Battlefield 2142 seems to have a lot of love out there, so it’s natural gamers want a sequel. However, DICE’s Lars Gustavsson has stressed that while the reality attached to modern day settings may prove limiting, it only serves to push the studio’s creative mind-set further.Speaking with OXM, Gustavsson stressed, “It’s definitely a fact that sticking to any era from true life makes you have to look harder for more possibilities to bring in for cool gameplay, but I think for Battlefield 4 this definitely hasn’t been a limiting factor or a limitation. I think we’ve found a lot of new ideas and new ways of keeping customising and adding new toys to the battlefield.
“And to be honest, if we – and I’m not saying that we will, but for the future – if we did continue to go down the contemporary warfare route then yeah, I would seriously look into what we can do that seriously impacts your experience of Battlefield. Since, as you say – every era, as long as it’s [true to life], inhabits limitations.”
When it was suggested that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 developer Treyarch would have had much more freedom to go bananas in the creativity stakes due to its future setting, Gustavsson continued, “Yeah, it gives them a lot of creative freedom. And I think that’s what people loved when we did Battlefield 2142 – when they got to unleash their creativity. ‘This seems cool: let’s do it!’
“At the same time I think that we’ve been really happy working with a contemporary setting, in being able to have a great foundation to build on and then just add a plethora of extra goodies to it. The contemporary [setting] with all the hi-tech stuff that’s already out there, to just keep on evolving it. I’d rather see it as a positive for the customer, that we can bring so much more to that setting, than a negative.”
