Battlefield 3: Eight Minutes Of Tank

Ratta-tat boom and all those noises.
Missed the tank bit from Battlefield 3 that everyone was talking about? It’s below. Highlights include a dinosaur, a glimpse of tank interior, a subsequent air-strike, some poor fella tumbling out of a stricken tank on fire, and so, so many explosions. The question for me is whether we can expect multiplayer battles with similar vehicular carnage. If we’re going to get 64-player maps, then will we also get a heavily tanky multiplayer version of this sequence?


That’s angry housing.

70 Comments

  1. 09/06/2011 at 09:20 Valvarexart says:

    They added dinosaurs. The game will now sell better than Modern Warfare 3.

    link to i.imgur.com

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:23 max pain says:

      Stuff like this is great.

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:28 Nallen says:

      haha, grinned so hard when I got to the bottom of that :D

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:34 Holybasil says:

      I chuckled whole heartedly.

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:37 MonkeyMonster says:

      *grin* :D

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:38 Gorgol says:

      :D My interest meter for the game climbs.

      BTW, do you think that was an on purpose reference to that by DICE? :o

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:44 jon_hill987 says:

      Show me a man who does not think more dinosaurs would improve CoD and I will show you a man who is lying.

      Also: It would not surprise me if DICE were referring to that thread, not if the other digs at Activision/CoD during that conference were anything to go by.

    • 09/06/2011 at 09:56 Valvarexart says:

      link to twitter.com

      Scroll down a little bit. Or do Ctrl+F “dino”. You will shit brix.

    • 09/06/2011 at 10:09 JackShandy says:

      Shit! My bricks!

    • 09/06/2011 at 10:58 Davee says:

      This made my day ^^

      Good one, 4chan/DICE.

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:08 Pemptus says:

      It’s little things like that make me love the internet.

      Then I go to Youtube and accidentally read some comments and it’s back to normal.

    • 09/06/2011 at 12:13 McDan says:

      Oh wow, that thread is hilarious. They are totally right though, battlefield 3 will be the better game, because it has dinosaurs! When will activision learn.

    • 10/06/2011 at 00:46 Tams80 says:

      Well, think we can conclude you can’t beat dinosaurs.

  2. 09/06/2011 at 09:38 Gorgol says:

    Reply fail :/

  3. 09/06/2011 at 09:38 SpaceAkers says:

    I’m sure there will be some tanky maps. A good battlefield tank run is a thing of beauty and joy, for sure. I’d like to see maps with 6 or so tanks per side. Could get unbalanced pretty fast, but unbalanced matches have sort of always been a part of the battlefield experience.
    Also, the graphics in this game are just insane. best looking manshoot ever, no doubt. I look forward to running it on low!

  4. 09/06/2011 at 09:39 wodin says:

    Superb stuff…animation and graphics have come on loads in the last two or three years…

    I do hope the campaign is a abit longer this time though.

    • 09/06/2011 at 12:19 syntax says:

      I heard 20hrs of gameplay (probably including co-op) thrown around somewhere.

  5. 09/06/2011 at 09:44 Rossi says:

    Anyone get the feeling the guy demoing it had god mode enabled? ;) I’m not sure the tanks can sustain that many hits!

    Looks brilliant though. I think I need to book all of my holiday off work just to play this :)

    • 09/06/2011 at 10:28 wengart says:

      If those enemy tanks are indeed T-72s as was said then those Abrams could take frontal hits all day long without suffering any catastrophic damage.

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:04 StoneMason says:

      Of course each enemy tank takes multiple hits from the AI Abrams without brewing up. Just like Bad Company, it’s up to the player to kill every single target.

    • 09/06/2011 at 12:10 p34ce says:

      Export/indigenously produced T-72s are known to be poor in the face of western technology (e.g. first Gulf War, the Iraqi Asad Babil).

      There was one case in Iraq several years ago where a UK Challenger 2 MBT survived 70+ RPG hits and suffered minimal damage. The biggest danger to M1A2 tank crews is mean time between failures (MTBF), I heard an anecdote once about M1A1s-A2s having an MTBF of around 8 hours.

      Game looks amazing, nice to see they are using proper tank terminology, reminds me of Armored Fist 3.

  6. 09/06/2011 at 09:50 lurkalisk says:

    BF3 has tanks, tanks.

    This is good.

  7. 09/06/2011 at 10:06 Sonicberry says:

    I honestly couldn’t care for BF3 or military shooters in general, but with these graphics, I can’t help but wonder what DICE will do with Mirror’s Edge 2 sometime in the unforeseeable future.

  8. 09/06/2011 at 10:09 RogB says:

    that looks FANTASTIC, but looks to be falling into the linear COD heavily scripted rollercoaster trap. (in its defense, it looks like the first time tutorial)

    i’d pay good money for a game that was ENTIRELY tank based, in that amazing engine.
    unfortunately it seems tanky sims dont sell anymore. :(
    anyone know if this will be moddable?

