Battlefield 3 Maps to be More Compact on Consoles

Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach, in an interview with GameZone.de, discussed what DICE is having to change to make their upcoming shooter more action-packed on consoles.

The 24 player multiplayer modes for consoles, compared to the 64 player fights on PC, have brought DICE to the decision of trimming down map sizes, making them more compact. “We tried to get more players in [to the console version] but then you need to scale down all the graphics, scale down all the destructibility, and sometimes you need to scale down all the map sizes. Everything is a compromise on: where do you cut?”

Don’t be too upset by the announcement of more compact maps though. Bach added that, “When we say they are smaller, it’s not that we have cut them in half. But we tried to compact them slightly to keep the action up. If you compare it to Battlefield: Bad Company 2, the maps weren’t really small on console. We actually had huge maps even for console. We have the same kind of angle on it right now [in Battlefield 3]. We want to create the same experience for PC as for consoles.”

24 player fights on consoles are still insanely action-packed, and since many spent a lot of time in Bad Company 2 wandering to the fights, the decision to cut down map size is no big issue to me.