14 DAY TRIAL // The team at DICE working on the new China Rising downloadable content pack for Battlefield 4 says that all players will see an expansion of their game experiences as long as they use the new maps and their unique features.
Craig McLeod, a producer working on the game, tells VG247 that, “Silk Road and Altai Range are geared towards the use of big vehicles. Guilin Peaks is designed for infantry combat, and then probably our broadest spectrum comes in Dragon Pass, which is a re-imagining of Dragon Valley from BF2, where we’ve included water play as well.”
Some players have criticized the studio for adding new content to the game too close to release, which means that hardcore gamers fail to learn the subtleties of the core maps before they have to deal with another set.
But the studio believes that any player can settle on a favorite experience and work on getting good at playing it and the wider community benefits from the fact that plenty of options are offered.
The four new maps in China Rising are also used to show how the Levolution mechanics, one of the main elements of Battlefield 4’s Frostbite 3 engine, can work in more subtle ways.
McLeod adds, “Not just collapsing helicopters or boats crashing in, but smaller gameplay things that create a tug of war situation. We put bollards in the radar station, so that when you approach it you don’t know what state it’s in. There’s terrain destruction on the sand dunes as well, leaving craters after big explosions.”
Gamers will see snow falling down on the Altai Range map, rain coming in on Dragon Pass and fog descending on Guilin Peaks.
There are at least three more content packs for Battlefield 4 that DICE and Electronic Arts will launch in the first few months of 2014.