EA Takes Battlefield to the Future

Swap bullets for...well, bullets in this high-tech update of DICE's popular online shooter series. First screens.

EA and Swedish developer Digital Illusions (or DICE) have made waves over the past few years with their Battlefield PC shooter series. The series has till now been focused on current and past global skirmishes, but for its next instalment it is looking to the future.

The next game, Battlefield 2142, is set two centuries after the first one and does for the future what its predecessors did for World War II, Vietnam and our current turbulent times. This is according to a leaked cover story for PC Gamer magazine, which has since been confirmed by EA and by DICE through its community message boards.

"We're creating a ton of cool features that you won't have seen in any [Battlefield game] before, including cloaking devices, mines that follow you, awesome new rifles, guns and grenades, and of course, MECHS!," said a developer at DICE.

With the world's climate thrown into disarray and resulting in a new ice age, multinational factions are fighting for what little land remains. Skirmishes will take place in Northern Africa, which contains a large chunk of the still-habitable land on the planet.

The new futuristic setting has given DICE the freedom to stray from the bounds of realism that have been so pervasive in past Battlefield games. Vehicles are still a major feature, though the jeeps and choppers have been gussied up for the 22nd century. New to the game are the 20-ft bipedal mechs, which you'll be able to use to destroy large parts of the game world and anything else in its path.

This isn't a wholly new game, though. Instead DICE has taken Battlefield 2 and used its core technology as a basis for this new experience. It's sort of like what the developer did when turning Battlefield 1942 into Battlefield Vietnam.

Battlefield 2142 will be out for PC this winter in North America and Europe.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games