I returned full-time to EA and Visceral Games to co-Audio Direct Battlefield Hardline in 2014. I'd had a thought: I had been on a major title for every console transition since the original PlayStation launched. Watching from the sidelines as the PS4 and Xbox One launched struck me as very risky. I had an offer from Visceral to return, so I took it.
I want to note that I find certain aspects of Hardline problematic, and I did at the time, too. Suffice it to say that the situation was more nuanced than it probably seemed from the outside, but some of the reactions were fair enough. So while I harbored some ambivalence about the game, I gave it my best.
And I think the game sounds great, and the team did a terrific job. IGN said: "Battlefield has a history of looking and sounding excellent, and Hardline continues the tradition." Game Informer concurred with: "the sound effects provide the same aural thrills players expect from the series." WorthPlaying weighed in simply, "the sound is top-notch." And there were many others.
Hardline was nominated for "Best Audio" by GamesRadar, and "Audio of the Year" and "Sound Design of the Year" from GANG.
Hardline Dev Diary: Sound. (And speed?) Seek to 0:22.
Hardline shipped day-and-date on five platforms (PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC) and in nine languages. It has a surprising amount of voice in it (60k+ lines of dialogue), so it ended up being one of the most challenging localization projects I've ever been involved with -- for certain technical reasons there were well over a million files to manage in that process.
My focus on Hardline was Audio Directing the single-player campaign, but I did do sound design and implementation work on the DLC package Betrayal, too.
The game's standout multiplayer mode was called "Hotwire." Completely preposterous and over the top, but hilarious. In a sense, it just took advantage of what the game (for better or worse) did best: drive fast and blow stuff up.
The Battlefield franchise had inspired a long-running animated web series called Battlefield Friends (BFF). Of course, they took on Hardline, too. Even devs have to laugh at these things sometimes, and we all got a kick out of this one in particular. We started walking around the office going, "I wanna do the job!" Good times. (Please note, NSFW language):
Do you wanna do your job, or do you wanna make sense?