DICE, it’s safe to say at this point, didn’t really enjoy a memorable 2013 as it expected with the release of Battlefield 4. With both bugs in multiplayer and lawsuits threatening EA and DICE, the company hasn’t had much to cheer about last year. However, it seems like DICE is hopeful that the future will be more promising than it is now, and has stressed on how big a role the evolved Frostbite Engine 3 has had on the company’s current game and the kind of impact expected in the future.
Speaking to OXM in a recent interview, DICE executive producer Patrick Bach talked about the long term advantages of the Frostbite engine both now and for the future. Interestingly enough, the concerned interview also took place even before the release of Battlefield 4.
"I think we made the right move a couple of years ago when we actually started, a couple of years before Battlefield 3 was even announced, we said what do we want games to be five years from now?" Bach stated.
"And we can see now that the level of ‘next gen’, if you want to call it that, on Frostbite is pretty stable. We're still, I would argue, one of the best looking next gen games - I don't want to say the best-looking next gen game, but we have an engine that truly takes advantage of the next gen machines."
Also, during the time of the interview, Bach, apparently, had also warned players that the game would indeed arrive with some bugs and that they were inevitable. Although the term “some” now sounds like an understatement.
“If we'd wanted to play it safe, we wouldn't have created a new version of Frostbite - we would have stayed on the right side of the fence. We are trying to push things as far as possible. That doesn't mean you will have loads and loads of bugs, of course,” he added.
Additionally, on asked whether the company will be looking to revamp the Frostbite engine for future titles, Need for Speed: Rivals senior producer Jamie Keen added: “Talking about an engine as a finite thing in space and time is slightly misleading. Engines are constantly in development and they're constantly changing."
"And that's something you particularly see with Frostbite, there's a lot of under the hood stuff that goes on, so it's a constantly evolving animal. There are all these things from all those different game studios being rolled back in. It's never going to 'run out', per se," he added.
DICE’s Battlefield 4, utilizing the latest iteration of the engine, Frostbite Engine 3, is currently available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC and next generation systems in North America and Europe.
