First of all, we need to forget about the travesty that was Battlefield 2142 and move on. The Battlefield franchise has provided us with some extremely entertaining games. 1942 and 2 were absolute classics in their own right. Vietnam was playable and even amusing, but it doesn’t hold a candle to Battlefield 2. 2142 just didn’t have the polish on it that the other games had. Battlefield 3 is set for release late next year and the rumors that are already circulating about it sound very good indeed.

Digital Battle was apparently sent a PDF that contained information about the upcoming release. We have no way to judge if it is authentic or not, it could very well be a hoax, but there is nothing outrageous included in the claims that would lead us to suspect that it is not genuine.

Everything is pointing towards a DX10 requirement which would leave XP users out in the cold. What gives this away is that OS support lists OSX and Windows Vista but not Windows XP. The graphics engine that is to be used is Frostbite DX. BF games have traditionally had some rather high system requirements.

On to the interesting stuff, it is claimed that there will be 48 different vehicles (24 for NATO and 24 for the MEC). There will be 34 different weapons, a total of 17 for each faction, which would suggest that perhaps there will be three weapons upgrades per player class. There will be quite a few other unlocks including different types of ammunition, body armor, helmets, camouflage and accessories. New stuff that looks interesting is the “Soldier” feature which allows avatar styling. They appear to have beefed up the communications a bit. The VOIP in BF2 was quite buggy, lets hope that BF3 works a little more smoothly.

What doesn’t really blow me away is that it is only shipping with eight maps. Eight maps gets boring pretty fast and I happen to believe that they limit the number so that they can sell more expansion packs. Give us a dozen maps to start off with. At least the maps are mostly urban, and large. They will need to be big to hold up to forty players per team.

A Beta launch is said to be coming in Summer 2008 and we can expect a teaser in January. That is of course if any of this is true. It is entirely possible that it is a hoax. EA has responded to the rumor but failed to either confirm or deny it.

Sources: Digitabattle via 1Up

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