DICE is not playing "the cover band" with tomorrow’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 release, according to senior producer Patrick Bach. Speaking with GamerNode last Friday, he explained that the company aims to create something original with its sequel and not mimic what Infinity Ward or any other developers are doing. He claims that Bad Company 2 has something that other games don’t, and for that reason, DICE wants "to be the star."
"We are not trying not to build the same game as our competition. We are not trying to be the cover band. We want to be the star ourselves, so we are not trying to mimic anyone else and do what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean that you don’t get influenced by qualities that other titles might have, but in general, looking at our characters, they are quite different, I would argue, than most other game characters. They have a different approach to the situations that they are in. They have the sense of humor, but we would more like to call it "the human touch." They behave like human beings, and not cartoon characters that just do everything right all the time. They’re characters that have some kind of resemblance to how we would act if we were put in a situation like this, instead of trying to build something that is kind of a gimmicky, supernatural character that couldn’t exist in real life. I’m not saying that one thing is better than the other, it’s just that we want to build a game that we think is more attractive, and a game that we would prefer to play….
We’re hoping that consumers will pick up on the kind of focus and the work we’re doing with narrative and the characters and understand that you can do things different and you don’t have to kind of chase one goal, or try to create everything to be equal. There are more ways of showing characters in games than one. To us it’s very important to create characters who feel alive and believable."
You hear that, Infinity Ward? You characters are gimmicky and supernatural, rather than alive and believable. Well, Mr. Bach didn’t actually say that, but it feels like the general idea here. We’ll find out tomorrow if Bad Company 2 can indeed be the new star.
