UPDATE (via DT Gaming staff): The rumors are true. Electronic Arts updated the official Battlefield website with title art for Battlefield: Hardline and the promise of more to be revealed on June 9 at 12pm PT. For those not keeping score at home, that’s the date and time of EA’s annual E3 press conference. The art (above) seems to confirm what we already knew — the game shifts away from modern warfare theaters to focus on cops and robbers — and a leaked trailer (below) shows off some actual gameplay.
Watch it while you can, because it’s likely to disappear without warning:
The video confirms that Hardline is the product of a collaboration between Dead Space studio Visceral Games and Battlefield dev DICE. The action on display in the video looks appropriately Battlefield-y, but with heists and ski masks and whatnot. Three different multiplayer modes are described: Heist tasks robbers with blasting open a vault and stealing loot while cops try to stop them, Rescue sees SWAT forces trying to save hostages captured during a botched robbery, Hotwire is a cops vs. robbers vehicle chase, and Bloodmoney is a race between two teams to grab money from a central stash and get it back to their respective safehouses.
We also get a sense of the game’s single player story, which follows a cop on a cross-country revenge quest involving drug smuggling and murder. The levels are said to be written in the style of an episodic TV series, complete with credits and cliffhangers. The video also mentions an all-star cast that includes TV veterans from Justified, The Americans, and House of Cards.
Bear in mind that the video repeatedly refers to the game as “Omaha” — apparently a codename for Hardline — so any of these elements might have changed in the time since the video was created. It’s also possible (though unlikely) that the video is a very elaborate fake. Whatever the case, we’ll know more in a few weeks when EA reveals all.
ORIGINAL POST: The ever-vigilant Internet hive mind started to piece together leaked details of what is apparently an upcoming cops-and-robbers-themed Battlefield game, believed to be called Battlefield: Hardline (via Eurogamer). Committed code-combers found that the recent Battlelog update contained numerous hints of the upcoming game, which were then corroborated by assets found on publisher Electronic Arts’ website and shared via Twitter:
@BFDaily Battlefield Hardline http://t.co/WognTDSxN1 pic.twitter.com/CI7aO1DIbR
— Melvin Joosten (@melvinjoosten) May 27, 2014
Awards from the next Battlefield game: pic.twitter.com/1h1lRiVLvN
— Battlefield Daily (@BFDaily) May 27, 2014
The money bag and handcuffs point towards a police theme, further supported by the team names SWAT and THIEVES found in the update code. A collection of weapon images shows the standard suite of shooter gear supplemented with a SWAT shield, taser, grappling hook, and acetylene torch. Game modes called Blood Money and Heist were found, in addition to the soldier classes Enforcer, Mechanic, Operator, and Professional.
The game is likely being developed under the codename Havana or Omaha by Dead Space studio Visceral Games, whose logo was found among the pertinent assets.
DICE plateaued somewhat in conventional military shooters with Battlefield 4, so the shifted focus to cops and robbers could go a long way toward reinvigorating the franchise. The asymmetry of two sides with such different objectives and tools has the potential for much more dynamic gameplay than staid modes like Battlefield favorites Conquest and Rush.
The developer and publisher have yet to comment on the leak, but fans can almost certainly expect an official announcement coming out of E3 in June.
