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No Shooting Civilians in Battlefield 3

[Aug 31, 2011, 09:46 am ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

There's a Battlefield 3 interview on VG247 talking with lead designer David Goldfarb, discussing the single-player campaign in the military shooter sequel. Also, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has news that while there will be civilians in Battlefield 3, players will not be able to fire upon them, which recalls the controversial "no Russian" mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that involved a civilian massacre. They have word on the topic of collateral damage from DICE executive producer Patrick Bach:

“In a game where it’s more authentic, when you have a gun in your hand and a child in front of you what would happen? Well the player would probably shoot that child.”

This is something Bach wants to avoid, because while the choice to do that ‘bad’ thing would have been the player’s, “We would be the ones to be blamed. We have to build our experiences so we don’t put the player in experiences where they can do bad things.” While not explicitly mentioned, the spectre of Modern Warfare 2 and its notorious ‘No Russian’ level seemed to this correspondent to loom large here.

So, Bach admitted that there was a degree of self-censoring necessary to limit potentially disagreeable player behaviour. “Me personally, I’m trying to stay away from civilians in games like BF because I think people will do bad. I don’t want to see videos on the internet where people shoot civilians. That’s something I will sanitise by removing that feature from the game.”

Importantly, “That doesn’t mean that I don’t want people to feel that war is not good,… We are trying to do something that is more mature. Mature not being gore –some people confuse the two. That’s childish actually, to want more blood.”

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23.

Re: No Shooting Civilians in Battlefield 3

Aug 31, 2011, 11:42

^Drag0n^

EddieTheHack wrote on Aug 31, 2011, 11:30:
This whole thing is a load of crap. "We have to build our experiences so we don’t put the player in experiences where they can do bad things." - Then don't make a game about war. By definition war is a bad thing and bad things happen. If you don't want the player shooting unarmed kids either keep them out of the game or make the consequences very harsh - like an automatic mission fail or court marshal. If your striving for an authentic counter insurgency experience you have to be able to engage civilians - its a direct result of the 'bad guys' looking exactly like civilians until they pull out and AK and start shooting. When that happens, in the moment of combat, an innocent civilian might get shot. Its a cold fact of modern war that kids are now combatants and as such they get shot. It's not a good thing its just War. it's messy and innocent people get killed all the time. Want to change that? quit using oil.

This has less to do with youtube videos and more to do with what just happened in Norway. My money says there is behind the scenes political pressure to remove these elements from the game - if they were in the game to begin with which it sounds like. The last thing dice wants to hear is the next nut job praising them for making such a good game to practice killing civilians in. Ah well. Ill still buy the game.

This all leads back to the classic "airport scene" in MW2.

The way people go off you'd think they were killing actual people. It's a game. If someone can't tell the difference, that's their mental dysfunction, not mine.

Now, the only real difference I see here is: isn't BF3 strictly multiplayer?

If they don't want to deliver a stiff penalty for firing on non-combatants, effectively making them into annoying CPU cycle stealling wasted eye candy/litter, why the hell are they in the game to begin with?

^D^




"Never start a fight, but always finish it."

Subject

Comment [quote="^Drag0n^"Aug 31, 2011, 11:42][quote="EddieTheHack"Aug 31, 2011, 11:30]This whole thing is a load of crap. "We have to build our experiences so we don’t put the player in experiences where they can do bad things." - Then don't make a game about war. By definition war is a bad thing and bad things happen. If you don't want the player shooting unarmed kids either keep them out of the game or make the consequences very harsh - like an automatic mission fail or court marshal. If your striving for an authentic counter insurgency experience you have to be able to engage civilians - its a direct result of the 'bad guys' looking exactly like civilians until they pull out and AK and start shooting. When that happens, in the moment of combat, an innocent civilian might get shot. Its a cold fact of modern war that kids are now combatants and as such they get shot. It's not a good thing its just War. it's messy and innocent people get killed all the time. Want to change that? quit using oil. This has less to do with youtube videos and more to do with what just happened in Norway. My money says there is behind the scenes political pressure to remove these elements from the game - if they were in the game to begin with which it sounds like. The last thing dice wants to hear is the next nut job praising them for making such a good game to practice killing civilians in. Ah well. Ill still buy the game. [/quote] This all leads back to the classic "airport scene" in MW2. The way people go off you'd think they were killing actual people. It's a game. If someone can't tell the difference, that's their mental dysfunction, not mine. Now, the only real difference I see here is: isn't BF3 strictly multiplayer? If they don't want to deliver a stiff penalty for firing on non-combatants, effectively making them into annoying CPU cycle stealling wasted eye candy/litter, b[why the hell are they in the game to begin with?]b b[b{^D^}b]b [/quote]

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