Battlefield 3

Let's go back to Karkand.

"You can only die once. Make sure it is worth it."

—Dmitri 'Dima' Mayakovsky

Be advised: You are now entering the Battlefield 3 page.

Battlefield 3 is the latest of the Battlefield series, and a sequel to the 2005 game Battlefield 2. Although technically it is only the 2nd game in the series and does not fit into the same timeline as any other game in the series, it is the 19th installment in the overall Battlefield franchise. It was released on October 25, 2011.

It is a First-Person Shooter with a heavy emphasis on multi-player action and the use of all types of combat vehicles including tanks, jets and helicopters, as well as improving on the infantry experience of its predecessors. It has deep persistence using the Battlelog internet server browser and game manager. Despite the emphasis being on the multi-player, it also includes a 6 to 8 hour long single-player storyline campaign, set in 2014. It involves a new faction taking power in Iran and weaves an international story through a series of flashbacks based on the recollections of Staff Sergeant Henry "Black" Blackburn, a US Marine. He is trying to stop an attack on New York City, but locations involve Iraq, Iran and Paris, among others. It also includes a Co-Op game mode.

It was released on PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation, although as the console hardware has become long in the tooth, PC is the lead platform. Its multi-player has the ability to have 64 players in a server, with the console versions having only 24.

---

Be advised: Spotted a number of tropes in your AO.

General Tropes

• Anti-Air: Campaign mode has one mission where the player is tasked with engaging an attacking Su-25 attack jet with a Stinger missile and another where you must destroy enemy anti-air batteries in preparation for an allied airstrike. In multi-player mode you can man anti-aircraft vehicles such as the Tunguska.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Civilian cars explode violently after shooting them with an entire magazine from an assault rifle or a few shots from a heavy machine gun or autocannon, making them a major hazard on the battlefield. Drivable military vehicles are more durable, but still explode after enough damage.
• Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: DICE certainly thinks so. Not only do you have the figurine in the campaign, you can have a dinosaur dog tag for the multi-player, and Wake Island even has an Easter Egg with more dinosaur figurines. The fascination is explained in a developer's tweet.
• First Person Ghost: Averted. You can see your legs when jumping down, mantling rails, or looking down while walking. You can also see your soldier's hands when crawling on the ground.
• Gun Porn: With plenty of Gun Accessories too.
• Lens Flare: The single-player has some lights in the night missions. Multi-player has some really bad ones though. Trying to assault the TV Tower on the Sharqi Peninsula map can be an exercise in frustration as you get cut down by people you simply can't see properly because of the massive lens flare that comes directly from behind the building.
• One Bullet Clips: Barring the Bad Company spinoffs, it's notable that this is the first main entry in the series to implement One Bullet Clips instead of the traditional magazine count. Unlike most games however, Battlefield 3 does keep track of whether or not there's a round in the chamber, meaning reloading from empty will net you, say, 30 rounds instead of 31 and take longer due to the character chambering a round.
• Post Processing Video Effects: And gratuitous applications of it. Really evident during night levels. The PC version even has two anti-aliasing settings which control the sampling and a post-processing filter on top to soften out the overall image.
• Quick Melee: There is the standard version of it, the "press the button and stab with one motion". That takes at least two swipes to kill someone however. If the player does it from behind a player, they will preform a takedown move instead, which kills in one stab and awards the player with the victim's dogtags.
• Qurac: Averted. All locations are real and named.
  • Played straight with Karkand.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Just about every US soldier in the game sports a fine shemagh, but a special example goes to the US multi-player sniper for wearing his wrapped around his head in the traditional manner.
  • Don't forget the Russian recon's bandana.
• Shout-Out: Played with some of the Dog Tags, Weapons and Assignment names:
  • In the dog tags: Ace Of Spades comes with a song quote, Cause of Death is called a "fishy abbreviation" (and comes with fish bones on it), and then there's HAGS WAS HERE, of course. Plus extra logos of EA games you might already own. Back to Karland added a Dog Tag named Diving Dolphin, featuring a prone dolphin with a helmet and an M4, in a callback to Battlefield 2's Game Breaker tactic.
  • Some of the Assignments released with Back To Karkand and Close Quarters are shout outs. "Professional Russian" to unlock the L85A2 is a shoutout to YouTube gun and weapon video maker FPS Russia. The PP-19 and Jackhammer assignments were called "Familiar Territory" and "Scared Veteran" as those guns were from Battlefield 2. The SCAR-L assignment in Close Quarters is called "Set us up the bomb".
• Shown Their Work: Well, whoever worked on this piece of artwork for Battlefield 3 apparently did, considering what off-duty soldiers found in it.
• Tech Demo Game: Battlefield 3 doesn't support Direct X 9, hence it can't run on Windows XP. It is arguably one of the first applications that will have a real impact in driving people to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. The console versions have 4 rows of pixels on the top and bottom of the screen blacked out to speed up performance while maintaining graphical fidelity, since you mostly won't notice the blacked-out rows anyway.
• Tie-in Novel: Battlefield 3: The Russian, a continuation of said game's single-player campaign written by military writer/former SAS operator Andy McNab.
• Unorthodox Reload: Totally averted. Every weapon is reloaded correctly. From the .44 Magnum, with which the player will properly eject the casings with the ejector rod and insert new cartridges with a speed loader, and close the chambers with his thumb to prevent misalignment; to every shotgun, where when loaded from empty the first shell is put directly into the chamber via the breach. The only thing that could be considered unorthodox would be reloading the AN-94 or AEK-971, where the player pushes the magazine release with a new magazine and flicks the old magazine out of the way, but even this method of reloading is legitimate.

