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Interview with Patrick Bach
Gamerzines.com posted up an interview with DICE's Patrick Bach:
With just six weeks to go until Battlefield returns to the frontlines, we sit down for a chat with Bad Company 2's Executive Producer, Patrick Bach, to discuss the game's single-player campaign and whether he thinks it can topple Modern Warfare 2 as the king of online shooters.
GamerZines: We were blown away by the gameplay presentation today that showed the single-player in action - overlooking the valley, that terrific sense of scale - it looked spectacular. Is that what you're aiming for with Bad Company 2, that sense of scale, those epic firefights
Patrick Bach, Executive Producer: Yes, in a way that's exactly what we're aiming towards. Battlefield has always been about some kind of 'epicness'. If it wasn't for the big landscape dunes in 1943, it was the vehicular action and cool 'Battlefield Moments' where crazy things just happen. So in the single-player we tried to mimic that, but we also tried to base it on drama and making sure that you have this dramatic pacing throughout the game, but without removing the sandbox, because the sandbox experience in a Battlefield game is key. If you remove the sandbox it wouldn't be a Battlefield game. You can call it epic, you can call it variation, but we have always aimed for quality and we want to make sure that Bad Company 2 is a proper Battlefield title.
GZ: I suppose that sandbox experience is what really sets Battlefield apart from Modern Warfare 2. The entire game feels dynamic rather than static and scripted. But you're obviously in a highly competitive market - does the fact that Modern Warfare 2 is still riding high in the charts worry you this close to launch? <!--more-->
PB: To be honest, all competition is good - you can always learn from your competition. But we have never aimed to be someone else - we know where we want to head, what we want Battlefield to be, and what we want our single-player to be since we've matured since the last game, and Bad Company 2 takes us one step further. As you can see, it's not the same game, but it's not supposed to be the same game. Just because both games have weapons doesn't mean that they have to be the same. So in a way, yes, we're scared of the competition because we want to make a game that people prefer, but we feel comfortable in what we're building, we're comfortable that we know how to improve because our goal is not set where we are, our goal is set in the future.
GZ: Have you made any subtle changes to the Battlefield formula to try and convert Modern Warfare fans?
PB: Yes and no. If people prefer a specific game style or pacing then you don't want to tell them that they're wrong, because if people like it they like it. But then again we wouldn't sacrifice the Battlefield universe to build a bleak copy of someone else's game. Our focus is still to make the best possible Battlefield game, and that's something that slowly changes over time. If you compare Bad Company 2 to 1942, our goal is to make it feel like the same, but side-by-side they're completely different.
GZ: DICE has a reputation for making these amazing multiplayer experiences, but its attempts at single-player haven't been so well received. Do you hope to change that with Bad Company 2?
PB: Yes. I'm quite sure that people will be amazed with how far we've come since Bad Company 1. We spent a lot of energy with BC1 just creating the IP, building the game engine, seeing what we could do and testing new grounds, but this time we actually took it to where we were aiming. We have a ten-hour single-player campaign that is extremely varied, both from a gameplay perspective and a visual perspective - and of course audio which is something that we cherish and make sure that we have a super high standard of. So variation has been key, because Battlefield has always been about variation and choice, and we want that to be a part of the single player as well.
GZ: Going by what you've learned from Bad Company 2, would you like DICE to concentrate more of their efforts on creating a single-player experience in the future, or do you feel that the company is more comfortable in creating multiplayer games?
PB: I think we have a recipe when it comes to what we actually give the player because we have new game modes for instance, but they're still Battlefield modes, we're not ripping someone else off; we're trying to build it from the mindset of Battlefield. So we go back to our roots and look at the experience we want people to have - what is it that it might be lacking when it comes to the 'full spectrum Battlefield'? Because Battlefield is different to different people, that's something that we have learnt over the years. When you ask someone what their favourite Battlefield moment is, or how they play Battlefield, they play it in so many different ways. So by creating those experiences for them and tailoring the sandbox slightly to force people to behave differently gives you a lot of cool things back. In the new game we have Squad Deathmatch, which, yes it's a deathmatch, but it's your squad of four versus three other squads, so it's kind of a co-op mode where you play against human players. It's a way of seeing Battlefield from a different angle, but it's still Battlefield.
GZ: The single-player is very character-driven but it doesn't feature the usual sort of generic, gung-ho, butch army men we've come to expect from the genre. The characters are personable and there's an element of humour - do you think humour is an important part of Bad Company?
PB: Our goal has not been to make a humorous game; our goal was to make a 'human' game. You know, how would I behave if I were in a war? I would be really stressed out, I would be scared ****less but I would probably crack jokes and have fun with my mates whenever I could. That's the natural behaviour of people - you often end up talking about things that are nothing to do with the situation you're in. If you look at modern war movies and TV series you see that that is how to portray war when you try to do it in a realistic way. People are not super heroes, even if they're super-trained and really skilled they're not robots, they're still human. They will behave and say stuff that humans would say, so trying to avoid that gung-ho behaviour will make it more humorous and more personable. You want that warmth between the characters even if it's just them bantering - you still want the human touch.