  9. 09/06/2011 at 10:12 Dana says:

    Yep, single player. Again.

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:01 Davee says:

      It’s looking good, but no, more SP footage I do not want.

      Come on DICE, why are you torturing us like this?! More MP footage please!

    • 09/06/2011 at 22:57 Gadriel says:

      They’re likely holding back on in-depth MP footage because it’s going to take a lot more testing and tweaking to meet community expectations. People are so picky about the most minute details in their MP shooters that a fair slice of their customer base might develop bad first impressions from analyzing alpha MP footage and freaking out about “OMFG PRONING IS 0.32ms TOO FAST! DON’T BUY THIS SHITTY GAME!”

    • 11/06/2011 at 01:13 siliciferous says:

      We’re going to get a multiplayer beta. If you’re really that skeptical, just don’t pre-order until the Internet explodes with opinionating on that.

  10. 09/06/2011 at 10:24 MajorManiac says:

    Very nice. With the Battlefield 3 music I get a real Terminator vibe from these trailers.

  11. 09/06/2011 at 10:39 tameimpala says:

    In spite of my misgivings towards to the campaign mode of battlefield, this looks ossum!

  12. 09/06/2011 at 10:41 Kaira- says:

    I don’t understand what people see in this, but on the other hand, I never really enjoyed BF2, so that may have something to do with it.

  13. 09/06/2011 at 10:57 Kakrafoon says:

    I would like some more love for the tanks in BF 3. In Bad Company 2, several things icked me:

    – You needed to waste your perk slot if you wanted to use the coaxial machine gun; you also needed to give up your perk slot for smoke launchers. I know it would have ruined the balance with the tracer/lock-on mechanisms for the RPGs because smoke terminates an active tracer lock, but I found them silly anyway. I think a coax mg and smoke launchers and the zoom optics should be standard equipment for every tank. Just give the smoke a very long cooldown time, and you’re good.

    – In the tanks or the Bradley/BMD-3, vehicular perks only worked from the driver’s position. Also, vehicular perks didn’t stack; it would have been a nice incentive to crew vehicles with two different perks if combining them would have been allowed. For some reason it worked in the helicopter, with the laser trace for the gunner and the guided missiles for the pilot. Why was the perk that would have been absolutely useful for gunners, the electronic warfare package for detecting sneaky infantry, restricted to the driver? The driver should have been free to choose something to increase the overall oomph of the tank, like heavy armour or harder-hitting warheads, while the gunner ideally would have chosen the infantry detector.

    – One last thing: If you are going with vehicular perks again, dear DICE, then at least give me some teeny-tiny ui icon that tells me which perks are currently active in my vehicle.

  14. 09/06/2011 at 10:59 Raiyan 1.0 says:

    A question: the ’60Hz’ on the HUD in the screenshot – it’s the frequency to what exactly?

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:05 Davee says:

      The frequency of comments on BF3 at this very moment.

      Honestly I don’t know, some on-board equipment on the tank or just there for show. Probably the latter?

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:46 Gorgol says:

      Maybe its referring to the frame rate? Now don’t go raging that the units of frames per second are abbreviated as fps, because that would be incorrect. Frames are not a physical unit and so cannot be denoted, therefore the correct and physical way of denoting the units of frame rate is Hz, having units of 1/s. If it is referring to the frame rate then kudos to DICE once again!

      On second thoughts it is more probable and makes more sense that it is referring to the tank’s HUD refresh rate, which in this case could be cleverly equivalent to the above, and so perhaps both my guesses are correct.

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:47 The Hammer says:

      Isn’t it the frequency of the ‘screen’ that the tank gunner looks through?

    • 09/06/2011 at 12:12 p34ce says:

      That’s the Gunner’s Primary Sight (GPS) refresh rate.

  15. 09/06/2011 at 11:04 CaspianRoach says:

    You know what this game needs? Some classic Battlefield music.

    • 09/06/2011 at 11:06 Davee says:

      Indeed. I though I was about to hear the good old link to youtube.com when the vid first started. I was disappoint. It’s a great theme and I hope they use it more (remixes are fine too)!

  16. 09/06/2011 at 11:42 neolith says:

    Want. Now.

  17. 09/06/2011 at 11:45 tomeoftom says:

    I really respect DICE for their attention to sound design. Absolutely fantastic stuff.

  18. 09/06/2011 at 11:46 AfternoonTea says:

    Yep, looks like a boring scripted single player hollywood shooter to me. I don’t know any PC gaming friend who cares at all about the singleplayer to this game.

