How EA built the tension of being a cop into Battlefield: Hardline (interview)

Electronic Arts showed off the multiplayer version of Battlefield: Hardline this summer, but it has saved the description of the single-player campaign until now. The combat is true to EA’s Battlefield series, but the single-player game shows what happens when you apply that sort of fighting to the everyday street battles of cops and robbers.

And as a cop — even a street-hardened one — you can’t just go around shooting all of the suspects. So Battlefield Hardline’s creators added some interesting elements, like requiring you to hold a gun on a suspect — or face that prospect that the suspect will draw a gun on you. It’s even trickier when you’re facing two suspects in close quarters. Those are the types of situations that the game designers wanted to throw at players and make them sweat it out. You have to know when to use stealth, to go in flashing a badge, or to knock someone out from behind.