GZ: It's interesting that you mentioned about how you would react to war, and touching on that sense of morality and humanity. Modern Warfare 2 tried something very different with that airport level which provoked all kinds of attention within the media. Would you want to approach something like that or avoid it altogether?
PB: I think if you want to provoke you can do it in many different ways. You don't have to be tasteless to provoke.
GZ: Would you say that was tasteless?
PB: Well, I wouldn't want to go into detail about what I think of other games, but I think there are different ways to provoke. Provoking in storytelling is more or less a standard tool that you use in all media. Games are maybe lacking some of that, but I think you can do things in different ways. Taste or tasteless is up to the eye of the beholder but I still think good taste is good taste.
GZ: Around the time of MW2's launch, DICE made it clear that Bad Company 2 would retain features stripped from that game; dedicated servers for example, and party chat in the 360 version. And now in the single-player there's the war between the US and Russia on American soil. Is that DICE recognising that Modern Warfare 2 is the one to beat?
PB: A lot of people ask us about Modern Warfare and they compare us to Modern Warfare, so when we answer questions about that it will sometimes sound like we are competing directly against them. I think a lot of people on executive levels see that as a goal, that we will beat Modern Warfare. To me it's not beating, it's showing that you can do things differently and to a high quality while delivering both a single-player and multiplayer game. There are more games than Modern Warfare that have these features in them, but people just compare us to what they perceive to be the best at the time. In my book, please go ahead and compare us but please don't see it as the same game because we're not trying to be that game. If you were to compare head-to-head and say 'are you better than Modern Warfare at Modern Warfare things?', no we're not, we're doing Battlefield things here, we're trying to do the game that we want to do.
GZ: Battlefield's obviously a very important franchise to DICE, but where does Bad Company sit in the series, because you've got Battlefield 3 on the way and presumably you'll also be pouring a lot of time into B:BC2 with post-release content, too..
PB: Yeah. The whole idea with Bad Company from the start was to create a spin-off, but then that spin-off turned into a behemoth.
GZ: Was that because of public reaction?
PB: In part, yes, but also we have a set amount of resources. We don't just add people to our projects to fill up the teams. We use the key resources we have and our experts know what makes Battlefield Battlefield. For instance, right now we have a lot of people working on the PC version of Bad Company 2 to make sure that it gets the right attention and the right love, and of course that moves people around from different bodies. In the background we're doing a lot of things that I can't talk about that are aiming towards creating the next big Battlefield product.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on March 5th.
So do you think this will feel like a Battlefield game? Is DICE staying different from Modern Warfare 2 or is it closer than they want to say? Will this game have a huge battlefield "sandbox" feel to it as other titles?
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With just six weeks to go until Battlefield returns to the frontlines, we sit down for a chat with Bad Company 2's Executive Producer, Patrick Bach, to discuss the game's single-player campaign and whether he thinks it can topple Modern Warfare 2 as the king of online shooters.
GamerZines: We were blown away by the gameplay presentation today that showed the single-player in action - overlooking the valley, that terrific sense of scale - it looked spectacular. Is that what you're aiming for with Bad Company 2, that sense of scale, those epic firefights
Patrick Bach, Executive Producer: Yes, in a way that's exactly what we're aiming towards. Battlefield has always been about some kind of 'epicness'. If it wasn't for the big landscape dunes in 1943, it was the vehicular action and cool 'Battlefield Moments' where crazy things just happen. So in the single-player we tried to mimic that, but we also tried to base it on drama and making sure that you have this dramatic pacing throughout the game, but without removing the sandbox, because the sandbox experience in a Battlefield game is key. If you remove the sandbox it wouldn't be a Battlefield game. You can call it epic, you can call it variation, but we have always aimed for quality and we want to make sure that Bad Company 2 is a proper Battlefield title.
GZ: I suppose that sandbox experience is what really sets Battlefield apart from Modern Warfare 2. The entire game feels dynamic rather than static and scripted. But you're obviously in a highly competitive market - does the fact that Modern Warfare 2 is still riding high in the charts worry you this close to launch? <!--more-->
PB: To be honest, all competition is good - you can always learn from your competition. But we have never aimed to be someone else - we know where we want to head, what we want Battlefield to be, and what we want our single-player to be since we've matured since the last game, and Bad Company 2 takes us one step further. As you can see, it's not the same game, but it's not supposed to be the same game. Just because both games have weapons doesn't mean that they have to be the same. So in a way, yes, we're scared of the competition because we want to make a game that people prefer, but we feel comfortable in what we're building, we're comfortable that we know how to improve because our goal is not set where we are, our goal is set in the future.
GZ: Have you made any subtle changes to the Battlefield formula to try and convert Modern Warfare fans?
PB: Yes and no. If people prefer a specific game style or pacing then you don't want to tell them that they're wrong, because if people like it they like it. But then again we wouldn't sacrifice the Battlefield universe to build a bleak copy of someone else's game. Our focus is still to make the best possible Battlefield game, and that's something that slowly changes over time. If you compare Bad Company 2 to 1942, our goal is to make it feel like the same, but side-by-side they're completely different.