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    09/06/2011 at 12:19 Joshua says:

    Sigh. Everyone is getting hyped up on the graphics… But does it have good gameplay? I couldn’t care less about the graphics…

  20. 09/06/2011 at 12:27 Gnoupi says:

    The sounds at the end remind me of some movie: link to youtube.com

  21. 09/06/2011 at 13:27 squirrel says:

    While they were marketing so much on the multiplayer sector of Bad Company 2 and remaining almost silent on singleplayer, I was always disappointed. Now I really regret that I had once hold such thought. This time EA seems having forgotten about multiplayer sector (including simulated multiplayer through bot support), which is the soul of the franchise. They have released so many trailers / demo gameplays, but with only a shorter than 3 minutes trailer on multiplayer gameplay. I watched some videos interviews of those playing multiplayer in E3, and from those videos the game is awfully similar with MW (be it 1 or 2). I sincerely hope that this is not the reason DICE doesnt put up more full screen cut scenes of multiplayer as the game development has reached its latest stage.

    This is the trailer for me to make up my mind purchasing BC2:

    and the outcome is more than fulfilling my expectation. I am expecting much more from Battlefield 3.

    BTW, would that greater battelfield after the capture of the small rocket base also part of the gameplay? I want to pilot those B1 bombers and give them hell!!

    • 09/06/2011 at 20:31 shaydeeadi says:

      Watching that video made me realize how horrific Cold War would of been with all them vehicles chuggin’ about.

  22. 09/06/2011 at 15:23 Red_Serpent says:

    I seriously hope they are modelling BF3 after its excellent predecessor BF2 and not after the spin-off BC2.
    I haven’t played any of the BC games but I do still play BF2 and I like to see the franchises kept separated. Old school is best school ^^

    Tank-action does look top notch!

    [ I support Com-rose, Commander, BF2 factions, mod tools & public server files]

    • 09/06/2011 at 17:11 bonjovi says:

      actually i found BC2 more enjoyable. Only beef i have is that maps have too many choke points. BF2 strength was in flankabilty XD (is that a word?)

    • 09/06/2011 at 21:47 godwin says:

      You seem to suggest that BC2 wasn’t itself excellent. It’s an evolution, stuff from BF2’s going in, as is stuff from BC2. Surely you don’t expect DICE to ignore everything they had learned and developed from the past 5 years?

      It also seems like lots of people are complaining that the maps are small and COD-like. It’s Rush mode.

  23. 09/06/2011 at 19:43 Christian says:

    Hmmm..I don’t know. While I’m really excited about the game (loved the BF-franchise so far), this trailer actually makes me less interested in BF3.
    The repeating background chatter (‘Yeah, hit it again’ or something along those lines) over and over again. The straight shooting (no bullet drop due to gravity?) and the target-painting-sequence. If I want to play this kind of game, I’ll buy CoD.
    Don’t get me wrong: the graphics: wow. And dinosaurs! Also, the other trailers with combat in a city: just great, hooray! But this is just..I don’t know- Been there, done that.

    I guess I just want to say: I really want to see some multiplayer already. And I hope the tank-battles are just an exception to the gameplay..

    • 10/06/2011 at 12:37 My2CENTS says:

      BF3 would most certainly have bullet drop, you can actually see a small drop in the clip when the tank is aiming. However im positive they won’t do the stupid mistake to remove the bullet drop.

    • 11/06/2011 at 10:31 Hides-His-Eyes says:

      Bullet drop due to gravity in a tank is one of those things that people think would be realistic but actually isn’t. The projectiles are fired very fast and drop very little.

  24. 09/06/2011 at 20:04 banski83 says:

    Moar dinosaurs.

  25. 11/06/2011 at 01:39 suibhne says:

    Can someone explain to me why the copious amounts of air support couldn’t take out the rocket platforms?

    • 11/06/2011 at 02:55 Muzman says:

      They’re A-10s. Just be glad they didn’t completely miss the killzone and spray friendlies all afternoon.

  26. 11/06/2011 at 14:13 Neurotic says:

    “…prosecuting enemy dismounts.” – love it! :D

  27. 13/06/2011 at 07:11 HeavyHarris says:

    This looks so good I reacted in shock when that Abrams got lit up around 5:50. “Ah fuck, oh shit” were my exact words when I saw those men flail out of the tank aflame. I wonder what happens to humanity when people can’t tell if they’re looking at a movie or a video game anymore. Hmm.

  28. 05/07/2011 at 13:45 Kakrafoon says:

    They are making this so realistic that it is easy to forgive that in reality, the Abrams’ has a fire control system that is a bit more sophisticated than “just aim a bit above and in front of the target…”. Still, it would be kind of unfair in multiplayer to have stabilized guns that can fire on the move and hit another moving target two kilometers away..
    To be perfect, tanks in Battlefield 3 should have:
    – smoke launchers and a coax mg that don’t have to be activated by a perk
    – a driver, a gunner and one guy manning the turret mg
    – a small delay when entering the vehicle, and real interior movement sequences when changing position inside the tank