PC Gamer - UK (2022-02)

up the wearer’s profile against matching scenery.

But as I learned during a discussion with the

multiplayer design team, DICE wanted every

character in the game to have the same “baseline

for visibility”, ghillie suit or no.

UNIFORM APPEAL

The game’s generous spread of camo patterns are

more about visual variety – and, reading between

the lines, microtransactions – than letting players

seek tactical advantage. In practice, stealthy

characters in Battlefield 2042 are distinguished

less by their ability to hide than by their ability to

spot and tag using UAVs and sensors.

DICE has, however, flirted with invisibility

modes at times in Battlefield’s tumultuous history.

Battlefield 2042 is the gritty, near-future ‘sequel’ to

Battlefield 2142, a work of outright science fiction

featuring an active camouflage gadget that renders

the wielder up to 90% transparent. Where Hood

riffs on Predator, DICE’s primary inspiration was

anime film Ghost in the Shell, whose cyborg

protagonist has thermo-optic mesh for skin.

This idea of invisibility is far-fetched, but not

impossible: real-world active camo technologies

exist that continuously adapt an object’s

appearance to resemble its environment, such as

Ray Alden’s 2001 US patent for a “cloaking

process” made up of segmented pixels.

Active camo in Battlefield 2142 comes with

hefty constraints. The device has a short-lived

battery, gives off a telltale whine when activated,

stands out more in well-lit chambers, and can’t be

wielded alongside a gun. But even given these

drawbacks, it is an eerie and compelling tool of

war – warping the environment

behind it and so encouraging

both user and victim to think

harder about the game’s light

levels and play of indoor and

outdoor spaces. Hood’s Shroud

ability takes this further: to

survive Marianne’s attentions,

you must ceaselessly monitor

light sources, corners or

high-contrast foliage for that

telltale ripple of interference.

Playing as Marianne, you

grow acutely conscious of how

the Shroud interacts with certain

textures or colours, and how conspicuous you are

based on relative position and motion. Well,

providing you can see yourself at all. “This is

something that I struggle with even now in the

game,” Willans says. “When I use her perk to

make her even more invisible, like 75%

transparency, I lose connection with the character

• suddenly I’m kind of just looking for an input
  that says ‘assassinate’. I’m less connected with the
  game world. So you know, it’s all psychological.”

GRID VERSUS EGO

That eerie sense of disconnection is integral to

Invisigun, Sombr Studio’s same-screen top-down

blaster in which every player is invisible by

default. Characters pop into view when firing or

using their special abilities, but are otherwise only

perceptible when they interact with the terrain –

brushing through foliage, splashing in puddles and

leaving footprints in snow.

CHARACTERS

POP INTO VIEW

WHEN FIRING

OR USING

THEIR SPECIAL

ABILITIES

Active camo in
Battlefield 2142 was
limited but powerful.