At the recent Gamescom 2013, the folks at VG247.com had a chance to sit down with the creative director for DICE, Lars Gustavsson to discuss some of the concept of Levolution in the upcoming Battlefield 4. During the interview, Gustavsson could hardly contain his excitement while discussing how the Frostbite 3 engine will impact players, thanks to dynamic environments that allows the development team to add more environmental destruction “than ever,” something that was teased during the Siege of Shanghai launch trailer that hit at E3.
While destructive environments have been apart of the Battlefield legacy, especially in the Bad Company series, player actions can now change the layout of a map. For instance, a once-dry land assault can turn into an amphibious mission, all because the attacking team destroyed the levy, flooding the very streets the battles are being fought on. Another source of pride for Gustavsson is the ability to include dynamic waters in the maps.
During one of the missions, a calm sea is struck by a vicious storm, producing turbulent waves players will have to negotiate, some of which is teased in the following video:
Clearly, Gustavvson is incredibly excited about the potential of the Frostbite 3 engine, and judging by the footage–which was run on an extremely high-end PC, no doubt–his excitement is justified. The gameplay shows some really intense firefights with lots of debris and leftover destruction flying around. According to the VG247 article, some of the footage seen in the video is from the new Obliteration Mode, which tasks teams with destroying enemy bases that randomly spawn around the map. Apparently, teams win by destroying three enemy bases, which sounds a little bit like the Rush gameplay option.
Battlefield 4 will be available on October 29 for the PC, Xbox 360, and the PS3. It will also be available on the next-gen consoles after they launch.