Visceral has been having a bit of a rethink about Battlefield: Hardline since the game’s first open Beta ended earlier this year, and they’ve come up with a list of additions inspired by fan feedback.
Amongst other notable changes, Visceral’s Steve Papoutsis revealed to VG247 that both of Hardline’s factions, the police forces and criminals, will receive their own unique weapons.
”There’s a handful that really stand out,” said Papoutsis when asked about what Visceral had come up with during the extra development time granted by publisher EA. ”The first one is something the community asked for, and that’s having faction-specific weapons. In the beta everyone used all the same weapons. We wondered if people would like it if they were invested in their P90, but when they were on the other faction they couldn’t use it?”
Another change is in how special weapons and heavy explosives are handled. Rather than being secondary weapons that specific classes have access to, RPGs and mines will be dotted around the map or placed in containers for each team to rush and grab.
“We also came up with the notion of ’˜junk in the trunk’,” explained Papoutsis. ”What if we allowed players to equip special items to their vehicle instead of their inventory loadout. It goes back to movies where bad guys pop open the trunk to grab something big. When you play the game, if you set up your vehicle loadout to have a specific weapon in the trunk and you control the vehicle you can use that item.”
Two seemingly minor changes, but ones that immediately jump out as being far more fitting to the themes and inspirations of Hardline than traditional Battlefield systems. That quote about taking inspiration form crime movies is interesting - it suggests Visceral are thinking of ways to make Hardline stand out from your standard military shooter.
That’s important, because the game never felt like it had a real identity when I played it during its open Beta. Hardline’s set for release early next year on PC and consoles.
