Only one Battlefield 3 soldier allowed per player?

[MrCreeper187]

Yesterday we reported that Origin would be required to play retail copies of Battlefield 3, and possible digital downloads as well. This wasn’t a big surprise and most gamers wouldn’t mind, but we’ve now got some news that might arouse some anger and disappointment among fans.

In the past Battlefield games, players would create an account for the Battlefield game (e.g. BF2 or Bad Company 2), and they subsequently could create several profiles or soldiers to play as. Now, according to DICE’s Daniel Matros, one’s Battlefield 3 soldier is tied to the Origin account. In the Battlefield 3 alpha, one’s soldier name was the same as the Origin profile, and there was no way of changing it or creating a new soldier. In order to change your in-game name, you had to change your Origin profile name. However, this was an alpha version, and it’s a possible that certain player features were turned off.

But Matros specifically commented on Twitter regarding the ability to chose a player name in Battlefield 3 by saying “your name is linked to your origin persona“. It suggests that there would be only one player per Origin account, which is quite disappointing, seeing how the feature was available in almost all other Battlefield games (we’re not certain whether it’s possible to create multiple Origin profiles without having to re-purchase games). Unlike consoles, PC players have had a choice of not only choosing their name, but creating a new soldier and starting from scratch, if they so desired. This also leads us to believe that Origin will be required regardless of where Battlefield 3 is purchased — retail or any of the digital distribution platforms.

We hope that this isn’t the final decision regarding player profiles and that DICE reconsiders keeping the feature that was present in many Battlefield games. And while we can understand why EA would tightly integrate Battlefield 3 into Origin, this is perhaps taking it a step too far.