There's no sending one person in to retrieve a password, while another holds off hostages near a safe, while another creates a diversion for the heat. The promisingly titled Heist simply tasks criminals with stealing one of two suitcases of money and taking them back to extraction points. Meanwhile, the two multiplayer modes we know about so far, Heist and Blood Money, don't seem to do much beyond tweaking Capture the Flag. Series fans may be fine with this, but it doesn't really gel with the reinvention Milham is projecting. All talk of a more 'personal' experience is thrown out the window when it supports teams of 32 a side (though it's possible some unannounced modes may be built around smaller groups). Instead, this very much feels like Battlefield as you know it. It's okay though: we're all thinking it too.Ĭoupled with a brief trailer showing high-speed chases and tense shootouts, this looks like it could be the Battlefield for people who aren't normally drawn to Battlefield.īased on my handful of hours with Battlefield Hardline, however, it is not quite the game Milham describes.

I want to use the word 'perp!' As a criminal, I don't want to take over the world - I want to rob banks! I want to have heists! I want to have cool getaways!' He stops short of saying he wants to be Al Pacino or Robert De Niro, but we all know he's thinking it. I wanted to be a cop who doesn't play by the rules. When asked if you'll play as both cops and robbers, the studio declined to comment. Visceral isn't talking Hardline's single-player yet. That's when we started talking about this cops and robbers thing - a story and a tone and a type of a world that was more based on fantasy fulfilment. 'The tone seemed to be going really serious,' he says. While Milham is a fan of the multiplayer shooter genre, he says he's become tired of the po-faced mood of the genre over the years. 'You'll never get me alive!' 'Put that gun down!'' The feel of the cops-and-criminals fantasy is a little more personal. 'It's about calling in close air-support all sorts of flanking tactics. 'The soldier fantasy is a little bit more about engaging at a distance,' says creative director Ian Milham, speaking to us just before we get to play the game at EA's Redwood City HQ. Developer Visceral Games is adamant that this isn't the Battlefield you're used to, because it's shifting its focus from saving-the-world military battles to tense skirmishes in familiar settings.

This year, Battlefield Hardline is trying to get us excited by throwing in a bit of, well, Dog Day Afternoon. Last year, Call of Duty: Ghosts tried to get us excited about a dog.

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