First-off, direction-wise my favorite Bad Company game is the first one. The console exclusive one, that introduced both Rush mode and the Frostbite Engine with its emphasis on destruction. Sure, subsequent Battlefield games play better, and Bad Company 2: Vietnam eclipsed Bad Company 1 in my esteem, mostly because I love flying its helicopters and listening to a banging soundtrack while doing so, ontop of it getting the core Bad Company strengths perfectly right, but Bad Company 1 got it all right the first time.
Singleplayer-wise, it's easy. I think that the semi-open-world/sandbox approach of Bad Company 1 fits the shoe of a Battlefield game the best, and its none-too-self-serious tone was refreshing and fun. I think DICE should have further pursued and refined Bad Company 1's design template, rather than starting to chase after the linear cinematic experience Call of Duty does so well. By now, I'm sure they'd have created something really special, rather than the mostly forgettable campaigns of recent Battlefield games.
The meat of the matter is multiplayer anyways. If I'd put my fondness for Bad Company's multiplayer direction in an EA-style marketing slogan, I'd say the words SIMPLE - DIRECT - POWERFUL - EXPLOSIVE.
- SIMPLE - as in the absence of bloat. Instead of an abundance of customization, we had clarity and elegance instead. My favorite example of what was lost? The ability to pick up a kit from the ground, and know exactly what that kit was capable of. These days, it's quite impossible to know what exactly I'll pick up due to too extensive customization. A medic that can't heal or resuscitate? An engineer that can't repair vehicles? A support guy who can't drop ammo? All of that can and will happen in BF3 and BF4.
- DIRECT - for the most parts, it means to me that anyone who could kill me, I could kill back. 100% line-of-sight based combat. None of that fancy lock-on warfare. No indirect fire warfare playing out on the minimap. No invulnerable vehicles. No tablet-app commanders. In short, no nonsense!
- POWERFUL - as in pointing my finger at something, hearing the distant thunder of artillery, and then seeing hard rain fall on whatever I've pointed at, and it leaving behind nothing more than a smoldering crater. I think that's the perfect example of how that sense of player empowerment has slowly erroded from Battlefield since the Bad Company days. Powerful is also the answer to the loss of clarity and elegance due to too extensive customization. Completely empowered kits and vehicles are automatically less fractured and more clear. For example, if every Assault kit comes standardized with a resusciation tool and a med-kit for healing, as well as a 40mm underslung grenade launcher - that'd be both empowering to the players, as well as vastly increasing the clarity and elegance of the design.
- EXPLOSIVE - as in blowing up everything! DICE has shied away from wholesale destruction, has become more selective of what can and cannot be destroyed - in favor of balance and old-school conceptions of good level-design. What I want from a Bad Company game? I want everything to blow up. The more destruction the better. The better shit blows up, the better I like the game. Fuck baked-in balance. In Bad Company, we make or break our own balance - with a whole lot of explosions!
There's lots and lots of other stuff that I could say, but I think the whole SIMPLE - DIRECT - POWERFUL - EXPLOSIVE slogan would lead anyone who speaks these words as a mantra to the place where I'd want a new Bad Company game to go.
...and that's why I want a new Bad Company Battlefield game!
P.S. For the love of all that's good, finally have a lisenced music soundtrack for every Battlefield game, not just the Vietnam ones. Start with Hardline. Slap some gangster shit on there!
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