The upcoming issue of Game Informer may be of some importance to Battlefield 3 hopefuls all over.

In our world-exclusive cover story, Game Informer unveils the first numbered entry in the Battlefield series since 2005. Many longtime fans are wondering, "what took so long?!" DICE has honed the concept for the true sequel for years, but it wasn't until the company developed the powerful new Frostbite 2 engine that it felt all the pieces were in place to create a proper follow-up. Armed with powerful upgrades like deferred rendering, real-time radiosity, a new animation system borrowed from the EA Sports label, and an exponential leap in destructibility, executive producer Patrick Bach dubs Frostbite 2 "the best piece of technology on the market when it comes to building games."

* Prone
* Jets
* 64 Players for PC
* 24 Players for consoles
* Modern/Urban combat across the globe including Tehran, Paris, and New York
* Vehicle warfare (including sea)
* Destruction
* Drag fallen teammates to safety
* Single player campaign
* USMC, EU, Russian, and MEC (or variant) factions
* No Windows XP support
* PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3
* Battlefield 3 Limited edition copy announced at GDC '11

Yes give it now, more than 64 players would be just mayhem with all jets and helis - one bombing run and 30 kills at once ? 64 is damn fine. And tbh BF2 was best playable with no more than 40.

no windows xp support? will still run on it right?

Nope, it won't have DX9 support.

well fuck it then... i will play something else.

ha.....ha!

Judging by how "well" pc version of bad company 2 was coded its a great move to have only dx10+ support, will probably require i7 as minimum req. 128 player servers would be so unplayable, imagine 64 players on one team with no more than hmm 15-20 vehicles ? Rest would be just spamming noobtubes or grenades with support 64 players servers in bf2 were unplayable on some maps ( karkand, mashtuur, sharqi ), when one team was down to 1-2 flags it was just spam madness.

-Aiming for CY Q4 2011 release
-Concept for BF3 has been in the works for years, waiting on proper tech to seamlessly come together
-Frosbite 2.0 is the culmination of this tech, entirely re-written
-Lighting sounds neat, one "probe" contains more lighting information than an entire BFBC2 level.
-Level destruction is going to be "believable" but basically everything is destructible.
-Character animations powered by ANT, what EA Sports uses.
-AI characters and multiplayer characters have different animation sets
-No more "gliding" animations that look off, animation realism is a focus
-Captured their own war audios (bullets, tanks, helicopters, etc) at different distances to ensure realism
-Better audio cues for certain actions, more easily able to listen for threats
-Plan on better, more immediate post release content
-More unlocks than BFBC2
-Dice trying to find a good balance between customization of your character and not having "pink rabbit hat(s)"
-4 classes
-Will talk about squads "later"
-Looking into a theater mode but can't talk about it
-Will have co-op
-There will be a kill-cam but it can be turned off
-BF3's team is almost twice as big as the team for BFBC2
-They want the pacing of the single player mode to be balanced, with highs and lows. Makes the comparison to a song vs a guitar solo.
-Part of the single player mode takes place in Sulaymaniyah - Iraqi Kurdistan.
-"****" will be used often, so M rated for sure
-There will be an earthquake in a level. The destruction sounds very impressive. 7 story building collapses, looks very well done
-Significant narrative that goes with the SP mode
-More than one setting, you're not in the middle east for the whole game
-PC version is lead version
-Why 64 players for PC only? No complains from the console crowd.
-No mod tools at release. Maybe none down the line either. Frostbite 2.0 is complex and mods tools would have to be dumbed down, so does Dice really want to put their time to that or would it be better spent elsewhere?
-Original story, not based on Bad Company at all.

so... i only have to upgrade my os? i wouldn't have to buy any new hardware would i?
(im at work so i cant post my spec)

well i might be able to get w7 pro for 16quid, as we know a guy who makes the keys at MS.

I've got a quad core, 4gb ram and a gtx295, so, that should run a 64bit os right?

Yes and that is a total fail, cause it makes medics rambo style combat-heal-revive own everything class. Also it makes assault have ammo packs allowing them to spam tubes. 7 class design of bf2 was perfectly ok