Campaign Tropes

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: Yes, there are laser-guided JDAMs, and yes, the Hornet's backseater can cue all the weapons.
• Air Vent Passageway: In Operation Swordbreaker you have to go through one in order to defuse a bomb.
• America Saves the Day: Averted. The US military is not only involved in battling against the PLR. Russian GRU Spetsnaz commandos are also involved in trying to stop Solomon from bombing Paris with a nuke.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Captain Cole's leadership style is like this. Exemplified by the American side in the "Rock and a Hard Place" mission.
• Back to Front: Dima's playable levels are in reverse chronological order; the penultimate level "Kaffarov" is played mostly as Dima (the last portion has the player as Blackburn being confronted by Dima) and is set after, while the first level where you play as Dima is set between "Kaffarov" and the interrogation / "The Great Destroyer."
• Bald Black Leader Guy: Cole is actually a subversion of this. He's the only black character in the story, and he has a deep, strong voice not unlike Sergeant Foley's, but he turns out to be The Neidermeyer and gets countless Marines killed before being fragged by Blackburn.
• Blue Eyes: The player, Sgt. Blackburn
• Camera Lock On: Using the HARM, JDAM and heat-seeking missiles in "Going Hunting".
• Cassandra Truth: The CIA doesn't believe Blackburn's story, since he allegedly killed his commanding officer and that Solomon is a CIA informant.
• Check Point Starvation: The checkpoints are few and far between, and some of them are set before a scripted event, so you have to redo the entire scripted event and/or slaughter entire armies again to gain back progress because of one stray RPG or a lucky bullet.
• Combat Breakdown: Through most of the game, you fight with assault rifles, machine-guns, tanks and jets against enemies armed with assault rifles, machine-guns, tanks and jets. By the final battle, you are fistfighting the Big Bad and beating his head in with a brick.
• Coup De Grace Cutscene: The final fight with Solomon is a QTE in the middle of Times Square, with a crowd watching, while you beat him to a pulp with a brick.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: When Blackburn meets Dima, you have to kill the friendly soldier that discovers the two of you in order to continue.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to Bad Company 2, which itself was Darker and Edgier than Bad Company 1.
• Dies Wide Open: Al-Bashir
• The Dog Shot First: Cole will kill you and Dima if you don't shoot him. Then again, you and Blackburn have absolutely no way of knowing this if you do shoot first like you're supposed to.
• Don't Ask, Just Run: A variant in "The Great Destroyer", where you climb out of the sewers after a long firefight aboard a train when suddenly Montes, who was last seen shouting at you to jump on the train, shows up in a hijacked police car and says "Don't ask. Get in."
• Elites Are More Glamorous:
  • Dima is ex-Spetsnaz, and a member of the Vympel unit (the Spetsnaz's best) at that, before becoming a GRU agent.
  • Blackburn is an aversion. He's a U.S. Marine, though he's part of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, not an elite group like Force Recon.
• Enemy Chatter
• Eyes of Gold: Dave Montes
• Fatal Family Dinosaur Figurine
• Fighter Launching Sequence: The start of "Going Hunting" which even runs through the pre-flight checks.
• Fission Mailed: The end of "Fear No Evil" where Miller is captured by the PLR.
• Foregone Conclusion: We all know that the US and Russia are at war in multi-player.
• Foreshadowing: Al-Bashir reveals that Solomon had betrayed him, and also states that Solomon "uses everybody", like how he used Al-Bashir and the PLR for his own ends. It's later revealed that Solomon is a CIA informant.
• Good Cop, Bad Cop: The two CIA agents interrogating Blackburn definitely play the part. The grey-haired interrogator is very confrontational to Blackburn, while the bald one is calmer. Neither are willing to give Blackburn the time of day.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: When playing as Miller, after finishing the final objective, the enemy will send endless wave of mooks, and later waves are invulnerable.
• How We Got Here: The starting mission, "Semper Fidelis," starts near the end of the game, and the interrogation itself is set before the final level, "The Great Destroyer," slightly before the start. The rest of the campaign is told in the form of flashbacks during the interrogation (just like Call of Duty: Black Ops) of Staff Sergeant Blackburn's events in chronological order.
• Hypocrite: Before his throat is cut, the tank driver Miller is the hostage in a video of a terrorist who calls shame on the Americans for invading their country and killing their people and having the gall to call them terrorists, yet these same terrorists have set off a nuke in Paris and used the opportunity of an earthquake to launch a terrorist-sponsored coup.
• Ink Suit Actor: One of the government agents that investigates Blackburn is a spitting image of voice actor Glenn Morshower. As Morshower is well known as Aaron Pierce, Presidential Bodyguard on 24, this is also a case of Hey, It's That Guy!.
  • The same thing is true of Dima, who is the spitting image of his voice actor, Oleg Taktarov of Predators fame, and Blackburn, who looks like Gideon Emery with shorter hair.
    • Dima's character model is indeed based on Oleg Taktarov, but he's actually voiced by André Sogliuzzo.
  • All major characters are based on their voice actors. Ronan Summers as Montes and Ilia Volok as Vladimir are more examples.
• Involuntary Group Split: The entire "Uprising" level.
• It's Personal: Solomon killing Montes at the end apparently was the last straw for Blackburn, and he henceforth proceeds to lay down the smack which becomes the game's final battle.
• I Want Him Alive: Referenced by Cole many times in Night Shift when looking for Al-Bashir.

