Bad Company 2 is unique because of the "personality" in its single-player, says EA DICE's Patrick Bach, who tells Gamasutra that "it's not in our DNA" to make
March 5, 2010
Author: by Staff
Military themes have always been integral to video gaming, almost a genre unto itself. But the Call of Duty games -- particularly the record-selling Modern Warfare -- have become so culturally pervasive that it's easy to see a challenge for other military IP. But when it comes to Electronic Arts and DICE's Battlefield: Bad Company 2, senior producer Patrick Bach doesn't feel like he's living in Modern Warfare's shadow. Although Modern Warfare is "great", he says in today's Gamasutra feature interview, "we don't really see ourselves that way. We would never want to make that game. It's not in our DNA to make a game like that." The particular difference lies in Battlefield's the approach to the single-player campaign, which Bach says is nearly opposite to Modern Warfare's. "We want a game with personality," he asserts. "If you were in the war, how would you behave?" He continues: "If I was in a war, if you were in a war, what would you say? What would you do? You would do unorthodox things because real people do real stuff, and we would never change that. Bad Company is a game with personality. It's not something else." The aim for personality makes Bad Company what it is -- "if we tried to mimic other games, we would have to cut features away," adds Bach. "We have a wider array of things in our games than most other shooters. That's kind of what Battlefield is about. But I don't think [their approach] is all negative. It's a different way of seeing things." That's why, with Bad Company 2, Bach says he's aiming to prove that guided dramatic experiences and player choice and freedom aren't mutually exclusive. "I think, hopefully, consumers will see that I can play this game in the way that it's "supposed" to be played, but I can also play it in a way that it's not supposed to be played, because that's the kind of system Battlefield is. You can play it in your way." The full feature interview with Bach discusses how the philosophy behind the series has evolved as it has made the transition to consoles -- and how that transition has fundamentally shifted the way the developers think of the series as a whole.
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