Paracel Storm
Set in the China sea the Paracel Storm map is based around a small group of islands and features full on naval assaults.
Think Kharg island meets Wake Island, meets a bucket full of meth amphetamine, and the bucket is on fire, and there's a grenade in the bottom of the bucket... Oh and the bucket is on a boat....and the boat is in a storm and the boats on fire, and.... well you get the idea...
Paracel Storm is very sea orientated and unlike the fore-mentioned Kharg and Wake island maps of Battlefield 3 which mainly used boats as a method of transport for getting to the fight, Paracel is all about the naval battles.
Control the sea control the world, the British knew it, and if your team want to control the map you had better know it too!
Paracel Storm has large open water for firing long range salvos Bismark style, and tight inter-island water ways which we're sure will play host to some frantic James Bond-esque boat chases!
Its not all about the wet stuff, air vehicles will play an important role. Jets such as the F-35 and J-20 will be battling for air supremacy, while helicopter gunships provide ground support. They wont have it their own way though, the rock, paper scissors element is alive and well and both sides get some pretty hardcore AA guns for tearing up the birds of prey.
Dice are bringing in a new game mode which they show cased on Paracel. Obliteration Mode as its known will give each team 3 bases scattered over the map to defend. A bomb appears in the center of the map and the teams race to capture the bomb and use it to destroy the enemy's bases. First team to destroy all of their enemy's bases win. While some die hard Battlefield fans will scream "if its not conquest or rush, it's not battlefield" we can see this mode really taking off! Dice say Obliteration was based on capture the flag which is no bad thing, some of our most intense matches have been playing CTF on Riverside.
One of the things that bought most of us to Battlefield was the desruction. The idea that the map I started a round on was completly different to the map at the end of the round, blew my mind the first time I played. This was something that felt lacking in BF3, sure the destruction looked pretty but it never altered the game like it did in previous titles. Dice thinks it has addressed this with what it calls Levolution. As each game progresses Levuolution uses the powerful Frost Bite 3 engine to change the dynamics of the match. For example when players destroy key features a skyscraper might tumble, a city begins to flood or day changes to night. On a more basic level bringing down a wall might open a new path through a building while at the same time blocking the road it was next to.
In Paracel Storm Levolution will bring in a tropical storm and cause battleships to run aground, wind turbines will fall while an island paradise turns into to disaster zone that would have the Red Cross panicking.
How this will ultimately effect real world game play only time will tell, but the future looks bright, or more to the point, bright then stormy......