Cole: I do not want a bin Laden-style resolution here.

• Just a Stupid Accent: Averted, Kiril and Vladimir speak completely in Russian.
• Kick the Son of a Bitch: So, that interrogator who was being a total and complete ass to Blackburn the entire game, who was all but accusing him of treason repeatedly, insulting him at every turn, and generally just being a total prick? In the final mission, you get to break his kneecap and then repeatedly slam his head into the table, in full, glorious up-close first person view. And lo, it was satisfying.
• Kill'Em All: The bodycount gets very high by the end the game. Your squadmates aren't immune either.
• Locked Door: Most doors are scripted to have an NPC open it for you.
• Missile Lock On: Played almost constantly during "Going Hunting". Expect to encounter this a lot when piloting a jet or chopper in multi-player mode too. In both cases, both you and the enemy can launch flares to break the lock.

Pilot: You got tone, shoot!

• The Neidermeyer: Captain Cole has shades of this, with his willingness to stubbornly sacrifice his men to complete the mission, even when it's clear the situation is out of hand.

Cole: I'm saying we need to get there first, you think the Russians are here just because? They're covering their asses. We know they're working with the PLR. Now let's move it out.
Montes: Yeah okay. We're just gonna finish one war by starting another, that is out-fucking-standing!

• • The reason Montes is pissed? Because Cole is leading a platoon of Marines (about 20) across an open field with no cover, no vehicles and no air cover, against Russian elites, who are airdropping at least a company (200 soldiers), probably more, and their equipment and armor consisting of armored personnel carriers, while enjoying air superiority from fighter-attacker jets. There's crazy, and then there's suicide. Not to mention that open assault on the Russians will, as Montes points out, inevitably and predictably result in war between the US and Russia. All because one captain can't exercise discretion.
• The New Tens: The game is set in 2014, and was released during the time in real life.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The game is set in 2014, barely enough time for any new faction to gain any sort of control, especially in Iran of all places.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Dima did this to Kaffarov, and later Blackburn to Solomon.
• No Points for Neutrality: In the "Kaffarov" level Blackburn catches up and finds Dima, who tells Solomon's plans for the nukes and urges you to find the last one. You are forced to shoot a friendly soldier as you cannot be seen working with the Russians on charges of treason.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The CIA agents interrogating Blackburn.
• Oh Crap: The Marines' reaction when they realize they're not fighting PLR soldiers, but Russian paratroopers.
• One-Man Army: Generally averted, although certain parts of the story this trope does come into play.

Kaffarov: Bullshit. Can't be. How could three men do this?

• Plot Lock: For all the destruction abilities showcased by the developers, you still need an NPC to open wooden doors despite having rocket and grenade launchers in hand.
• Poor Communication Kills: If the Russians had actually told the Americans why the hell they wanted Kaffarov so bad, many of the events of the game could have been avoided.
• Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner:

Better get your fangs out, Hawkins. We're hunting big game today.

• Press X to Not Die: Loads of it. If you miss, the enemy will stab you or shoot you dead. There's even a QTE sequence against a rat! If you fail that QTE, you get bitten, and make enough noise to attract a PLR trooper who blows you away. While dying you also flip off the rat.
