‘Battlefield Hardline’: Top 10 Facts You Need to Know (Interview with Creative Director Ian Milham)

The Battlefield series is making a big change for 2015. It’s going to move away from the explosive army conflicts of series past for once and head into the territory of cops vs. robbers. Developer Visceral Games and EA Digital Illusions CE are partnering together to craft this 1st-person shooter full of the familiar Battlefield gameplay fans have come to appreciate.

Along with its new focus on the eternal struggle between Los Angeles’ police force and ruthless bank robbers, Battlefield Hardline is arriving with new weapons, multiplayer modes, levels based on real-life locations and plenty of fresh content for the series. We sat down with one of the main members on the development team for the game and we got a ton of info on what went into creating this game’s scenery and more.

Here’s everything you need to know about Battlefield: Hardline, straight from the creative director of the game Ian Milham.

1. What caused the development team to place the game’s setting within Los Angeles, as opposed to other cities such as New York or Detroit?

LA is the cinematic town where real stuff goes down. It has the perfect mix of glamour and grit. It also has a ton of variety where we can get different looks and feelings, but keep them thematically related. The only other American city with the same contrast is Miami, where we also set some of our action.

2. What were the 1st steps taken towards replicating LA?

First was doing some virtual scouting for locations that gave us the variety and mood we were going for. Once we identified those (comfortably from our studio here in the Bay Area), we made trips down to thoroughly measure and document the areas. We would look at the big picture, and get right down into the gutters to scan details to incorporate into the game.

3. What are some familiar LA locales that have been placed within the game’s many maps?

Our “Downtown” area features Downtown LA, all around 4th St and Flower, from the bottom of the parking garages to the top of the skyscrapers. We also center around the LA River east of Downtown and the bridges over it east of Downtown. There’s also the neighborhoods east of Dodger Stadium and some fancier areas based on Mt. Olympus. We also take a desperate detour out to the high desert areas of the Mojave.

4. How has the Frostbite 3 engine aided the development team in the process of creating LA?

I don’t know if it would’ve been possible otherwise. Frostbite gives us the scope we need to capture maps that are kilometers wide. Lots of engines are good at detail, but are stuck basically in hallways. Frostbite can use real geographic data and rendering to represent fully scaled real spaces. Everyone around the world knows what LA looks like, so their realism detectors are accurate. We needed to get it right to do it justice.

5. The Levolution mechanic played a huge part in the mayhem present in Battlefield 4. How will this feature play a role in Battlefield: Hardline?

Daydreaming what chaos we can unleash is part of the fun of this game and this setting. We’ve got giant construction cranes coming down and tearing giant gashes in skyscrapers downtown. We’ve got overpasses collapsing and train cars exploding on LA river bridges bringing the whole thing down. We’ve got apartments in the hood players can level to the ground and Hollywood Hills mansions that players can tear the entire facade off of. That one was particularly fun.

6. What will the game’s single-player campaign focus on this time?

We really wanted to focus on character and player choice. There’s no world-war plot this time around. Just cool cops and criminals facing off with characters you want to spend time with. So the story is clever and quick. On the gameplay side, we wanted to provide as much variety and choice as possible. The enemies are smarter and players will need to be clever to win. That means being cool under pressure and not just guns blazing all the time. It means scouting out places for clues and combat advantages.

7. Were there any real life crime stories or TV shows that inspired your game’s plot?

We were more inspired by the crime drama TV shows we love than real life, which usually doesn’t get as big as we’d like. The show Justified was a huge influence, as like us, it features cops and criminals who have history together and are always playing mind games with each other. The dialog is memorable, and the cops are sometimes shadier than the criminals.

8. Give us a brief overview of the game’s many multiplayer modes.

We’ve got more new multiplayer modes than ever before! There’s Hotwire, where high speed action and squad teamwork carry the day as groups drive and chase through epic chaos. Heist, where coordination and teamwork take the lead in attack and defend criminal attacks against vaults. Blood Money, where back and forth fluidity as both sides coordinate and change tactics dynamically as they target a central money pile. Crossfire is about tense competitive gameplay and communication as a small group tries to escort a key member to escape. Rescue is where Multi-Round strategy and-tense pace dominate as cop teams try to rescue hostages from dug-in criminal teams. Plus old Battlefield favorites Conquest and Team Deathmatch are back.

9. What are some of the newer firearms and vehicles longtime players will get introduced to?

All the vehicles in Hardline are new, twenty seven of them, in fact. And the emphasis this time is on speed. So fast cars, fast bikes, speed boats, helicopters, plus some wildcards like fanboats and fuel tankers. In the weapons and gadgets department, we’ve tried to tune for personality, so every gun has a role and playstyle. We’ve also added grappling hooks and zip lines to open up the action and let players get around maps faster.

10. What features make up the DLC package offered for the Premium edition?

Almost too many to list. Premium is where we really get to dig deep on aspects of the game and go big. Many more maps, modes, vehicles, and other cool stuff that focuses on specific aspects of the cops and robbers fantasy.

Buy Battlefield: Hardline here.

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