Executive Producer Marcus Nilsson conducts a tour of duty on Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
By Michael Lafferty

“This is a completely new product designed from the ground up for consoles.”

Three military powers battle for control, using an array of modern weaponry and with the combat theatre set around the world. It is the Battlefield franchise from EA, and with the Battlefield 2: Modern Combat iteration, the series is expanding its horizons with releases on the home console platforms of the Xbox, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 consoles.

With more than 30 vehicles available and online multiplayer battles with 24 players, the forces of the United States, Chinese or Middle East Coalition look to heat up the action.

But is this simply a port of the beloved PC franchise to the consoles? Far from it. The folks at Digital Illusions and EA are doing everything to make this a fresh experience as well as continuing the tradition of excellence the series stands for.

Marcus Nilsson, executive producer of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, chatted with GameZone.com about the title.

Question: The Battlefield franchise has been a standard now through several iterations. What will make Modern Combat stand apart from other titles in the series, such as the 1942 versions or Vietnam Redux.

Marcus: “The addition of a comprehensive single-player campaign is a big step for us. This includes the ability to Hotswap, which lets you take control of any soldier in your squad as long as you have line of sight. It makes the pace very fast and always keeps you in the middle of the action. This is combined with 20 missions where you fight on both sides of the war, and in the end must decide which army you think is right and then lead them to victory.”

Q: After progressing the title forward to Vietnam, why is this stepping backward to the World War II theatre?

Marcus: “Actually, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is all about the present day. Just like Battlefield 2 on PC released earlier this year, we’re in the modern day military theatre, and this is supported by the vehicles, weapons, and gear of the soldiers.” 

Q: This title is coming out on the PS2, Xbox and Microsoft 360 consoles. Are we looking at totally new elements for this title, or will some of the gameplay be familiar to PC users?

Marcus: “This is a completely new product designed from the ground up for consoles. However, we have a great legacy on PC, so of course we leverage what has made the series great. You still have the critically acclaimed multiplayer, and several of the weapons and vehicles will be familiar. However, many weapons and vehicles are new, and we’ve also tuned the controls to suit the console controller. There’s also the previously mentioned ability to Hotswap and the single-player missions, which are all completely new to the franchise.”

Q: The consoles - at least the PS2 and Xbox - do not have the same power graphically as modern PCs. How were you able to capture the graphical intensity of the PC versions and bring the visual power to the consoles?

Marcus: “We have a few tricks up our sleeve to make the consoles look as awesome as possible. Of course there are some things we can’t do on them that we do on PC. But we use other things to make up for that. For example, most people agree that our explosions look better on console than they do on PC.”

Q: Obviously when talking PC gaming, the control scheme can be much broader with the keyboard-mouse tandem. With consoles, you are working in a more finite controller base. How were you able to take the scope of a game like Battlefield and make it fit the controls of the consoles?

Marcus: “Since this was developed from the beginning for console, that wasn’t really a problem. If we were porting the game from PC, we might have run into issues. But as it stands, we just thought ‘What do you absolutely need to do in this game because it is a Battlefield game?’ and once we locked those mandatory elements in, designing the controls for the rest of the game followed naturally.”

Q: How much input do fans have in determining the direction of the series, and considering the large fan base, what presents the biggest challenge when you work on a new title?

Marcus: “We listen to our fans very closely since we build games for them. They have more influence than perhaps they know when it comes to the content, expansion packs, new vehicles and weapons, settings, etc. Our biggest challenge is to build the most balanced, addictive game that we can. We’ve delivered that with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, and in all of the online testing we did with our Beta and the demo that we released, that allowed us to fine-tune the final game based on what we saw and on player feedback.”

Q: What is your favorite aspect of this game, the parts that have you going "wow!" and coming back for more?

Marcus: “The fact that we’ve been working on the game for about three years now and still want to play it means we are very happy with the whole package. However, nothing beats the ‘Battlefield Moments’ that you find when you are playing the game. We give you all the tools you need to get the job done, and how creative you are in using them is up to you.”

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