  • Smashing Survival: Only 3 times in the campaign thankfully (the two are actually the same place where you have to climb the maintenance ladder on a moving train), but the last one is a subversion where you beat the hell out of the Big Bad's head with a brick.
• Regenerating Health: Of the "red jam all over your screen" variety. The health percentages you get in multi-player don't show up in single-player.
• Ramming Always Works: In the beginning of "Comrades", your companions debate about the best way to infiltrate a target building and accounting for the fact that you are just 3 guys against an entire army. They end up just ramming down the main gate with the car you're riding in and you shoot your way through.
• Retirony: Miller is the only character known to have family (a son) back home, and he is the first character to die.
• Rogue Agent: Dima and the team after failing to secure the nuke from Kaffarov, being accused by the Russian government of being the ones responsible for stealing the nuke from Russia in BF3: The Russian. Also Omorova in the same novel.
• Sequel Hook: An implied one.
• Shaggy Dog Story: Dima and his team sacrifice so much to try and stop the Paris bomb plot, and they fail anyways.
• Smug Snake: Solomon.
• Sniping Mission: In the middle part of "Night Shift", you are tasked with covering Cole's squad as they clear a building where Al-Bashir is supposed to be located.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the novelization Battlefield 3: The Russian all the members of Blackburn's squad survive (except for Cole), Vladimir also survives (although Kiril/Kroll dies instead), and Dima succeeds in stopping the Paris nuke.
• The Squad: Misfit 1-3.
• The Starscream: Al-Bashir states that Solomon betrayed him, and is the one responsible for giving the Americans the intel they needed to locate and kill him. He also states that he only wanted the nukes as leverage, whereas Solomon has stolen them from Al-Bashir and plans to actually detonate them. It's heavily implied that Solomon is only using the PLR to deliver his nukes, rather than having any affinity for their cause.
• Story-Driven Invulnerability: Most of the time, your teammates are invulnerable (though the various unnamed Red Shirt characters are not).
• Teased with Awesome: Blackburn and Dima can beat the crap out of anyone in the scripted melee sequences, but trying to knife regular enemies in front is asking for trouble (or a checkpoint reload)
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: How do you deal with a sniper shooting at you from another building? Blow up that entire building!
  • This is actually the standard method of dealing with snipers. Shell 'em.
• Throwaway City: Poor Paris...
• Too Dumb to Live: At the end of "Operation Swordbreaker", when the buildings were collapsing everywhere, why didn't that helicopter pilot just fly away?
• Translation Convention: Averted with missions starring Dima. Dima, Kiril, and Vladimir speak to each other in Russian, and the only way to understand them (unless you speak Russian) is to use the game's subtitles.
• Unfriendly Fire: Blackburn is forced to do this to Cole while talking to Dima.
• Videogame Set Piece: Collapsing buildings in "Operation Swordbreaker" and "Uprising"
• Wasted Song: "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash
• With My Hands Tied: Blackburn handcuffs Solomon to himself yet he was able to fight and win in the final battle.
• Would Not Shoot a Good Guy: No, Dima and team will shoot French cops trying to do their jobs. Kiril is obviously reluctant, though Vladimir bleakly points out that if it means sacrificing a few French cops to prevent a nuclear explosion where millions of people will die, so be it.

