That recent leak of a ‘dev build‘ of Battlefield 3? Not fake, apparently, as a community manager has weighed in on Reddit to not only confirm the validity of the screens and movies but also – as you’d expect – dispel fears that the final game will look as – well – poor as the leak did.
“So, first of all,” starts ‘crash7800’, “this is an old build and is definitely not representative of the final game. In fact, this is not even reflective of the HD capabilities of the platform.”
“Glad to see that you’re all excited,” he continues, “but honestly this is probably doing more harm than serving ‘the greater good’. People that see these videos and captures might not take the time to understand or appreciate the source and quality issues that using a dev build presents.”
Quite why a leak of an old build has only just appeared is the confusing issue here, and it looks like – if this chap’s to be believed – the development is going right to the eleventh hour if the game’s to improve as much as console owners are hoping it will.
“I’m getting bombarded with people asking me if this is what they should expect from their console copy of BF3, which, of course, it’s not. So, the EA, DICE teams and myself are working to address these concerns instead of working on other things that you guys would probably appreciate more.”
Ouch.
“There is a reason, and a very good one, why we don’t circulate this kind of stuff publicly.”
There’s a counter-argument here, though, that suggests that if EA and DICE had pushed out some Xbox 360 screens we wouldn’t have needed to rely on an ‘old’ build for our first taste of that particular version.
Still, there’s time…
Smallville2106
It’s all just a publicity stunt IMO.
cc_star
That was & is my assessment too.
Column inches ahoy
cc_star
*Obviously the leek of one of the years biggest games & reaction from the company is news.
I’m just of the mindset it’s all part of the plan.
TROPtastic
Yeah, because it makes sense to show your unreleased, blockbuster game in the worst
light possible. (sarcasm)
Smallville2106
We’re all talking about it though.
wick15
I didn’t think it looked all that bad. Especially for a dev build. I played inFamous 2 back in February at PS Access and it was in Alpha. It played poor, but it didn’t make me think the final game was going to be as bad as the demo I played at Access. Fair play to the community manager for saying that they will work on the game itself more, than actually adding in cool features. Surely only silly people will be worried about an early dev build representing the final game?
teflon
Well, on the eleventh hour thing, DICE will be firmly into crunch time right now, and the date for going Gold will be at the end of September, or very early in October, so that it can be pressed an distributed in plenty time for the 25th-28th Oct release date. Nothing unusual there.
Preview builds of the game will also have been taken from a while back. Since this leak is from a physical disc, it’s quite likely to be at least a month old by now, if you think that Gamescom would be an ideal opportunity for such a thing to go missing from behind the scenes. So what was on show at Gamescom? Well, it was the co-op gameplay and a bit of the PC multiplayer, but wouldn’t they have also brought along some of the older stuff that was behind the scenes at E3 from the single player?
So, if you back track far enough, it’s entirely plausible that this disc is from E3. Have a gander at the blurry picture of the disc labelled “hello” and you can clearly make out the “pre-alpha” label on the left hand side, with the rest of that phrase blacked out.
Of course, the other explanation is that the 360 is properly crap, and the PS3 totally roxx0rs!
cc_star
Of course the term alpha and pre-alpha can be slapped on near final footage so people go “wow… that’s the alpha imagine what it will look like”.
Bilbo_bobbins
That footage is pretty poor and really isn’t worth the talk about it IMO. THe sooner DICE/EA release proper MP footage the better. People are getting majorly frustrated that nothing has been mentioned regarding the beta which was promised in September. I know we still have over half the month left, but still, hurry up and annouce it.
E8_BALL_
Dice (& iw) also need to get this media onto psn/live, to offer the best quality viewing. Sick of dodgy utube vids. (that means ps3 & xbox footage btw, not pc.)
iAvernus
Didn’t look all that bad tbh. I can’t believe people thought that this represents how the final game will look. If you’re a BF fan, you should DICE cares enough about BF, just to push some mediocre game out.
Shame on you if you did.
minerwilly
Amen to that . Have yet to buy a new title this year just lots of pre-owned and the odd PSN title , this is going to be my personal GOTY . Dice have never let me down since 1942 .
Already warned my Girlfriend of 6 months that she needs to make room for another love of my life soon. (I’ll have to buy her Skyrim to keep her sweet though !)
E8_BALL_
cough moh.
E8_BALL_
sorry… In ref to mediocre.
bacon_nuts
I assumed it wasn’t final tbh.. Seemed pretty obvious.
Jakster123x
Hmm, maybe an uber-awesome console video will be released soon showing us all what we’re missing.
E8_BALL_
More to the point, what we’re spending our wages on.
The Lone Steven
EA, you do know that your game comes out next month? As we have seen diddly squat of the console versions. Yes, the PC version looks excellent but not all of us have a supercomputer in order to run it.
Also, isn’t there meant to be a beta soon? As i swore i heard about it or was it Shoddy PR? :p
Rad4Life
Don’t care that it got leaked. I love Battlefield and can’t wait to give DICE/EA my money for a fantastic product. Anyone downloading this leak can have it. I would rather have the official version with full online capabilities and trophy support.
Severn2j
Dunno what he’s worrying about, the dev build of DX:HR that leaked onto the net about 4 months before release looked quite poor compared to the final version, but most people just seemed to be pleased that it was actually faithful to the original and not just a cheap cash in on the name like everyone was expecting..
Leaks like this is only hurt if the game is bad IMO, in which case the game deserves to fail.. I don’t think that will be the case here tho.