Battlefield 3: "no supervillains"
DICE doesn't want to pick sides.
Battlefield 3 won't follow fellow military shooter Call of Duty's lead and feature cackling Russian supervillains, developer DICE has said.
"No, no supervillains," executive producer Patrick Bach told Edge.
"But you still want your enemy to be clear; you still want your player character to have a clear motivation - that's something we're working on to find the right balance."
Neither will Battlefield 3 court controversy with an overtly political message contained within its globetrotting campaign, which sees US troops involved in a Russian invasion of France.
"First of all: it's fiction," Bach insisted.
"We're not trying to base it on any political or religious conflict - controversy is probably a good marketing tool, but we make games.
"Our goal isn't to make controversy. I don't want people to feel bad playing our game. Our goal is to create a fun, entertaining experience. So we are trying to stay away from things that are real - authentic and real don't have to be the same thing."
Bach said DICE, as a Swedish developer, is "neutral on paper".
"We have a tendency to not take sides. I think that reflects in our games. When we say Russians versus Americans, it's like Red versus Blue.
"We try not to depict the reasons for the war, because then it can end up in a very bad place. We depict it from the perspective of an individual rather than an army - it's about you as a soldier on the battlefield, because no matter who you are or on what side you are, it's still drama.
"I don't want to create a war simulation or a game which picks sides. I think that would be tasteless."