Multiplayer Tropes

• Ascended Glitch: Every mention of sound going out? That's actually a glitch that occurs when too much stuff around you is making noise. The game can't keep up and causes other sounds to go out, such as the ambiance, engine sounds, footsteps, and such. But, it has come to be accepted as Shell-Shock Silence.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: While most of the time you get your rewards in items or new abilities when leveling up, at certain levels you are instead given more custom uniforms. The uniforms are useful, sometimes, if you can match the camouflage to the map type.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Similar to the One-Man Army example below, attempting it will likely get you killed. A lot.
• Awesome but Impractical: The EOD Bot is capable of remotely repairing/destroying vehicles, removing explosives, and arming M-COM stations, but is hampered by touchy controls, a conspicuous spotting icon, and loud operating noise.
• Blinded by the Light: Flashlights and Laser Sights will completely blind a player, even if the player is in complete daylight. Not as bad in the single-player campaign, though.
  • What didn't help was that in the beta version of the game, you could be blinded by your allies' flashlights and laser sights as well, which made it a popular Griefing tactic. Unfortunately, it hasn't been fixed in the retail version of the game, on both consoles and PC.
    • By several accounts, the effectiveness of tactical weapon lights at blinding others is completely realistic, as mentioned below.
• Bloodless Carnage: Oddly comes into play when getting a kill with the knife. Averted for other weapons though. So far, only blood though, just like previous Battlefield games, no Gorn ever.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • The Physical Warfare pre-order bonuses are a minor example of this at release, with a handful of items being released for early use by players. It took a concerted campaign against the game for it to be 'clarified' by EA that those items were not going to be locked out for people who didn't pre-order or use a pre-order location with the Physical Warfare pack, except in the case of the Type 88 LMG, which IS only available through the PW pack. Many players were not amused, until the entire pack was made available to everyone for free. It was somewhat mitigated for a time (before the entire pack's release) by the December 6th patch changes, after which it wasn't much better if at all than other LMGs unlocked through normal gameplay.
  • With the March patch, one can pay money to instantly unlock all weapons and vehicle upgrades. It doesn't mean new players will become Instant Experts just by having all the unlocks though, and since most weapons in a category have the same damage values (with a few exceptions such as the G3A3 and the SCAR-H), they're not appreciably better than the starter weapons anyway. It's more of an option for players that want to avoid grinding.
• Car Fu: You get bonus points from scoring a roadkill more than shooting the enemy.
  • Or maybe the EOD Robot.
  • While MAVs are supposed to be used for spotting enemies, they're also good for ramming into enemies as well.
• Cherry Tapping: Two extremely humiliating ways to die in BF3 are from the Engineer class. The first is their kit supplied blowtorch, since the Engineer would have to get into melee range of his target and keep the flame focused on him for several seconds. The other is the Engineer's gadget the EOD robot, which again has a built in blow-torch.
  • Even worse is a vehicle being destroyed by the repair tool. When targeting a friendly (or unoccupied) vehicle, the torch repairs. When targeting a hostile vehicle, you slowly remove health at around 5% a second. Bonus points if, in an attempt to stop you, the crew bails out... only for you to get in and drive off. Corridor Digital demonstrates.
    • As it turns out, to unlock the Back to Karkand engineer carbines (the G53 and the QBZ-95) you are explicitly required to do these.
• Combat Medic: Battlefield 3 combines the old Assault and Medic classes into an Assault class armed with the usual assault rifle, and a medical kit consisting of health packs plus a defibrillator. Players who take this class make a choice over how much of a medic or assault class they wish to be: you can take a medical kit or a special weapon (grenade launcher or M26 shotgun), but not both.
• Cool Hat: Russian recon and American engineer.
• Critical Existence Failure: Averted hard for vehicles. Vehicles in low HP will burn and cannot be moved unless it is repaired to working condition.
  • It's a standard feature for the Battlefield series, though vehicles in older games outside of mods tended to get destroyed outright instead of being brought down to critical, burning condition first.
