In a recent interview with CVG at the EB Expo in Sydney last week, Gustavsson noted that Battlefield 4 will focus in on the issue left by the Battlefield 3 single player narrative. 

“The future will tell, but where we come from we do single player because we want to and we’ve learned a lot while doing it, and I think we have a great story to tell. As a team and a studio we’ve learned so much from crossbreeding between single player and multiplayer. The whole concept of Levolution in many ways comes from single player, and our exploring how we could bring drama and interaction to the world. We got a lot of feedback from the Battlefield 3 singleplayer, and based on what we intended to deliver the team did a great job, but given that it’s a Battlefield product there were a lot of expectations that it would be more open.” 

It seems as though, despite harsh criticism, the team at DICE are certain they can craft an interesting narrative.
He continues; 

“What we promised ourselves [with Battlefield 4] was to unify the product more, so we infused a lot of the things from multiplayer – from being able to use your squad – into multiplayer, so now you can use them in single player to engage enemies. First and foremost we’re opening up the encounters more to give you the freedom to decide how to tackle them, whereas in Battlefield 3 it was more ‘pick up that one and kill that one’, which I can agree is not the most exciting way. Players want to feel smart doing what they’re doing.”

Battlefield 4 has set out that it wants to improve story telling whilst also implementing and merging more multiplayer features within the single player campaign. The benefit of this being that is brings what has rightly been viewed as two very different aspects of the Battlefield experience and attempt to interlock them. Only upon release can we truly tell if these comments from Gustavsson can be justified. 

What do you make of the potential of Battlefield 4’s single player? Let us know what you think in the comments below.