While it’s hard to call the Battlefield franchise a military sim, the franchise is known to shoot for authenticity whenever it can. However, with Battlefield Hardline, some have noticed that the criminals are unrealistically too well-armed with vehicles like helicopters at their disposal and other equipment that they normally shouldn’t have access to.
This exact sentiment was asked to Visceral Games boss Steve Papoutsis in an interview, and here’s what he had to say:
We definitely put realism in the forefront of our decision-making throughout the course of development. We researched a lot of different cop-versus-criminal situations. Things like D. B. Cooper jumping out of a plane. There are situations where criminals do have access to things like helicopters, as one example.
We also got great feedback from our early beta on some of the weapon choices we had. Battlefield has such a rock-solid grounding in rock-scissors-paper gameplay, where various elements counter each other. In our early beta we had things like rocket launchers as part of your loadout. Those were great for taking out vehicles or helicopters. We needed those from a design perspective. But players felt they were too overpowered, and to your point, not really appropriate for the fiction.
Our design team went off and thought of ways we could include those things and make them more special, so that when you obtained one of those it really felt unique. They created these battle pickups throughout the map that almost become mini-objectives. If a team can control them, they have access to that more high-powered weaponry.
Do you agree with Papoutsis and Visceral’s reasoning behind Hardline’s “realism?” If you haven’t bought the game yet, make sure you check out our review to know what you’re getting into.
[Source: VentureBeat]
