With the October 10 release of Battlefield 6 being just three weeks away, DICE design director and product owner Sashank Uchil has revealed details about how challenging it tends to be for the developer to bring back fan-favourite classic maps from throughout the franchise into the current game. In an interview with PCGamesN, Uchil also noted that some of the difficulty in bringing back old maps also tends to come from the expectaions of players.
“You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is,” explained Uchil while discussing the return of Battlefield 3 map Operation Firestorm in Battlefield 6. “Because [of players’] expectations. People know the map and people have certain expectations. But also there’s rose-tinted glasses, like, this is how it used to be.”
He spoke about how it isn’t as simple as just dropping the assets of the old map into the newer engine. Rather, the challenge comes from having to update the map to work with the newer gameplay mechanics, such as the new environmental destruction features. Uchil also spoke about the need to retain the nostalgia factor that players might feel, while still modernising the map’s design to better reflect the current state of shooter gameplay.
“That’s where challenge comes in,” he said. “How do we make it as destructible as every map in the package? How do we make sure the map work with the weapons, which are different from the weapons in Battlefield 3? It’s much more complicated than people think.”
While this might present some challenge, DICE producer Jeremy Chubb spoke about how the development team was helped by the fact that Operation Firestorm was built to be somewhat “future-proof” thanks to its emphasis on the high player-count gameplay that the Battlefield franchise is known for. “When we bring back a map like Firestorm, it still works,” he said. “It’s still fun to play.”
Once again, however, things come down to player expectations coming from their memories of playing the map 14 years ago, and how the multiplayer shooter genre has evolved since then.
“It’s a fine line because people have really particular views about what that map was,” said Chubb. “They want that experience realised. But I think that we would disappoint people little if we weren’t able to evolve it and embrace the new ideas and features that we have in this game.”
As we get closer to the release of Battlefield 6 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the four developers under the Battlefield Studios banner—DICE, Ripple Effect, Criterion and Motive Studios—have been revealing more details about the title. Technical director Christian Buhl, for example, spoke about how the upcoming shooter will not feature ray tracing at launch, and that there are no plans to bring the feature to the game in the future as well. He noted that this was because of a focus on offering the best performance possible in the game.
Buhl has also confirmed that low-specced PCs are also a major focus for the development team, with a “meaningful percentage” of open beta players `.
