Battlefield Hardline’s campaign length too ‘variable’ to estimate

Visceral Games won't commit to a length

The Battlefield franchise, like most other shooters, has the benefit of relying on multiplayer for hours upon hours of replay value. But for those of you like GameZone's editor-in-chief, who actually plays first-person shooters for the single player story, campaign length is a huge deal. Unfortunately, campaigns in shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty are often overlooked as the focus tends to be on the multiplayer.

Although Visceral Games couldn't comment on the specific length of Battlefield Hardline's campaign, they did assure "we've provided so much value."

"I always hesitate to talk about game length just because it always seems to blow up in your face and it's always variable," developer Visceral Games told us in a roundtable discussion. 

"What I will say, this has been the most variable game length in all of our testing. It's over 100 percent one way or the other based on how people play because we've provided so much value. I don't think anyone will think it's too short or not providing value."

While Visceral wouldn't comment on length in our interview, creative director Ian Milham did recently give us a hint via a series of Tweets that revealed there are about ten episodes in the Hardline single-player campaign, and that they "vary quite a bit." Some, he said, last less than an hour, while some last more. 

When we asked Visceral about the possibility of DLC adding to the story, they told us it was "definitely on the table," though nothing has been pre-designed yet.

Our full roundtable interview with the developers at Visceral Games will be posted this week. In the meantime, read how "speed," one of Visceral's three key pillars in design, helped shape the overall Battlefield Hardline gameplay experience.