Battlefield 3 stops by 'Paris, Tehran and New York,' down to 24 players on console
While the Battlefield 3 pre-order text appearing on GameStop is almost identical to the text that briefly appeared on EA's own pre-order site, BF3Blog.com snagged the full copy from EA before it was stripped. While the GameStop text simply says that battles will be fought in "diverse locations from around the globe including Europe, Middle-East and North America," the original EA text was a bit more specific: "Paris, Tehran and New York." What that tells us is that Battlefield 3 will have some seriously urban environments, which is a good thing for the seemingly massive multiplayer levels.
While we've known that the PC version would support 64 players in its multiplayer component, Best Buy lists "massive 24-player online battles." Game Informer – which is hosting the reveal of the title via its March issue – lists the multilplayer component as supporting 64 players on PC and 24 on consoles, a not-unusual limitation for console face-shooting. And lastly, so long as you're here already, we wanted to share this video of Battlefield 3's Frostbite 2 engine busting out real-time radiosity using the Enlighten middleware toolkit. We're sure DICE will be highlighting the work it's put into this new engine, so consider this an early (and admittedly sedate) look at the tech behind BF3.
[Thanks, Darren and Zach the Maniac]
