DICE: Battlefield 3 Is The First Game 'In The Next Generation'

We showed you exactly why earlier this morning. DICE's Frostbite engine is really pushing boundaries this time, with some outrageously speculative lighting and animation. In fact, DICE cites the engine as the reason for the very reason for the game taking so long — the developer refused to make the game until the right tech was in place. Frostbite 2 was the solution. "The short answer is this: No other engine can build a Battlefield game."

"If you don't have the right tech, you can't build the right experience," DICE executive producer Patrick Bach added. While competitive tech such as the Unreal Engine and CryEngine are built to be resold, Frostbite's reason for existence is purely to create Battlefield games.

Bach's so proud of Frostbite 2 that he reckons his studio are the "first ones in the next generation". Of course, those concerned that the experience won't scale to the PlayStation 3 should rest easy. "We're streaming all the data. There's not a single frame where nothing streams. From textures to objects to weapons to sounds and animations ... it scales down pretty well. All of the core systems will use streaming, so it's more of a question of how often you have to stream, and how big are those packages. The engine is built with that taken into account." In other words — you won't need a computer the size of your living room to get the game running.