A long suspicion has finally been confirmed – EA are announcing the next Battlefiled game less than a year after the release of BF4. Battlefield: Hardline was leaked at first and then EA acknowledged its existence and launched the official website. However, the name was not the only thing that leaked, a lengthy gameplay trailer appeared on the net ahead of the official release as well.
Also known under its codename "Omaha", BF: Hardline is developed by Visceral Games in cooperation with DICE. Unlike other BF games before it, BF:H is not about military combat – it is the fight between criminals and police. Even with this new premise, both sides seem to have an abundance of military armaments.
Game modes demonstrated in the trailer seem to be completely new for Battlefield games, but most of them are familiar to fans of other games, like Payday: The Heist or Counter-Strike. In Heist mode, criminal team has to get the loot and escape, while cops must stop them. There is a Hostage Rescue mode where police must get innocent people out of thugs' hands. Hotwire mode seems more original, with non-stop car fighting action on long roads. Finally, the Bloodmoney mode has both teams fighting over a large pile of cash.
The story mode Is being developed by Visceral and the setting seems to help with variety. The player character will be Nick Mendoza, a detective from Miami. Developers are advertising that each mission of the campaign will be similar in the story structure to episodes of a TV show. The snippets of story in the trailer seem to be more interesting at a first glance than what we had in the last few Battlefield campaigns. It seems there is a new trend when it comes to actor involvement in large shooters – just like the latest COD, BF:H also proudly advertises the cast from House of Cards and other big TV shows. On the gameplay side, there are promises about large levels with multiple approaches and advanced AI. It will be interesting to see how well it will work in the actual game.
The technical side; destruction and levolution are the centrepieces once again. Developers say that there is much more diversity in these mechanics, but it is hard to say from the trailer alone. The graphics and visuals look very close to BF4 within what is possible to see in a compressed video. Overall, we have only seen the game shown from its best side, which is what trailers are meant to do. We should learn more during E3 event on June 9th.