• Subverted with infantry. It is possible to survive with 0% health displayed. Due to how the assist system works that means it's entirely possible that you can get a 100 point assist - or if your still firing a 150 point assist for the suppressive fire. A kill is only worth 100 points.
• Desperation Attack: On Conquest on Caspian Border, when one team is brought down to ten respawn tickets, they'll enact an air strike on the huge radio tower, bringing it down and killing anyone unfortunate enough to be near it.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: The only way to get the MVP 2 and 3 Medals, Ribbons and Dog Tags is to place in the respective overall positions.
• Easter Egg: Loads.
  • Operation Metro has two usable photo booths. They only give off a bright flash every time you press the button though, no photos.
  • Operation Metro also has a sandcastle with the Swedish and Norwegian flags on it, the same castle found in Bad Company 2 and 1943.
  • A top-secret document found in the Airfield point on Wake Island mentions there are five or six dinosaur figurines scattered throughout the island, and there are indeed six of them to be found. The document also mentions, "The General promised cake!"
  • On some locations on Strike at Karkand and Sharqi Peninsula, you might hear the MEC Theme (the Battlefield 2 loading screen music for Middle Eastern maps) playing from a room or a radio.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: You play as elite force from both factions, partially justifying how they get access to Rare Guns.
• Enemy Chatter: You can hear some random chatter from your teammates and enemies, though for some reason, you cannot hear your own chatter, save for when you call out enemy sightings.
• Five-Token Band: On the US Team; the Assault is African American, the Engineer Caucasian, the Support is Hispanic American, and the Recon could either be Asian/Native American (can't really tell with the mask on).
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Russian engineer wears a large gas mask. Sadly, they do not sound like the pyro.
• Goggles Do Nothing: US Recon. He always wears what appears to be a pair of ESS Advancers on top of his shemagh no matter what the weather condition is. Although these goggles are standard issue within the UK Forces, this model have been discontinued by ESS.
• Improvised Weapon: The engineer's blow torch.
• Interface Screw: The aforementioned Laser Sight and Flashlight when shined in your eyes. The suppressive fire mechanic reduces accuracy and blurs the game to represent the distraction that incoming fire causes. Killing someone who is suffering from suppression effects gives bonus points to the suppressor.
• When under heavy suppressive fire, the screen will blur like it was covered in Vaseline.
  • When you're hit with a stealth kill from a knife, your viewpoint will be violently turned around, and you'll see the face of the guy stabbing you and taking your dogtags, before letting you fall to the ground. It can be incredibly jarring.
  • Sometimes, after a large amount of nonlethal explosions near your soldier, he may become briefly shell shocked, tuning out most sounds (except for any sounds that actually come from him). Shell-Shock Silence may also happen because of a glitch in the sound.
• Joke Vehicle: The Skid Loader added in Back to Karkand. It's incredibly slow, weak, and difficult to turn. You need to get a roadkill with it for the "Like a Boss!" achievement, however.
• Just a Stupid Accent: The Russian Team. You will sometimes hear spoken Russian though. You can change the voice over language to several different languages. Changing it from English to Russian will have the Americans speaking Russian with an American accent. This is a minor downgrade from Bad Company 2, where it was possible to have all militaries speak the appropriate language.
• Magical Defibrillator: A zap on the foot will revive a teammate from their slit throat or multiple bullets to the brain.
• Mook Maker: The Radio Beacon, the AAV Amtrac and Transport Helicopters, and you can also spawn near your squadmates, or in vehicles they are in as long as there's space.
• Nitro Boost: Most vehicles have it, even tanks. Using it adversely affects handling.
• Nonuniform Uniform: Both sides, especially with the amount of customizations available.
  • Averted with the Russian Federation Medic and Engineer that wear "Gorka" suits that in reality come in a huge variety of different camos. Post-Soviet troops also seemed to have problems with issuing matching uniforms until recent years.
• Nostalgia Level: The entire Back to Karkand expansion. Wake Island especially, since it was a map in Battlefield 1942, the very first Battlefield game.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Zig-zagged with the knife. Using the knife behind an enemy will kill him instantly (as well as give you his dog tags), but using it in front of an enemy requires two slashes to finish him off. May lead to Damn You, Muscle Memory! moments when you've been playing other shooters where the knife is an instant kill from any angle.
