Visceral Games has hinted at the story behind the single-player campaign of their upcoming shooter Battlefield Hardline.
With series torchlight bearers DICE hard at work on improving Battlefield 4 as well as working on the new Mirror’s Edge game and a brand new Star Wars Battlefront installment, Hardline moves away from the traditional series focus on large-scale international conflict to the tighter, more individual shadow-world of professional heist gangs and the police who try to stop them. It’s being developed by Visceral, best known for their work creating the Dead Space franchise.
Visceral’s addition to the long-running Battlefield series will put players in the shoes of Nick, a good cop who, alongside his partner, is determined to rise through the rank-and-file of his department. But, well, you know how it goes- Nick and his partner get framed after making a major cocaine bust on a local kingpin called Roark, out in warehouse in the desert. “Breaking Bad meth country,” creative director Ian Milham calls it. Now Nick has to go back undercover and work with the gangs in order to finally clear his name.
EA appears to be putting a lot of resources into the game’s campaign story, an area that has long been criticized as a weak point. To that end, Visceral Games enlisted television veterans Wendy Calhoun (writer and producer of Justified, and Nashville), and Bill Johnson (editor for The West Wing and Justified). Clearly, the pair have experience writing and producing hard-hitting crime stories, though the world of videogames presents some challenges in switching between mediums.
“The difference [in writing] this, it was really a head-twister, but I love it: You, the gamer, are the hero,” Calhoun is quoted as saying in Polygon. “Now it’s a 3D world that you’re taking the audience and dropping them into. I have to remember that you, the audience member, you’re that character. It’s very different from TV and film.”
Hardline will also feature a few recognizable voices from television- Eugene Byrd (Bones), Mark Rolston (The Shield), Kelly Hu (Nash Bridges and Batman: Arkham Origins), and Benito Martinez (Sons of Anarchy) have all signed on to the game’s cast of heroes and villians.
EA’s new direction for the long-running and ever-popular series is ambitious, to say the least. It may not have the futuristic sparkle of something like Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but in Visceral’s attempt to shake up established franchise tropes it’s certainly no less ambitious.
Peter Yankowski
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