Battlefield 3 has been successful because it got rid of "shit animation," says Patrick Soderlund, vice president of EA Games.
In an interview by OXM that will release Nov. 23, he said, "When we came out last year with Battlefield 3 I think that we took a lot of people by surprise." This, said Soderlund, was a "deliberate effort", where they sat down and discussed "What are the things that are preventing us from getting a maximum impact on screen where we can give the player an experience that they haven't seen before?"
"We dissected every shooter game that was on the market and the first thing that we saw was animation," he went on. "Animation was, frankly, shit. And now if you play Battlefield 3 and then you play any other game you almost instantly think about how poorly animated [the other game] looks, because the systems underlying it aren't good."
He details how DICE achieved the animation, from the NHL and FIFA teams in the studio.
Soderlund also said that DICE does not want to become a Battlefield factory.
"Well it depends, right? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. It's also important for us - the DICE guys are roughly 300 people in the Stockholm studio; not all of them are working on Battlefield things, and that's intentional, because we don't want to become a Battlefield factory," Eurogamer reported.
Meanwhile, Ben Cousins, general manager of ngmoco Sweden and former executive producer of the Battlefield franchise Tweeted, "It is general knowledge in the Stockholm dev scene that Mirror's Edge 2 is in production at DICE."
This confirms that Mirror's Edge 2 is indeed in development.
In related news, a Battlefield 3 player has spotted a well-hidden Contra Easter egg.
"The Battlefield 3 Contra Easter egg can be found in the second mission, Operation Swordbreaker. After you make your way off the rooftops and begin to follow the IED wire, you will work your way through an air vent until you come to the location of the IED source. On the table in front of you will see the IED that you are tasked with defusing, as well as the Contra Easter egg," StickTwiddlers reported.
This circuit board is a replica of the arcade mainboard for retro classic shooter Super Contra.
