With its release date set for just two short weeks away on the 2 March, DICE are firing out a steady barage of information payloads concerning their upcoming DLC End Game. Today’s mortar contains details about the four new maps. Providing a list of the game modes they each support and also a little about the core design concepts that drove their development. Concepts like “SNOW” and “LOGGING”.*
Said details can be found under the break.
First up we have Operation Riverside, the autumnal level is split in two by a river that flows through a power station at the map’s centre. DICE blogger H Brun says that the map “caters somewhat towards infantry action rather than all-out vehicle warfare. It’s generally speaking an infantry-friendly landscape where soldiers can go by foot between the bases, while ground vehicles need to take more roundabout roads to traverse the environment.” Of the maps in End Game it is Riverside that we’ve seen the most of as its broken bridge dirt bike jump featured in some of the first videos of End Game.
It supports the returning game mode Capture the Flag, Air Superiority (which is a new mode for PC Battlefield games), Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch.
Next up we haveNebandan Flats. Set in an unassuming desert, the warehouse at the level’s centre sits atop a secret weapons depot. So while the surface capture points have little cover, making infantry advances somewhat hazardous, and lend themselves to vehicle assaults, the weapons lab will be hard fought over by the squaddies.
We’ve seen a little of Nebandan in one of the dirt bike trailers released recently.
It supportsCapture the Flag, Air Superiority, Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch.
Penultimately there’s the Kaiser Railroad. Set in summer time amid a central European forest turned over to the logging industry, the map is carved up by a snaking railway. Brun says that the railway is for “covert weapons deliveries”. Whether this is meant to be the lore of the map or players can board the train to travel across the map without being seen isn’t clear.
Kaiser Railroad welcomes dirt bikers though the jumps are more hidden then those on the other maps, as the ramps are natural geographical features which just happen to sloped ideally for big air.
I can’t think of any video that shows off a great deal of Railroad but a recent DICE blog post that goes into building jumps shows off a few images of the map.
It supportsCapture the Flag, Air Superiority, Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch.
Finally we have Sabalan Pipeline. This has been thequietestof the maps so far, with DICE showing little of it in videos or speaking of it dev blogs. It’s also perhaps one of the best looking maps in the upcoming DLC. Built up around a snowboundoil refinery, there’s a strong hint of Bad Company 2’s Port Valdez about it, it is made up of vehicle-hindering rocky terrain and only a few roads cutting through the landscape. This will allforce teams to try and hold these vital routes if they hope to transport captured flags back to their base.
It supportsCapture the Flag, Air Superiority, Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, Squad Deathmatch.
*Capitalisation may have been added for emphasis.