Hardline Miami: The Next Battlefield Is About Police

There's gonna be another Battlefield. Of course there's gonna be another Battlefield. The sun rises and falls, the grass sways innocently as worms make sweet, sweet wormlove below, and virtual men keep on shooting each other. Cut, print, put on repeat until sun collapses and time ends. Battlefield: Hardline, however, at least looks a little different. While EA's revealed very little at this point ("tune in during E3 yada yada yada blugggggh"), the focus appears to be on cops, robbers, SWAT teams, and the like. So Battlefield: Payday, basically.

EA made the sorta-announcement in the wake of a probably accurate leak that suggested a cops/robbers motif, classes with names like Enforcer, Mechanic, Operator, and Professional, and a new developer doing the honors.

Dead Space's resident evildoer Visceral is apparently in charge of this one, presumably freeing up DICE to continue hammering away on Battlefield 4 and - let's face it - probably work on Battlefield 5 proper. And also maybe Mirror's Edge 2, but I doubt we'll be seeing any more of that any time soon (please let me be wrong, please let me be wrong, please let me be wrong).

Battlefield: Hardline will get its official blowout reveal during EA's E3 conference on June 9th. I'll be there, so expect me to let you know all about it and/or send a series of passive-aggressively disappointed postcards.

I really do hope it's good, though. Even if Dead Space 3 landed with a wet thud, Visceral is an insanely talented developer, and Battlefield could use a gentle shove in a new direction. Well, newish. It's a different boyhood fantasy, at least. And in the realm of first-person shooters, that is tantamount to evolving a bristling swathe of new toes. Here's hoping for the best, as truly interesting multiplayer FPSes aren't the easiest thing to come by these days.