DICE, developer of the upcoming Battlefield 4, is focusing on the game's single player campaign believing it will have more impact than the multiplayer strategy.
Patrick Bach, executive producer at DICE, reveals in an interview with EDGE why the company showcased the single player aspect of the game via 17-minute footage instead of the multiplayer component, which is what the game is known for.
"It's a great showcase of a lot of different aspects of the game. Lots of people say 'oh, my favourite thing about Battlefield is this', and depending on the personality of the consumer, they want to see different things," Bach says. "If you look at this demo, you can extrapolate a lot of features that you can then translate into either the singleplayer or the multiplayer."
Bach said that the developing team, as well as the company, was looking to "grow up a bit and create a great story." This time the company wanted to offer players a character that they would care about and feel involved with.
"We tried to create... I won't call it a Bond opening, but you see a build-up from showing you different parts of the actual gameplay and showing you game elements," he stated. "But also from a narrative standpoint, we wanted to open it up: 'who are you in this squad? Who are your squadmates?' and of course then 'will this evolve into the future? What's the hook?'"
"One of the things we're most happy with is that people actually pick up on the characters. They remember their names. How often do you do that in a game, really? People talk to me about the characters, for a game like Battlefield, you could argue that it's just a shooter, so who cares."
He also says that if a gamer is involved in the multiplayer mode, he actually cares about the other players in his squad because these are often the player's friends.
"Now we need to create a singleplayer that mimics that feeling," Bach says.