  • Bolt-action sniper rifle headshots are these at any range, while semiauto sniper rifle headshots are only one-hit kills within their "max damage" range before damage dropoff begins.
  • Shotguns are one-hit kills at close range and can get headshot one hit kills at longer ranges.
  • Getting rammed by a MAV moving at full speed results in instant death.
• One-Man Army: Heavily, heavily averted. You can't survive more than a couple shots from your average weapon. Overall, you're very, very squishy.
• Patriotic Fervor: The Russians are notably more patriotic than the Americans, occasionally shouting phrases such as "For Mother Russia!" and (when losing) "You're Russians, for fuck's sake! Turn it around!"
• PVP-Balanced:
  • The game continues the tradition of rockets doing very little splash damage to infantry.
  • Helmets, goggles, and armor have no effect, and everyone has 100 heath points with a .95 multiplier to the legs and a 2.1 multiplier to the head, except in hardcore, where everyone has 40 health with the same multipliers.
  • With the exception of the G3A3 (unlocked through co-op), every assault rifle deals the same damage (25 maximum to 17 minimum) per shot and has the same ammo capacity of 30+1 rounds, so reload times, recoil/spread and rate of fire tend to be the big differentiators. Likewise, semi auto sniper rifles all deal the same damage (50 max to 34 minimum), bolt-action rifles except the M98B deal the same damage (75 max to 55 minimum), and all except the M98B have the same ammo capacities.
  • The G3 Battle Rifle and the Scar-H carbine are balanced by their natural statistics compared to the other assault rifles. They get better damage than the other assault rifles because they both use the 7.62 cartridge as opposed to the 5.56 that all the other rifles uses, but like reality, they only have 20 rounds available. By sticking a foregrip, scope (anything from a 3.4x, 4x ACOG up to a 8x ballistic sight) heavy barrel you can turn either into a semi-automatic marksman rifle at the cost of suffering several drawbacks in close combat.
  • The MP7 doesn't have a foregrip attachment as it would make the already amazing close combat ability even better. That and the base gun already has a hinged foregrip.
• Rare Guns:
  • The Magpul PDR (called "PDW-R" in-game) didn't even make it to working/firing prototype before Magpul shelved it, citing a lack of interest from the biggest potential customer.
  • The MP 412 REX, which also didn't go to full production because of lack of market, as Russia did not permit firearms to civilians and lack of interest from Western countries. This time however, they properly show the automatic ejection mechanism.
  • Both the AEK-971 and AN-94 were participating in the same "Abakan" trial contest which was aimed to find a replacement for the current AK-74M service rifle. Their advantages were considered insufficient for their increased production cost and complexity and both ended up in the arsenals of elite Russian forces and the Ministry of Home Affairs. The AN-94 was accepted at the end of the trials but the Russian Federation doesn't seem to be able to afford such a replacement at the time, while AEK-971 manufacturing stopped in 1996.
  • Back to Karkand brings back the PP-19 "Bizon" from Battlefield 2 as a PDW, as well as the MK3A1 shotgun (AKA the Pancor Jackhammer), a gun that never went into production.
  • Close Quarters brings in the SCAR-L assault rife (which was cancelled in favor of the SCAR-H), SPAS-12 shotgun, and the LSAT LMG. The LSAT is especially rare since it's still undergoing testing and prototyping.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Many players complained about the tactical flashlights being too bright. In reality, the flashlights used on guns can be pretty bright. Blinding bright. They can be used to disorient a target.
• Regenerating Health:
  • Much to the chagrin of older Battlefield fans. It heals at a slow rate of 5HP/second and it takes a long time to kick in (at least twelve seconds). However, suppressive fire will reset the timer and stop any healing in progress, and it is completely off in hardcore. If people so desire, they can turn it off in their server, regardless if it is hardcore or not.
    • Medkits, however, heal at a speedy 10HP/second and force regenerating health to kick in for players within their effective range immediately, regardless of suppression.
  • Vehicles have regenerating health as well. However, vehicles below 50% health (35% for transport helicopters and AMTRAC) will become disabled, catch on fire and receive a penalty to movement and control (MBTs and IFVs can barely move, jeeps and armored cars stop dead in their tracks, helicopters lose much of their yaw, pitch and climb capabilities and jets go into a barely controllable spin). At this point vehicle health will keep bleeding out unless repaired back up to 100%.
