DICE explains why there hasn’t been a Battlefield Bad Company 3
While the Battlefield series has always been popular amongst first-person shooter fans, a spin-off had a surprising amount of success when it released in 2008. In fact, Bad Company had such a good reception that it spawned a sequel two years later that went on to sell over 12 million copies. Despite this, DICE and EA have never really spoken publically about the possibility of a third game in the series.
Even though EA have made it clear they would like more Battlefield games available, especially considering how long it takes to develop games in the main series, it would seem like a further Bad Company sequel would make sense. Yet the publisher has instead opted to go with Battlefield Hardline, even though they know fans would like another title in the spin-off series. Speaking to Eurogamer Karl-Magnus Troedsson said: “We hear those comments as well and see them. There were some people who were saying, ‘Why are you building Hardline? You should build Bad Company 3 instead.'”
However, this isn’t because DICE has an aversion of working on a Bad Company game, it’s just that they don’t really know how to go about making one. “We take all this into account when we think about the future, and do franchise strategy,” Troedsson added. “But there’s one thing that lingers with Bad Company that we’ve been asking ourselves: what is it that the people really liked about Bad Company?”
“Some people say they found the multiplayer controls faster and more direct. Some people liked the single-player and the characters and the humour. People love different things about it. It’s starting to almost get to that place where, if we were to make a sequel to Bad Company, what would than even imply?”
“It’s scary to go back and try to remake an old fan favourite when actually no-one can really put their finger on what it is people love. Bringing back the characters and creating a great single-player out of that, sure, I can understand that. But some people say this: the Bad Company 2 multiplayer is the best you’ve ever done. Okay, why is that? It’s hard for people to articulate what that is, which is actually hard for us. It would be hard to remake something like that. Can we do it? Of course, we have our theories when it comes to the multiplayer.”