If you were a Battlefield 2 player, you no doubt fondly remember many a match fought on Dragon Valley. It was a huge, sprawling map with more capture zones than any other, and two destructible bridges for some epic conflict. DICE recently asked Battlefield 4 players what classic map they’d like to see remade, and the answer was Dragon Valley. So it’s coming to BF4 this winter in a free DLC pack.
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The map has been updated in a few small ways to ensure it fits in alongside the modern Battlefield maps. Back in the early 2000s when Battlefield 2 was released, draw distances were barely further than your nose, so long-distance firefights weren’t an issue. Now draw distances are huge, if Dragon Valley was just recreated wholesale there’d be nothing to prevent stupid map-wide sniping. To fix this, terrain verticality has been increased, with terrain occlusion (more trees and stuff) offering a replacement for short draw distances. There’s also a dynamic cloud layer that fogs far distances, and also offers a separation between air and ground. DICE claim that dogfights above cloud-level in jets “looks really, really cool”.
Those bridges are back of course, and will no doubt look spectacular when exploding in the Battlefield 4 engine. The Conquest set-up has more capture flags than any other Battlefield 4 map to mimic the feel of old-school Dragon Valley. Vehicle spawns are slightly asymmetrical to mimic Conquest Assault. And these days, Rush can be played on the map, which offers a very different take on the game mode.
The Dragon Valley map will come as part of the Legacy Operations DLC, which will be free to all players when it releases alongside the Holiday Update later this year.