Battlefield 4 Will Fix Sea Combat

Controlling the sea will be as vital as controlling the land and air in Battlefield 4, DICE said today. They outlined the game's fresh approach to naval combat in a new question-and-answer with fans.

In Battlefield 3, seafaring players were limited to motorboats or amphibious APC's. DICE has expanded the selection considerably in BF4. Players can now zip around on jet-skis or terrorize the waterways with attack boats such as the American RCB-90 or Chinese DV15 Interceptor.

The first vehicle customization screenshots gave us a glimpse at how powerful the attack boats could be. Depending on what loadout you chose, these boats are capable of taking out infantry, land vehicles, or aircraft. They're the tanks of the water.

The only thing more useless in BF3 than a boat was a swimming player. If you were in water more than waist-deep, you couldn't use any weapons. You were a free kill until you waded to the shore. This made it a bit pointless to eject out of an aircraft over water; your reward for your near-death experience was a five-minute swim to shore or a death on the way there. DICE plans to fix this in BF4 as well.

"If you need to bail out of your jet-ski or attack boat, now you’ll be able to dive underwater or sprint-swim away to escape pursuers. If the situation gets desperate, you’ll also be able to use one-handed weapons and one-handed gadgets while in water for the first time," the developer said.

This might actually be the most exciting aspect of BF4 for me, surpassing even Commander Mode and the enhanced destruction. DICE is smoothing out perhaps the roughest edge in the previous game. You've actually got a chance at surviving now if you're caught swimming. You can use your pistol to pop off a few rounds at enemy soldiers, or try to give them the slip. Maybe you can even swim up alongside enemy boats and plant C4? The sea just got very interesting. It's part of the battlefield instead of this dead zone you just have to swim or drive through.

Though DICE is keen on fixing naval combat, they're not neglecting the skies or shores. New air and land vehicles will be added to the game. China, a new playable faction, will have its own set of vehicles. DICE confirmed that the Type 99 MBT, ZFB-05 Armored Car, Z-9 Haitun Transport Heli and Z-10W Attack Heli will all be included in that faction's arsenal. The Z-10W can be seen in the screenshot above.

DICE will host a new Q&A about Battlefield 4 on every other Friday. For the next installment, they plan to talk about five-person squads as well as the four character classes. The studio will also shed some additional light on multiplayer.