As the next generation of home consoles looms, one of the most exciting prospects for tech enthusiasts is what rendering technologies these platforms will shepherd in the form of next generation game engines. While most game engines over the last seven years have been built near exclusively with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation hardware ceilings in mind, next generation engines are unshackled from these limitations, promising rendering of significantly more complex lighting and shadows, post processing effects, highly detailed geometry and textures, and other wonderful technologies such as procedural destruction, deeper physics engines, larger environments, greater multiplayer player counts, and more.
And though every developer out there is tinkering away at their own next generation engines for future games, it’s arguably DICE who is leading the charge right out the gate with their in-house developed game engine: Frostbite 3. To get a great look at what Frostbite 3 spearheads in its debut title Battlefield 4 later this year, check out the DICE engine interview overview video below.
In the past, Frostbite has stood as a DICE-specific rendering engine and tool set, almost exclusively used in the studio’s own games. However, with Frostbite 3 both DICE and EA aim to integrate the engine and workflow into their entire business structure and development outlook. Or, to be more specific, Frostbite 3 is more than an engine to power Battlefield 4; it’s an engine to power almost every franchise, new and old, under the EA banner.
Frostbite 3 has already been picked up by several EA subsidiaries for use in their own games. The newly founded Ghost Games is using Frostbite 3 as the cornerstone for their Need for Speed: Rivals, meanwhile the ever delightful PopCap Games are using the engine to power Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. Both of these titles too will release later this year. BioWare and Visceral Games too have adopted Frostbite 3, the former making use of the engine for 2014’s Dragon Age: Inquisition as well as the yet-to-be-revealed future of Mass Effect, meanwhile the latter will make use of the engine’s capabilities to create a brand new Star Wars game.
But end of the day, Frostbite 3 calls home at DICE, where it will be used to power not only Battlefield 4, but also Mirror’s Edge 2, and the studio’s own creative vision of the Star Wars: Battlefront franchies.
Aimed at pushing both PC and next generation consoles to the limits with an advanced destruction engine, massive maps, and 64 player mayhem, Battlefield 4 will be the first taste of Frostbite 3, and be available to gamers come 31 October 2013 on PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions to launch alongside the arrival of each of the systems.
