Battlefield 3 on Consoles: What’s the Difference?

Battlefield 3 looks pretty incredible thanks to all the fancy effects and lighting that gives it a photorealistic style. So far, the game has only been shown on a powerful PC, and like it or not, PCs have gotten pretty far ahead of consoles in terms of horsepower. We can wish that the game will look like it does in the videos, but the reality is that it won’t. How different will it be?

In an interview with videogamer.com, DICE Executive Producer Patrick Bach explained how the console versions of the game will stack up. “The higher resolution, the higher frame rate, the anti-aliasing, the motion blur, stuff like that. We can’t have it to the same quality on the console,” said Bach.

In another interview, Brand Manager Kevin O’Leary revealed that the team is gunning for a solid 30 frames per second. “We always have a bare minimum of constant 30fps if not higher,” he said. “It’s always about that great quality experience, so if frame rate is something that we see is lagging, we’ll bring that back up.”

Footage of the game so far has had all of those components cranked up to eleven, but that doesn’t mean the console versions will look horrible without them. “What we’ll show on console doesn’t look worse than any other game out there,” said Bach. “It’s probably even better than every other game out there on console.”

It may not be the most confident take on the console versions, but it’s hard to imagine DICE slacking at this point. The consoles are still quite powerful when it comes to certain effects, and if Crysis 2 is anything to go by, taking advantage of that power is key. If the lighting effects, huge environments, and environment destruction are intact, a drop in quality might not be a big deal. Here’s hoping.