and then added the other details to arrive at the finished product -- a believable if ominous narrow killing zone.

Few games pull this off so well -- and before you jump to the conclusion that it is all the engine and not the art -- it was a human eye that built that environment, not a machine. That is the only way you can provide the sort of detail and impact that another set of eyes will accept.

No Cheering in the Press Box

We are not fans of this game. But as gamers, it is a game we want to play. Do not mistake our impressed reaction to this as being purely from the gamer POV -- you see the reason we are impressed has more to do with the fact that we know what they had to do to get to that outcome, and less that we want to play through it.

Last year we found two games that had IT -- Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2 -- not that we considered Heavy Rain and Assassins Creed: Brotherhood to be inferior, no, they just did not have the whole package, whereas those two games did. You can say that declaring that now is easy, since we already know how they placed -- but that is sort of the point here. We think Battlefield 3 just might be... Just might.... Be... Wait for it... Wait for it... Game of the Year 2011.