Battlefield 4: Final Stand has released this week on consoles and PC for Battlefield Premium members, but will see retail release on December 3.
Final Stand marks the fifth and final DLC expansion for the popular Battlefield 4 game from Electronic Arts. It centers around the end of the War of 2020 with the formation of the Pan-Asian Coalition and the development of the same futuristic technologies that we see in Battlefield 2142, which was first released in 2006.
According to the game's synopsis, "The United States has received intel from the Chinese mainland that Russia has been secretly developing new technology far in the north for the next stage of warfare and has sent in the USMC to put a stop to it."
The Battlefield franchise is set as a first-person shooter that began life in 2002 on PC and Mac as the World War II-themed Battlefield 1942. Since then, it has grown to include 11 games and 12 expansion packs serving more than 50 million players worldwide.
Battlefield 4 was first released in 2013 for the PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. It takes place in the year 2020, six years after the events of Battlefield 3. Its library of DLC packs include China Rising, Second Assault, Naval Strike, Dragon's Teeth, and now Final Stand.
Final Stand was first announced on August 20, 2013 at Gamescom in Germany. It features four new winter-themed maps, including Operation Whiteout, Giants of Karelia, Hammerhead, and Hangar 21. New prototype weapons are also featured in the new content, including the Rorsch X1, the DS-3 DECOY gun attachment, and the XD-1 Accipeter remote drone.
Battlefield Premium members got this DLC as a free download two weeks before retail release. Premium membership includes all five expansions, greater personalization options, server priority position, weekly content, and 12 battle packs all for $50. Battlefield Premium Membership is available for the PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4.
Battlefield 4 has experienced recent controversy over its first DLC pack, China Rising. In late 2013, China banned the game from stores and even online sales while encouraging those who already purchased it to remove it from their consoles and PCs. The game's four maps of China's mainland were seen as a national security risk and an invasion of China's culture.
In a recent interview with Gamespot, DICE LA co-founder and producer David Sirland responded to questions regarding the game's rocky start and October's fall patch. "I'd say we passed that point a little while ago, but this [fall patch] was where we added a lot of improvements and changes as well as fixing issues," Sirland added. "A lot of what's in this patch is actually gameplay balance changes and tweaks to systems that we wanted to do. But we felt that we had to do it in a collected way, and that's why this patch is so big and so feature-laden."
October's patch was seen as the game's biggest in preparation for this Final Stand DLC. "It's a collection of everything we've done on the CTE that we couldn't get into Dragon's Teeth because of time issues basically," Sirland continued. "We opted for a bigger patch, but could have done several smaller ones. But in the end we wanted to get more features and more updates in there. So we opted for a bigger one and kind of collected it. It enabled us to change bigger things like weapon balance, soldier movement, and visual recoil, which go hand-in-hand. We couldn't really do a visual recoil change without the other two because it would be unbalanced. There's so much here; the amount of how much changes are in it, absolutely [it's the most important patch]. How it affects the game in a positive way, we believe. It feels more like Battlefield now than it ever has, I would argue."
Look for Battlefield 4: Final Stand to hit store shelves just in time for the holidays on December 3.
