DICE: Single-player a very important part of Battlefield 4

Calling Battlefield 3’s single-player campaign a fail”, DICE is aiming to infuse the true Battlefield experience into the campaign for Battlefield 4.

We still have a lot of people who liked the campaign in Battlefield 3, but there were a lot of people who were like, this is not Battlefield. It’s a shooter single-player yes, and it looks good and it plays good and it’s cool, but it’s not Battlefield. That actually hurt us quite a lot. It was like, what? It’s not Battlefield? We need to fix that,” DICE’s Patrick Bach told Eurogamer.

Yesterday, DICE unveiled Battlefield 4 via a 17-minute single-player gameplay demo, and the studio is making a conscious effort to make the campaign a more engaging experience that goes beyond the tech behind it.

Frostbite is a tool. We have passed the point where we will impress people by talking about the technological wonders. What will impress people is the experience we’ll get from the output from when you use the engine,” Bach added.

One of the ways DICE aims to create a better single-player experience is by infusing in it Battlefield moments” such as those encountered in the game’s multiplayer.

We don’t want to have epic set pieces where you sit down and relax and put away the controller and enjoy the nice explosions in slow motion. We want to encourage you to make choices and interact with those set pieces. You should be a part of them. You should not be the silent observer sitting there and watching it,” said single-player producer Tobias Dahl.

Bach said that while Battlefield was known for its multiplayer, a lot of people played Battlefield 3’s campaign, and that the single-player is a very important part of the Battlefield experience.

We see single-player as a very important part of Battlefield nowadays. We had a lot of people playing single-player. Not everyone finished it, but not everyone finishes the best single-player only games either, which is a bit sad,” Bach said, adding, There are also a lot of people – some evil people call them noobs or lame – who don’t want to play multiplayer, because it’s very competitive. People want to have an experience, and if you’re afraid of all these people who are flying around and shooting at you, single-player is a way for you to get that experience without feeling completely bashed in the head.”

There are a lot of people who are really happy we are building the single-player. They don’t even dare to say it out loud, because all their friends will mock them. But Battlefield is no longer a multiplayer-only game,” Bach said.

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