Thanks to several years of development and the creation of the Frostbite 2 engine, DICE and Electronic Arts are bringing a cutting edge visual experience to the first person genre this fall with Battlefield 3. With all of its power though, the game will admittedly not be as stellar on the consoles vs. the PC and that’s just a factor of the consoles’ tech vs. the latest and greatest PC hardware.

No matter the platform, Battlefield 3 will deliver industry-leading visuals and to showcase the game’s presentation and details, new screenshots, animation cells, storyboards and conceptual sketches have been released.

The game that was “designed to take [Call of Duty] down” brings not only brings back vehicles (including jets) and the ability to go prone (a la Call of Duty), but it also brings back destructible environments, another feature its competing franchise has yet to fully implement. Below are the descriptions of key things the gallery showcases:

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Frostbite 2 lets us use features such as dynamic radiosity, dynamic shadows, and deferred lighting on a big scale. Included are some examples of an environment where you can see just the lighting information, the actual light probes that control how light affects dynamic objects.

As you know, destruction will be a major part of Battlefield 3, both on a micro and and large scale. You saw the earthquake, and the hotel getting RPG’d at the end of Patrick Bach’s playthrough. One of the new destruction features we bring to Battlefield 3 are crumbling facades, as you can see in this 4-pic sequence from one of our levels (this destruction will be a feature both in SP and MP).

To see these still shots in action, watch the Battlefield 3-Inception mash-up trailer as well as these three single player videos:

  • Fault Line Episode I: Bad Part of Town Fault Line Episode II: Good Effect on Target Fault Line Epsiode III: Get That Wire Cut

The last trailer revealed that there are a full 12 minutes of in-game footage coming on April 17th, so stick around for your Battlefield fix and expect an official release date soon.

Battlefield 3 releases on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall, possibly on November 2nd.

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