• Revenue Enhancing Devices: In the March 2012 patch, DICE rolled out the Rent-a-Server plan, allowing Play Station 3 and Xbox 360 players to customize their own personal server like PC players. The "revenue enchancing" part comes in when players, tired of custom settings and abusive server admins, try finding vanilla DICE servers, only to find out that EA phased nearly all of them out.
• Reverse Grip: How the knife is held.
• Rule of Cool: Killing someone with the knife from behind will also have your character take off their target's dog tag with the knife in the same motion of pulling the knife out as well. Because... it looks cool.
• Shell-Shock Silence: May happen after a large amount of explosions near your soldier that don't actually kill him. It'll tune out most sounds, except for the ones that actually come from him.
• Shoot the Medic First:
  • While not all Assault players have medkits, all of them have defibrillators. A single Assault player can easily revive all the enemies you took out once you've been put down.
  • Tanks or IFVs with an Engineer buddy are an absolute nightmare to take down with RPGs. Take out the Engineer as soon as he pops out when the vehicle is disabled, else you'll soon find yourself out of rockets.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Inverted. The Shotguns can be used at ludicrous ranges with slug rounds if you compensate for bullet drop.
  • Equipping a gun like the 870 MCS with slugs and an 8x Ballictic scope can be used as a sniper for any class
  • Played straight with the semi-auto shotguns with buckshot or frag, which only kill reliably within 20 meters or with a headshot while aiming down the sights. At least the shotguns work balanced to assault rifles, unlike MW 3.
• Shout-Out: A newspaper in the Strike at Karkand remake says "/v/-The Vidya, Why haven't you got a girlfriend yet?" ^[1]
  • In Back to Karkand, running an enemy over with the Skid Loader will unlock the "Like a Boss!" achievement.
• Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke: The FGM-148 Javelin, capable of doing significant damage against even Abrams tanks, is a two to three shotter against tanks in the game (unless the target is laser designated).
  • The Jet guided missile unlock is an even better example: the Maverick missile that it's based on WILL destroy any tank it hits, but in game it has the same stats as a Javelin, is stupidly inaccurate unless you maintain the lock, and leaves you as a sitting duck to any other jets out there. But it makes a REALLY big explosion.
• Stop Helping Me!: Thankfully averted for the first time in the series. Battlefield 3 allows a player to ignore the revive and 'tap out' to stop the revive.
  • See Blinded by the Light above. Nothing is more frustrating than a team-mate with a flashlight running up to you and ruining a shot you are trying to take with some of the nicest looking bloom and HDR effects ever.
• Too Dumb to Live: A hasty engineer feels like this the first time he goes to repair a tank in the heat of battle and accidentally selects the RPG instead of the repair tool.
• Universal Driver's License: Back again in 3. Buggies, cars, IFVs, tanks, helicopters, and jets are free to be driven by anyone. The "Back to Karkand" expansion even allows you to drive a skid loader.
• Urban Warfare: Operation Metro, Seine Crossing, Tehran Highway, and Grand Bazaar maps. And of course Karkand again. The upcoming Close Quarters DLC will focus heavily on this type of maps.
• Weaponized Car: The "technicals"; pickup trucks with machine guns mounted in the bed.
• You Have Researched Breathing: After sinking hours into the online Multi-player, you finally receive the Grenade Specialization. It increases your measly amount of one grenade... to a measly two grenades. When the Explosives specialization can give you up to 6 extra RPG rockets, this perk feels extremely worthless. This was most likely done as a response to complaints in earlier games, which tended to have problems with grenade spam.
  • Subverted later when you unlock the squad-wide version of it. Giving a total of four people two grenades each. That's 8 delicious eggs of destruction! And that's not taking into account Assault classes with the M320 grenade launcher, of which the specialization also affects.
  • And if you are in one of the oh so popular 64 player metro conquest maps. With 32 players a side, each with 2 grenades, and very short resupply times, you can essentially have a never ending hail of grenades raining down the staircase and elevator.

1. ↑ It may sound like a Take That, but it's more of an in-joke; it's the most common off-topic thread OP text on /v/.