EA hijacks traditional shooters with Battlefield: Hardline

Above: You might be surprised how useful a side-gunner can be in Hardline.

Image Credit: Electronic Arts/Visceral Games

GamesBeat: With the transition from military to police situations, did you just delete a lot of things and add a lot of other things, to keep that sense of variety?

Papoutsis: We built this game from the ground up. Everything in it, from the animations to the weapons you’re using, we created at Visceral. Those elements were brand new assets. You might see something you think you’ve seen in a previous Battlefield game, but we actually made that. We put a lot of emphasis on creating all of the assets, making our own flavor, but still having it feel very much like a Battlefield game.

It wouldn’t be to our advantage to get rid of things like Team Deathmatch or Conquest. Those are modes players have enjoyed for years. We wanted to make sure we’re delivering for the Battlefield veteran that wants those things. At the same time, we realized that this is a new game, a new entry in the franchise. We need to bring freshness, innovation, uniqueness to the game. That’s why we took that approach, making sure we went through and crafted everything in the game ourselves.

Above: The sideways grip, a 1990’s throwback that had its practical uses.

Image Credit: Electronic Arts/Visceral Games

GamesBeat: Do you have some favorite maps or new twists on the maps?

Papoutsis: Some of my favorite maps are Glades, Grow House, and The Block. Those are three I really enjoy. Our maps range from small to large, but I think our sweet spot is more in the medium-sized maps. Cops and criminals tend to have a different experience. When you watch it on TV or in a film, the two factions are closer. When you think about modern military situations, the two sides don’t talk to each other. They talk to themselves. In a cops and criminals setting, you always seem them talking back forth to each other. The engagement distances are much closer. Again, in modern military settings, you see people with high-powered scopes far away from each other.

In our game we wanted to make it feel like your favorite TV crime show or movie. We have more of the banter going on between the factions and the engagement distances are closer. That also leads into one of our big pillars, which is speed. We wanted to make sure players could get into the action quick and not have any long periods of inactivity or running to one spot or another. We wanted to make every second you’re in the game compelling and fun and full of opportunities for strategy and teamwork.

GamesBeat: Five against five sounds like a new trend in multiplayer these days. It’s very MOBA-like. What was the thinking behind putting those modes together?

Papoutsis: There’s a huge community of e-sports players who want highly competitive game modes. We thought we should tap into that and try to deliver game modes that support that community. We talked to a lot of people outside the development team, to gamers, and we found out that these modes that are highly strategic and teamwork-focused really are interesting. We wanted to take that and couple it with our spectator mode and allow gamers the ability to stream these matches. Hopefully it gets picked up by the community and takes off. People can feel that they’re gaining experience and skill. They can get into matches that are both highly competitive and highly rewarding.

GamesBeat: Can you talk at all about the single-player right now? I saw the preview of the beginning of the game and the later stages. The story seemed very compelling.

Papoutsis: With our single-player, we felt like that was a big opportunity for our studio. We put so much of an emphasis in previous games on single-player and storytelling. When we got the opportunity to work on our own Battlefield game, we felt we needed to bring those skills to bear.

What we’ve done is we’ve created a single-player campaign that we hope plays out like a season of your favorite TV show. The story is focused more on people over plot. It’s not about saving the world. It’s more about the individual characters, the dialogue, connecting with them and the situation they’re in. We did a lot of work with actors in the game that have been on numerous TV crime shows – Kelly Hu is one, Alexander Daddario is another. We also connected with writers and directors from those shows to get an understanding on how an episode of a show is constructed, how it pieces together and flows through an entire season.

Above: We’re all the more curious about the campaign, especially since we haven’t played it.

Image Credit: Electronic Arts/Visceral Games

The other thing I was really excited about was the design concept of providing more player choice within that narrative. This isn’t a game where you’re going to go and do things that will change the outcome of the story. It’s a linear narrative in that sense. But the second-to-second choices within the gameplay allow for a lot of different outcomes and strategies.

You can play our game non-lethally if you choose, using the taser and the freeze mechanic to go through much of the campaign without having to use lethal force. If you’re a player that enjoys lethal force, though, you can do that too. Our metagame rewards players who play the game more like Detective Nick Mendoza would want to – using non-lethal methods, doing case files and investigations. Piecing those things together awards experience to unlock additional weapons, gadgets, and attachments. It also awards more battle packs.

GamesBeat: You had to make choices like which criminal to point your gun at, trying to make them surrender.

Papoutsis: That’s our freeze mechanic, yeah. Freeze is a big part of the game. When you think of cops and robbers, what do cops do? They pull their gun out and say, “Freeze!” We wanted to create that moment for players and make it a compelling gameplay mechanic that allows them to feel empowered, to take out enemies without having to shoot them.

GamesBeat: It seemed liked some of the tools you could use to investigate crime scenes were pretty high-tech. Is that where some of the Battlefield heritage comes in, having cool new gadgets to play with?

Papoutsis: One of the neat things about the cops and criminals fiction is using a lot of cool gadgets and technology, whether it’s high-powered scopes or ziplines or things that allow you to assess and scan an environment. We created this gadget called the scanner that you use in single-player. It allows you to identify clues and objects in the world that you can analyze and get additional information out of. Once you’ve done that, you can piece the clues together and solve these mini-case files we have throughout the game. It’s a fun tool. It’s a little bit on the high-tech side, but we felt like it leaned into the idea of being a detective.

Above: Battlefield: Hardline is one of the games that will keep EA’s momentum going.

Image Credit: Electronic Arts