14 DAY TRIAL // Patrick Bach, the executive producer at DICE who handles Battlefield 4, says that the Frostbite 3 engine that powers the first-person shooter is constantly evolving and that players will see serious improvements in future titles.
The developer tells The Official Xbox Magazine that, “the level of ‘next gen’, if you want to call it that, on Frostbite is pretty stable. We’re still, I would argue, one of the best looking next gen games – I don’t want to say the best-looking next gen game, but we have an engine that truly takes advantage of the next gen machines.”
Bach accepts that bugs can still linger in the core code of Frostbite 3, but he believes that having a new engine is better than simply working to upgrade an older one.
He adds, “Engines are constantly in development and they’re constantly changing. And that’s something you particularly see with Frostbite, there’s a lot of under the hood stuff that goes on, so it’s a constantly evolving animal. There are all these things from all those different game studios being rolled back in.”
Battlefield 4 has been affected by a number of bugs since it was launched, which DICE is trying to eliminate as fast as possible in order to keep the shooter interesting for its fans.
Frostbite 3 will also be used for a number of future games from Electronic Arts, including the BioWare-made Dragon Age: Inquisition, which adapts it to the role-playing genre.
The engine is designed to use all the capabilities of the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony and to adapt to all future PC hardware.
DICE will continue to tweak the engine while collaborating with other teams in order to make it more attractive than rivals like Unreal Engine 4.