14 DAY TRIAL // Visceral Games, the developer of the upcoming Battlefield Hardline first-person shooter, wants to deliver a different kind of experience, particularly in the general tone of the game, than the regular series made by Swedish studio DICE for quite some time now.
The Battlefield series has been around for many years, arriving first as a gritty first-person shooter from studio DICE, and after being acquired by Electronic Arts, the studio started making more and more installments.
Now, for the first time in the history of the series, the next installment, Hardline, is made by another studio, in the form of Visceral Games, which previously made the Dead Space franchise for EA.
The new title, Battlefield Hardline, switches up quite a few elements of the series, this time focusing on the cops vs. criminals conflict instead of the large global wars, while bringing a higher-quality story.
Hardline takes things into a new direction
Developer Visceral Games says that this was the goal from the beginning of the game's development, as it wanted to take things in a different direction than DICE, while still keeping the core Battlefield franchise principles.
"Battlefield is great. DICE does such a tremendous job – but they’re already doing it," Hardline Creative Director Ian Milham tells VG247. "We started this in February 2012, and DICE was still a year and a half from being done with Battlefield 4. It kind of felt like they were doing their thing and there was this opportunity to take some of the DNA of this great franchise in a slightly different direction."
The new title won't take things to extreme levels, however
But this doesn't mean that Battlefield Hardline will go into an over-the-top direction or make fun of the previous titles. According to Milham, plenty of inspiration was drawn from crime thrillers and dramas, such as the books of Elmore Leonard and the many current TV shows and movies that focus on such things.
"That meant the world, the tone, the look, the everything. So yes, it’s different. It’s not like ours is funny, but our inspiration is the American writer Elmore Leonard, and the various things that have been inspired by his work," he explains.
"It sort of fit with our goal to not do this convoluted plot about someone trying to take over the world. We’re not going for cheesy. But it’s a different tone to Battlefield."
Battlefield Hardline was initially set to appear this October, but the desire for more polishing as well as the feedback from the alpha stage resulted in a delay until early 2015 for the new first-person shooter.
