BF3 Release Date

The Game Debaters managed to get access to EA’s pre-E3 press conference. Located in the prestigious Orpheum Theatre in Downtown LA, hundreds of games journalists, industry bigwigs and games gurus packed in shoulder-to-shoulder to see what magical delights EA are planning to release from their stables this year...

Battlefield 3 was one of EA’s biggest new releases that we were all waiting to see. The multiplayer shooter has been a mainstay of PC multiplayer gaming since 1942. “This is the game that we’ve always wanted to make”, says Karl Magnus Troedsson – General Manager of Dice. “The game comes alive with the sights and sounds of real war, both in single player and multiplayer”. BF3 is built on Dice’s new Frostbite 2 engine, which we are promised will feature hyper-realistic animation, destructible environments, and cinematic quality lighting and rendering. The first demo showed about 30 frenetic seconds worth of absolute mayhem in and around the Paris Metro, Close combat kills, squad rushes, Humvees trundling over the Champs del Mars and soldiers throwing themselves from second-storey windows with more agility than we’ve seen before – and parachute-less, would you believe?!

The next demo, a single-player tank rush set in the Kavir desert near Tehran, focused on the antics of a tank commander in an armoured column trundling up to assault a missile base. Tank to tank combat aplenty was followed by the tank commander switching between in-tank screens to access a satellite display, painting the missile base as a target for an incoming airstrike. Whether the bomber would be piloted by NoobPwner563 or whether the airstrike would be an automated feature of the tank command remains to be seen, but this being Battlefield, we’re expecting synchronisation between players to be a major feature.

Speaking of which, Dice’s new free system, Battle log, sounds like an enhanced lobby, allowing players to link up with their friends, keep an eye on one another’s achievements and participate in the Battlefield persistent world. If this sounds a little vague, that’s because at the moment, it is. But all will no doubt be revealed before release.

The Beta opens this September, with the actual release of the game expected on October 25th. Game Debate has a bodybag full of new screenshots for you to enjoy at the bottom of this very article.