A new leak has arrived regarding Battlefield 2021 and apparently lays the Bad Company continuation rumors to rest. Since EA has stated numerous times now that we won’t be seeing a Battlefield launch in 2020 to give the franchise a much-needed break, the rumors about what will come in the year after have been numerous. Though Bad Company was a divisive title due to its spin-off nature, that hasn’t stopped many fans from wanting to see a Bad Company 3. Unfortunately, that’s not happening – at least if the latest leak is accurate.
The latest leak comes from Reddit from a game designer that allegedly stumbled upon this information during a recent freelancing job. According to the leaker, two of his co-workers were ex-DICE employees that left over the course of the past year. The leaker cites a negative parting of professional ways from DICE for the reason why the pair opened up about what’s next.
TLDR, no Bad Company 3, though the extensive post did provide other key details. According to the Reddit post, “So, development for BF 2021 started around 2 years ago, before BFV shipped. DICE had had both game concepts, 2021 and BFV, in early production at roughly the same time, with BFV starting before BF1 released. The initial idea was that the 2021 concept, which I’ll go into in this post, would release in 2018, with the World War 2 setting being the 2021 release. However, DICE found the WW2 setting was easier to flesh out earlier down the line as the team could build on what they know from previous ww2 BF games, and from recent experience developing BF1 (WW1). The 2021 games concept and setting etc., needed a lot more time to be worked on and fleshed out, much longer needed than for BFV. EA made it clear that they had to have a 2018 Battlefield release to please shareholders and so they asked DICE to hurry BFV into development. This explained the relatively poor launch that BFV had, as a lot of development was rushed into production to hit 2018.
“This is where 2021 comes in. While BFV was in late production, development on BF 2021 began. Leaks late last year, and earlier this year stated that this game, was infact, Battlefield: Bad Company 3, and those leaks for the most part were TRUE. During early development, DICE had the full intention of making this a Bad Company sequel. They actually dedicated a team to dig through the development of Bad Company 2 as EA and DICE were worried they wouldn’t be able to replicate what made that game so beloved. As development furthered along, DICE started to hit a number of issues, namely that the game didn’t feel like a Bad Company game, and that they couldn’t get the voice actors, writers, or lead multiplayer designers back or to consult on Bad Company 3. After this, they decided to shut down production and rework what they had developed so far into a new title. They scrapped the Bad Company idea in March/April 2019. This is why DICE have decided not to release a BF game next year.”
The leak also says that the franchise will be returning to modern times after the last historical entry performed way less than what EA had originally projected. It won’t be crazy futuristic, instead being realistic in terms of what is available today though there will be a focus on robotic tech and AI.
Though the single-player campaign details were sparse, the leak does also talk about the multiplayer aspects of the game as well. “In terms of multiplayer, the game will bring back a revised version of Levolution, which will require more effort to trigger, compared to BF4 where just one player could activate an event. Levolution this time round is designed to be more tactical and can vary from game to game. It’s less of a scripted event, more of different actions the team has to take that can result in different outcomes. On the topic of destruction, it has been majorly improved thanks to next-gen capabilities, bullets realistically penetrate walls depending on material, leaving actual bullet holes in the geometry. Buildings can now fully collapse again, instead of just breaking apart walls, so you can chip away at foundations and load bearing walls to make the entire building come down. Destruction is also now ‘material based’ so a wood wall will break apart with just one explosive round, or a load of bullets while a metal or concrete wall will require a lot more damage to break open. Apparently on one map they are planning to make it so that you can destroy entire skyscrapers with jet strikes etc. Rush also returns, and Breakthrough too, with maps being designed more around Rush. Conquest will return as usual, and so will Air Assault. The usual vehicles also make an appearance, reintroducing helicopters alongside tanks, APCs, jets and buggies.”
Commander Mode is also supposed to be making a comeback as well. While all of this sounds intriguing, it’s important to take all rumors and leaks with a grain of salt until the developers themselves make the official confirmation. For now, we will wait and see but we won’t be seeing any validation until next year with the launch so far away.
Source: Reddit
