Alright Marines, listen up. With the clock ticking towards the release of DICE’s upcoming shooter Battlefield 3, we’re going to get you ready to cross the line of departure with the first of what will hopefully be several Intel dumps on information we know thus far regarding the single player, multi-player, and general game info.

Multi-Player

• 4 confirmed classes: Assault Medic, Support, Recon & Engineer.
• No kill streaks a la Call of Duty.
• Jets confirmed for both console and PC.
• 64 player support for PC. 24 players for consoles.
• Flashlights can be attached to guns. No word on whether or not this will be class specific, but we saw it attached to an M4 Carbine on an engineer class during E3.
• full environment destructibility
• Suppression mechanic can now be used to pin down players and give points for doing so. However, both the player doing the suppressing, and the players being suppressed will be highlighted to both teams.
• Engineers will be able to use carbine type rifles.
• Sniper rifles will have attachable bi-pods. We don’t know if this will be available from the start, or if it will be a weapon accessory.
• Equippable knife, even on console. You can still melee without the knife equipped, but the knife will make your attack faster and harder to counter.
• Vaulting ability to get over obstacles. Seen at E3 where you will see your players hands and legs when moving.
• Squad members can only spawn on the squad leader. This will make it doubly important for squad leaders to stay alive and play smart. Opposing recon players will be able to make a huge difference by putting precision fire on squad leaders.
• Squad leader can spawn on any squad member. Pay attention! If your squad leader goes down, back off and stay down until he gets back in the fight.
• No revive immunity and reduced spawn time if you get killed quickly after a revive. No more of the all medic zombie squads that we saw in the early days of BC2.
• No difference in spawn timers between BF2 and BFBC2.
• Beta in September. People who have the limited edition of Medal of Honor will get early access. The open beta will be available to everyone.

Single Player

• United States Marines will be featured.
• Near future setting. According to the single player trailer, the game is set in 2014.
• Full environment destruction. Just as in Multi-player, Frostbite 2 and all its glory will be included.

Miscellaneous

• Whole screen will zoom in when aiming not just scope views
• Disarm and kit pickup buttons are different buttons now No more picking up a kit repeatedly when trying to disarm the M-COM!
• Weapons only have fire modes they have in real life. Great addition. This means that the M16A4 won’t be fully automatic. Single shot and 3 round burst. Just for an example.
• No variable grenade throw strength
• Quick grenades and equippable grenades both confirmed. Except consoles will only have quick grenades due to lack of button variety.
• Joystick support on PC
• Random recoil for each gun.
• Sniper scopes (optics) flash when pointed into sun (lens flashes) to give away their position. This will make positioning very important for recon players.
• No offline bots.
• When spawning, your fire mode for a gun isn’t saved. It reverts to default. I’ll be interested to see if the default fire mode is single shot or fully automatic/burst.
• Level and vehicle designers from 2142 are working on BF3.
• Strafe while sprinting confirmed. Finally!
• Squad leaders create their squads like in BF2142.