14 DAY TRIAL // The developers working on the upcoming first person shooter Battlefield 3 at DICE have announced that they will not be allowing players to take shots at civilians in the title, because it's impossible to punish them in game for doing so.
Speaking to Rock, Paper, Shotgun at the DICE headquarters in Stockholm Patrick Bach, who is the executive producer working on Battlefield 3, has said, “If you put the player in front of a choice where they can do good things or bad things, they will do bad things, go dark side – because people think it’s cool to be naughty, they won’t be caught.”
He added, “In a game where it’s more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child.”
The executive producer also believes that having players shoot civilians could lead to potential consequences for DICE itself if videos of such actions or after action reports appear on the Internet.
It seems that both publisher Electronic Arts and developer DICE are not interested in being embroiled in a scandal like the one which affected Activision Blizzard and Infinity Ward after gamers got to play the “No Russian” level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Bach has suggested that the approach that Battlefield 3 will take towards war and combat will be a more mature one, focusing on the way military men experience the shock of battle and deal with it, rather than only creating non stop action sequences.
Electronic Arts is aiming to reduce the first person shooter market share that the Call of Duty series has this year and maybe take the lead in the genre in 2012.
Battlefield 3 will be launched in late October and gamers will be able to experience it on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.