Some FPS games – Half-Life, Doom, Counter-Strike – are intrinsically part of gaming and PC culture. There will always be a new Call of Duty. The legacy of erstwhile classics like Quake and Far Cry is settled forever. But for every totem to the genre's history, dozens of lesser-known, lesser-loved, or just lesser-played shooters slip into time's yawning chasm. The Battlefield series lives on, but one of its finest chapters, the Bad Company spinoffs from 2008 and 2010 respectively, are comparatively forgotten. For the true destruction physics devotees, the idea of Battlefield Bad Company 3 is as tantalizing as a new Titanfall – but feels similarly unlikely. On the contrary, the series' senior and lead designer, whose credits include Payday 2 and Metal Hellslinger, now tells PCGamesN that he's "right here."
Traditionally, Battlefield games feature real wars (or thinly disguised versions of real wars) and focus on frontline troops in the heat of the conflict. Guns are loud and frightening. Buildings, vehicles, and defensive positions explode when hit with rockets and grenades. Battlefield 3 is one of the best examples. Refreshingly self-serious, there are times where it feels like less of an Bad Company is different.
Part war game, part action-comedy, the eponymous bad company is a handpicked squad of military screw-ups dispatched on suicide missions. Compared to the mainline Battlefield series, the games are lighter and funnier. The gunfights are still large-scale and spectacular, but rather than screaming orders at one another, the characters – Marlowe, Redford, Sweetwater, and Haggard – trade quips and barbs.
It's been 14 years since Battlefield Bad Company 2, but anybody who played it almost certainly re having a blast. Now, David Goldfarb, the series' senior and lead designer, and creator of rock-music demon shooter Metal Hellslinger, talks about Bad Company coming back.
"I am right here," Goldfarb says. "They [EA] know where I am if they want to do one." Goldfarb currently works with and oversee The Outsiders, creator of Metal Hellslinger. While he says that "would love to do" another Bad Company theoretically, he also adds that he is happily committed to his current work. "I have a studio, a project, and a team," Goldfarb says.
Neverthless, speaking to PCGamesN, Goldfarb explains why the Bad Company spinoff series was distinctive from other shooters of the time, and how the team within EA DICE developed the game's identity.
"I think the Bad Company franchise was special because it didn't take itself seriously in the way many other games did," Goldfarb says. "It prioritized fun and was totally cool with being what it was. My personal angle was to always make what I liked, so Bad Company 2 was very much Raiders of the Lost Ark as a buddy picture, and the multiplayer leaned into Rush hard because that was what I liked the most.
"I can't speak for anyone else, but I know there was a collective feeling that we had our own identity for Bad Company, weird or not, and we were going to enjoy making it. It is actually something of a miracle we got to do it."
With regards to Bad Company 3, Goldfarb says that he "had started writing it and knew where it would take place." However, he is uncertain whether a new Bad Company game get approved today, given the current condition of mainstream development.
"There aren't games like [Bad Company] at that production quality anymore," Goldfarb says. "Most big productions will not take those bets because they believe they can look backwards to predict successes and looking backwards makes Bad Company and its humor and approach look like an anomaly.
"As with all these fucking places, that's why we don't see those kinds of games anymore, because economics and risk aversion and all the other shit turn people away from it. In many ways, Bad Company 2 was a perfect storm, though. I don't know if we could do it again like that."
If you miss Bad Company, you might want to try some of the other best multiplayer games ever made.
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