14 DAY TRIAL // Battlefield Hardline is now officially the game that will battle with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare for the title of best shooter of fall 2014, and it seems that both developer Visceral Games and publisher Electronic Arts are aiming to create an experience that breaks with some of the core elements of the franchise it is part of.
The new title will have a single-player mode built around a detective and an enormous drug bust that is apparently designed to work as a television limited series, with cliffhangers and some very tense gunfights.
At the same time, Visceral Games is working on a multiplayer experience designed around a new set of modes. It will feature a smaller battle space that encourages more dynamic gameplay and a bigger emphasis on team work and support.
Visceral Games is known as a single-player only developer, based mostly on the work they have done on the Dead Space series, and DICE, the creators of the Battlefield concept, will also be involved in the creation of the game, which uses the Frostbite 3 engine.
Battlefield Hardline seems like an ambitious effort and could be the long-term second shooter franchise that Electronic Arts is searching for at the moment.
Break with the Past
Creating a spin-off for a well-regarded, long-term franchise like Battlefield can be a problematic proposition, as developers try to balance the need to deliver a familiar experience with the desire of fans to get a new type of experience.
Battlefield Hardline clearly tries to walk this fine line by introducing the cops versus criminal cartels theme and by adding smaller combat areas, while also keeping the Frostbite 3 engine, the destruction associated with it, and the focus on a wide variety of weapons, items and vehicles.
The game was part of the E3 2014 line-up for Electronic Arts, and those who managed to get hands-on time with it have experienced a title that delivers plenty of the core elements of the Battlefield series, but also tries to push its new theme to the forefront.
Remember Medal of Honor: Warfighter
Unfortunately, the attempt to try and create a new game experience while using an old series as a basis has failed once before in recent history for Electronic Arts.
Medal of Honor: Warfighter was supposed to be a new approach for the military first-person shooter genre, a title that had the power to show how Tier 1 operators actually fought in the Middle East and the burdens that they carried.
The game was designed to compete directly with Call of Duty, but was a failure both from a critical and a commercial standpoint, and the direct result was that the franchise did not receive another installment from EA.
Resilience and Risk
The Battlefield franchise is much more resilient at the moment than the Medal of Honor one ever was, which means that it’s very likely that DICE is currently working on another experience linked to it, which might be officially revealed in 2015.
But Battlefield 4 had its share of issues when it first launched, and the problems with the sales of Hardline might mean that in the long term Electronic Arts will fail to have a solid series that can compete with Call of Duty.
At the same time, the risky bet on the new spin-off can pay off and can deliver a solid hit that opens up new avenues of evolution for the franchise.