GZ: DICE has a reputation for making these amazing multiplayer experiences, but its attempts at single-player haven't been so well received. Do you hope to change that with Bad Company 2?
PB: Yes. I'm quite sure that people will be amazed with how far we've come since Bad Company 1. We spent a lot of energy with BC1 just creating the IP, building the game engine, seeing what we could do and testing new grounds, but this time we actually took it to where we were aiming. We have a ten-hour single-player campaign that is extremely varied, both from a gameplay perspective and a visual perspective - and of course audio which is something that we cherish and make sure that we have a super high standard of. So variation has been key, because Battlefield has always been about variation and choice, and we want that to be a part of the single player as well.
GZ: Going by what you've learned from Bad Company 2, would you like DICE to concentrate more of their efforts on creating a single-player experience in the future, or do you feel that the company is more comfortable in creating multiplayer games?
PB: I think we have a recipe when it comes to what we actually give the player because we have new game modes for instance, but they're still Battlefield modes, we're not ripping someone else off; we're trying to build it from the mindset of Battlefield. So we go back to our roots and look at the experience we want people to have - what is it that it might be lacking when it comes to the 'full spectrum Battlefield'? Because Battlefield is different to different people, that's something that we have learnt over the years. When you ask someone what their favourite Battlefield moment is, or how they play Battlefield, they play it in so many different ways. So by creating those experiences for them and tailoring the sandbox slightly to force people to behave differently gives you a lot of cool things back. In the new game we have Squad Deathmatch, which, yes it's a deathmatch, but it's your squad of four versus three other squads, so it's kind of a co-op mode where you play against human players. It's a way of seeing Battlefield from a different angle, but it's still Battlefield.
GZ: The single-player is very character-driven but it doesn't feature the usual sort of generic, gung-ho, butch army men we've come to expect from the genre. The characters are personable and there's an element of humour - do you think humour is an important part of Bad Company?
PB: Our goal has not been to make a humorous game; our goal was to make a 'human' game. You know, how would I behave if I were in a war? I would be really stressed out, I would be scared ****less but I would probably crack jokes and have fun with my mates whenever I could. That's the natural behaviour of people - you often end up talking about things that are nothing to do with the situation you're in. If you look at modern war movies and TV series you see that that is how to portray war when you try to do it in a realistic way. People are not super heroes, even if they're super-trained and really skilled they're not robots, they're still human. They will behave and say stuff that humans would say, so trying to avoid that gung-ho behaviour will make it more humorous and more personable. You want that warmth between the characters even if it's just them bantering - you still want the human touch.
GZ: It's interesting that you mentioned about how you would react to war, and touching on that sense of morality and humanity. Modern Warfare 2 tried something very different with that airport level which provoked all kinds of attention within the media. Would you want to approach something like that or avoid it altogether?
PB: I think if you want to provoke you can do it in many different ways. You don't have to be tasteless to provoke.
GZ: Would you say that was tasteless?
PB: Well, I wouldn't want to go into detail about what I think of other games, but I think there are different ways to provoke. Provoking in storytelling is more or less a standard tool that you use in all media. Games are maybe lacking some of that, but I think you can do things in different ways. Taste or tasteless is up to the eye of the beholder but I still think good taste is good taste.
GZ: Around the time of MW2's launch, DICE made it clear that Bad Company 2 would retain features stripped from that game; dedicated servers for example, and party chat in the 360 version. And now in the single-player there's the war between the US and Russia on American soil. Is that DICE recognising that Modern Warfare 2 is the one to beat?
PB: A lot of people ask us about Modern Warfare and they compare us to Modern Warfare, so when we answer questions about that it will sometimes sound like we are competing directly against them. I think a lot of people on executive levels see that as a goal, that we will beat Modern Warfare. To me it's not beating, it's showing that you can do things differently and to a high quality while delivering both a single-player and multiplayer game. There are more games than Modern Warfare that have these features in them, but people just compare us to what they perceive to be the best at the time. In my book, please go ahead and compare us but please don't see it as the same game because we're not trying to be that game. If you were to compare head-to-head and say 'are you better than Modern Warfare at Modern Warfare things?', no we're not, we're doing Battlefield things here, we're trying to do the game that we want to do.
GZ: Battlefield's obviously a very important franchise to DICE, but where does Bad Company sit in the series, because you've got Battlefield 3 on the way and presumably you'll also be pouring a lot of time into B:BC2 with post-release content, too..
PB: Yeah. The whole idea with Bad Company from the start was to create a spin-off, but then that spin-off turned into a behemoth.
GZ: Was that because of public reaction?
PB: In part, yes, but also we have a set amount of resources. We don't just add people to our projects to fill up the teams. We use the key resources we have and our experts know what makes Battlefield Battlefield. For instance, right now we have a lot of people working on the PC version of Bad Company 2 to make sure that it gets the right attention and the right love, and of course that moves people around from different bodies. In the background we're doing a lot of things that I can't talk about that are aiming towards creating the next big Battlefield product.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on March 5th.
So do you think this will feel like a Battlefield game? Is DICE staying different from Modern Warfare 2 or is it closer than they want to say? Will this game have a huge battlefield "sandbox" feel to it as other titles?
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