More BF3 info suggests that retail is far superior to the beta....

A slew of information about Battlefield 3 has become available lately, especially with the brand new multiplayer trailer having just been released.

You may have noticed that in this trailer, the destruction was a little more intense that what we’ve seen so far from the Beta version of Battlefield 3. Thankfully, Daniel Matros has confirmed that “destruction was downscaled and rigid in the beta. Full on for retail.” This should make many RPG-wielding Battlefield fans extremely happy.

Some other things that should make many fans happy are the recent announcements regarding unlocks. Make sure to check out our previous report here. You may have remembered that in the beta, weapons from the AK family were exclusive only to the Russian side, while the Americans exclusively used weapons like the M4A1 or the M16A4. However, many fans have been wondering if these weapons would eventually become available to the other faction to use at some point. Fredrik Thylander responds when asked if we could use the other factions weapons: “Yes, in fact, you can. Once everything for a class is unlocked, it’s default weapon becomes available to the other faction.” This seems fair to us.

Another interesting bit of vehicle unlock information is that flares (which should help you dodge incoming missiles while flying a jet) will be the first unlock available unlock for the jets. Thylander provides us with his line of thinking behind it: “Basically, prove you can fly and get any points whatsoever, and we’ll give you flares.” Some fans have been wishing that the flare unlock would be available sooner than what it was in the Beta, so this should come as good news to them as well.

Lastly, the recent trailer (included in a link up top) also revealed some shots of some of the maps found in the Back to Karkand expansion pack. Make sure to check that out if you haven’t yet already. Lately, DICE has revealed that the “Back to Karkand will be similar to Vietnam in that it will be a full expansion pack.” If it is, indeed, similar to the Vietnam expansion pack that was released for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, we could speculate that it will be around the same price of $15 and that it will have it’s own title screen in the Battlefield 3 main menu. This would also mean that all the weapons and maps would be exclusive to this separate playlist and would not be available in the regular one.

Get your hard drives ready as well because you will be playing the game in standard def unless you install the HD engine to your hard drive - from what I have read it sounds like BF3 is the closest the 360 has come to an out and out PC install to date.

What even more so than Rage!

Matt

According to the Partick Bach one of DICE's executives:

"The controversy about this is that we actually let you do it on 360 for once. So what it does is it gives you the same abilities, kind of, as the PC and PS3. You can actually stream information from the hard-drive.

That's new for Xbox 360, but its not a new idea for the gaming industry as a whole. No one has really tried to do it properly, so us doing it will create question marks.

You could call it a standard-def version for the 360 if you don't have a hard-drive.

It does make a difference, absoloutely, yes. The whole engine is based around streaming textures, streaming terrain and a lot of other content."

I install any game I know im going to play for an extended period anyway so Its no big deal to me. Bit of a noob question but do they even sell 360's without hard drives anymore?

Matt

This is the same as what Rage does but on a grander scale, Rage installs a "High Res" texture pack meaning without it some textures are low res, with BF the whole game is SD without install but HD with it.

A good idea imo if it means that console games are closer to the PC visuals

FlukeyHeadshot wrote:I install any game I know im going to play for an extended period anyway so Its no big deal to me. Bit of a noob question but do they even sell 360's without hard drives anymore?

Matt

The 360 slim only has 4gb of solid state memory but has the expansion bay to fit one if needed.