DICE's Lars Gustavsson has told CVG that the studio has "a great story to tell" in Battlefield 4's campaign and acknowledged that the response to Battlefield 3's single player was less than stellar.
Asked whether a single player component was necessary in Battlefield 4 he answered:
“The future will tell, but where we come from we do single player because we want to and we’ve learned a lot while doing it, and I think we have a great story to tell. As a team and a studio we’ve learned so much from crossbreeding between single player and multiplayer. The whole concept of Levolution in many ways comes from single player, and our exploring how we could bring drama and interaction to the world.”
Gustavsson admitted that there were problems with Battlefield 3's campaign, including how tight many of the maps were, he said:
"We got a lot of feedback from the Battlefield 3 single player, and based on what we intended to deliver… the team did a great job, but given that it’s a Battlefield product there were a lot of expectations that it would be more open.
“What we promised ourselves [with Battlefield 4] was to unify the product more, so we infused a lot of the things from multiplayer – from being able to use your squad – into multiplayer, so now you can use them in single player to engage enemies.”
He finished by saying that DICE has created a smart story for players which is more open, “First and foremost we’re opening up the encounters more to give you the freedom to decide how to tackle them, whereas in Battlefield 3 it was more ‘pick up that one and kill that one’, which I can agree is not the most exciting way. Players want to feel smart doing what they’re doing.”
DICE general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson has previously said that Battlefield 4's single player will be "less linear" and that they wanted "to give players a choice" in terms of how to approach the game.
