Bach: It's easier to build single player onto a multiplayer game
Battlefield 3's executive producer, Patrick Bach has been talking about the challenges of making a single player campaign for such a multiplayer-focussed franchise.
We caught up with him at EA's Spring Showcase in London this week and asked him about bringing the single player aspects to Battlefield 3.
Bach began: I think the challenges are that a single-player game that's very tailored around the narrative in the single-player experience then you might not have balanced systems because you're building it based on that experience. So when you pull it apart and place it in a sandbox environment it's often quite broken. Since we're doing the opposite we [already] have a very balanced toolkit. When we put that into single-player we don't have to do anything. It's more what do we want it to be about, what gadgets, what vehicles, what weapons do we want to use and what story do we want to tell. The whole shooting and driving and flying experience, we already have, so we don't have to create that."
"We want it to be more or less a tutorial for the multiplayer," he added. "So when you play it through you've tried everything out once and you don't feel uncomfortable going into the multiplayer. A lot of people are scared to go online and want a tutorial before they go online. Well, play the single-player, it's a great tutorial. It's the longest tutorial you'll ever play in your life!"
