Despite tossing around the made-up marketing buzzword for the past 2-3 months, DICE have yet to fully explain what Levolution is and how it impacts Battlefield 4. However, this newly released trailer from Gamescom fixes that. So, here’s the skinny on Levolution. It really just comes down to BF4’s focus on dynamic maps. To DICE, this comes down to 3 things: the tiny changes that matter in the moment, the ambient changes that affect the feel of the map, and the huge changes that affect the dynamic of the map. With the first category it boils down to small bits of interactivity that have a very small scope. An example they use in the video is shooting a light switch to kill the lights in a room, thus giving you a small moment of surprise on the enemy. The second category mostly deals with the changes in weather. This is most apparent in the newly revealed Paracel Storm map, which starts off as an overcast set of islands but by the end of the match a tropical storm hits the area. The final category is full of the big ticket changes. The ones that actually change how the match is played permanently. This was shown off perfectly back at E3 with the building collapse in Siege of Shanghai.
Personally, as a huge Battlefield fan, this sounds awesome. The buzzword is really stupid, but the design decisions that are going on behind it are awesome. Part of what made the pair of Bad Company games work so well was the sort of “make it up as you go along” movement of the gameplay. See a wall? Screw walking around, just blow a hole in it. Now that there’s more of that happening in Battlefield 4, I can safely say DICE has earned my hype. Well, it wasn’t just that. The craziness on display in the recently released Paracel Storm trailer certainly contributed.
Source: DICE (via Destructoid)