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DICE Studios, the developer behind upcoming free cartoony shooter Battlefield: Heroes, has defended its art style against accusations that it is a rip-off of Valve’s game Team Fortress 2.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com in an interview at an EA Games label event in London today, Ben Cousins, executive producer at DICE, responded directly to those who have claimed the game looks too similar to Valve’s team multiplayer first-person shooter TF2, saying: “Those guys aren’t artists.”
He said: “If you asked our art director he would point out probably 200 differences in the art style between our game and Team Fortress. There are only two cartoony shooters out there and those are the two. If there were 50 cartoony shooters out there we wouldn’t be having this discussion. No one says that Battlefield: Bad Company’s ripping off Call of Duty because it’s realistic.”
Battlefield Heroes, set for a closed, invitation-only beta on May 6, will be a completely free, 250MB download. The game will make money through the sale of customisation options, like new clothes, and through advertising on its website.
Cousins revealed that DICE considered changing Heroes’ art style from cartoony to realistic as more Team Fortress 2 details emerged, but decided to continue with its original design.
He added: “We developed our art style in January 2007. At that point there were very little images out there from Team Fortress. As more details about Team Fortress came out we said ‘well there’s a similarity here because we’re both cartoony, shall we change and go realistic again?’. But no we decided we wanted to keep going. The alternative would have been another gritty, realistic WW2 game and everyone’s fed up with those. We really believe in our style and we’re just going to go ahead and do it.”
You can check out Battlefield Heroes’ art style for yourself over at these brand new screens.
Battlefield: Heroes is set for PC in the third quarter of 2008.
