With Battlefield 4 being out for barely 8 months, the next instalment in the series was leaked this week. Titled Battlefield: Hardline, the action moves from the near-modern warfare setting of recent games to the ‘war on crime’. Can the new partnership between Visceral Games and DICE shake up a franchise that has been looking increasingly stale? Let’s take a closer look at what we know about Hardline.

First and foremost, you will have immediately homed in on the fact that Visceral Games is handling development on this title. If there is one thing that recent Battlefield games have been lacking, it’s a compelling single player narrative. As a huge fan of Dead Space (even though each time playing it required a new pair of underpants), I’m excited to see what Visceral can bring to the table.

The single player campaign is set to feature one Nick Mendoza, who it appears is an ex-cop, “caught up in his own personal struggle between right and wrong”. In other words, he used to be the good guy but now… not so much. The campaign will unfold episodically, much like a TV series, and will follow Nick as he attempts to exact (bloody?) revenge on his old cop buddies. The game apparently draws inspiration from TV shows such as Justified, The Americans and House of Cards. So, if any of those are your cup of tea, Hardline should pique your interest nicely.

From the details that have leaked so far, the storyline already looks more interesting than anything in the Battlefield franchise since Bad Company 2. Mendoza’s journey looks to offer up something actually unique, instead of the typical eastern military outfit gone rouge, or angry middle eastern terrorists trope. And with Visceral at the helm, I truly hope that they can deliver something special on this.

The setting and story aside, the gameplay seen so far suggests that there are some new mechanics coming our way, too. Well, new for Battlefield that is. Mendoza will have access to a “police scanner” which he’ll use to scan the environment for clues, as in Heavy Rain’s Added Reality Interface (ARI) scanner. He can also use it to check out any nearby criminals and see if they are wanted for certain crimes, which he then presumably exploits by busting their asses and collecting a reward. You know, kinda like Watch Dogs. Finally, the scanner also allows enemy tagging, Far Cry 3 style, letting you highlight all the bad guys in the area.

I suppose it would be easy to dismiss all this as cheap gimmickry, but I am interested to see how these mechanics will play out in a Battlefield game. The tagging in particular intrigues me, since it seems to suggest, positively encourage in fact, multiple ways of completing objectives. Add this to a completely new, redesigned AI, which will apparently allow “each episode to be played multiple times and in multiple ways”. Promising stuff! But since that is something we’re often promised and rarely given, we’ll have to wait and see how that turns out.

Of course, the big sell of the game is going to be multiplayer and here, again, we see a shake up of the old formula. We now have four game modes to chose from, starting with Rescue Mode, in which a SWAT team attempts to rescue a bunch of hostages from the bad guys. Next up is Heist Mode, in which team of bank robbers try to… rob a bank, while the cops try to stop them. Then we have Hotwire Mode, in which both teams engage in a cross map vehicular race between cops and criminals. The final one is Bloodmoney Mode, where the cops and crims all try to secure a stash of money before the other team, then bring it home to their safe-house.

A zip-wire and grappling hook add in some Titanfall-esk verticality to the proceedings, adding to what sounds a bit like a mash-up of GTA, Need For Speed, Counter Strike and Payday. The staples of Battlefield are all still there as well, with vehicular shenanigans, sniping, knifing and fragging present and accounted for.

Despite its obvious similarities to other franchises, we can but hope that these changes bring some much needed zest to the Battlefield series. Features such as Levolution events are set to return along with, of course, destructible environments. Together, these could result in something special, if Visceral can carve out an identity of their own for Hardline. Perhaps the most important thing they need to get right however, is to release a game that actually works. After the (ongoing) Battlefield 4 debacle, can EA really afford to drop yet another clanger on the series’ fans? Time will tell.

While I may not share the developer’s assertion that the war on crime genre is something “we all know and love”, I do think that it provides a much needed break from the modern military shooters we’ve been getting for the last 7 years. When Hardline releases later this year, it’ll be going up against not only Battlefield 4 and Ghosts, but also the upcoming Advanced Warfare. Personally, I’m completely down with a game that’s brave enough to step away from that gravy train and show people something different. But right now, what we’re seeing is only different as far as the Battlefield series goes.

I’ll be watching the events at E3 unfold with interest to see what sort of state the game is in. We’re still a long way off a release, and the game can, and probably will be very different from what this leak would suppose.

Are you excited about Battlefield: Hardline? Do you think Visceral Games can pull it off, or is EA on route to drop another deuce? Let us know in the comments.

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