This is Tommy Rydling from DICE, coming to you, the readers of the PlayStation Blog, with two exciting pieces of news.

First, we are very happy to announce the dates for the eagerly awaited Battlefield 3 Open Beta. The Beta is open to all and will run from September 29th to October 10th. You can join it by simply going to the going the PlayStation Store and navigating to the Demos section, followed by the Latest PlayStation Demos option – from there you’ll see the link to download the Battlefield 3 demo!

Prepare for battle in the bombed-out metro tunnels on the outskirts of Paris in the upcoming
Battlefield 3 Open Beta!

Alternatively, if you have redeemed a Medal of Honor: Limited Edition or Tier 1 Edition Online Pass, you will receive early access via a personal email invitation from DICE that includes 48 hour early access, which allows you to start playing on September 27th.

The Open Beta is your chance to play Battlefield 3 early, try out our free social platform Battlelog, and give your valued feedback directly to those of us at DICE. You participating in the Battlefield 3 Open Beta means that you are not only helping us load test the servers, but more importantly helping us fine-tune the final components of the multiplayer game.

During your time in the Open Beta, you’ll be playing on the map Operation Métro – a map you might have seen coverage of from E3, where we won the Best Multiplayer Game award.

But that’s not all for our PlayStation fans! You’ll be happy to know that, starting with our first expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand (released later this year), all full-blown upcoming expansion packs for the game will appear one week early exclusively on PlayStation 3!

As you may or may not have heard, Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand is a themed expansion pack containing four of the most loved maps from Battlefield 2, boldly reimagined in the Frostbite 2 engine. It also features new weapons and vehicles, unique in-game dog tags, new persistence, and new Trophies.

Be sure to stay tuned for more on the PlayStation version of Battlefield 3 and all things related. And do let us know what you think of the Beta once it’s up and running. For more stories on Battlefield 3, feel free to check out the official Battlefield blog where I post from behind the scenes under the name “H Brun”.

I also wanted to say thank you for your continued support for DICE and Battlefield 3. Meeting our fans in person is always very rewarding and exciting. We went to GamesCom with the PS3 co-op mission Exfiltration, and at Tokyo Game Show we let visitors play the single player mission Operation Guillotine. The response so far has been overwhelming, and we look forward to showing you more action from Battlefield 3 before the European launch on October 28th.

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Hi all! This is Tommy Rydling, Product Manager at DICE. Having just come back from a great GamesCom show in Germany, here’s your chance to learn all about the co-op campaign in Battlefield 3 that we showed off on PS3.

We designed co-op is designed to be the perfect blend between the strong narrative from single player and the open-ended action from multiplayer. We are fusing the replayability of multiplayer with a pick up and play mentality to create a totally new flavour of Battlefield.

Co-op follows the same philosophy as our award-winning multiplayer game mechanics. Teamwork is practically never forced upon you, but working together will make things much easier and — more importantly — lead to victory.

“Snake-66 is mission go!”

The missions in the co-op campaign are for the most part asymmetric. This means that one mission can have you piloting a helicopter while your friend is the gunner, for example. Other situations have one player disarming a bomb and the other one defending him. Or (as you could see in our press conference playthrough at GamesCom) you can do tandem kills to avoid detection. There are also other mechanics requiring teamwork, such as spotting enemies to make large firefights easier, or the essential concept of reviving one another to avoid ending up at the game over screen.

The co-op missions in Battlefield 3 all take place in the same world as the single player campaign, and follow a unique series of events that lead up to an explosive finish. Players in co-op will take the role of soldiers that are not tied to any one particular branch of the Armed Forces. This is an intentional design decision to allow for a vast variety in gameplay in the different co-op missions.

Extract Hamid El Zakir
At GamesCom 2011, we ran Battlefield 3 in co-op for the first time, with the mission Exfiltration on 10 PlayStation 3 stations. During the five days of the show, thousands of fans and journalists got hands-on time with Exfiltration.

The mission revolves around a defecting informant, El Zakir, that you and your co-op friend need to escort to safety. The mission starts outside the building where El Zakir resides. You need to move in, remove any opposition, and extract the target. If you can make it that far without raising a single alarm, there’s a little bonus in it for you. Part two of Exfiltration has you clearing a path for your convoy so you can reach the outskirts of the city, before entering two of the vehicles and assisting by manning the top-mounted machine guns. There’s much more to the mission, but that gives you an idea of what to expect.

Man down! Give your co-op buddy a helping hand to stay in the game.

Lend a helping hand
To survive through the co-op missions, you’ll need to stay close to your buddy. If he goes down, lend a helping hand with the new co-op “Man down!” mechanic, that lets you revive him in the heat of battle. While being down, you can still use your secondary weapon to defend yourself, while slowly crawling to a safer spot where your friend can help you without getting shot. If both of you go down, it’s game over.

You fight together. You die together. And you score together. After having cleared a co-op mission with your friend, your total combined score will be displayed via Battlelog, our suite of free social features that connect all Battlefield 3 players. Missions are designed to be shorter than single player missions, so you can easily do multiple rounds in an evening to try and beat your friends’ high score. The best score of your Friend will be displayed for each mission, so you know what to aim for.

Difficulty is high. We are definitely going for a tough challenge in all missions. Also, since competitive players will likely try each mission several times, all of the co-op missions contain randomized elements to keep every playthrough fresh. Clearing the co-op missions not only gives you scores and bragging rights – it also has benefits for your multiplayer career. There are a number of weapons that you can unlock in co-op and take with you to the regular multiplayer modes. These unlocks are based on your combined scores accumulated throughout the co-op campaign.

We hope you enjoyed this first look at Exfiltration. It was very rewarding meeting our fans at GamesCom, and we hope you stay tuned for more blog posts here at the PlayStation blog as we move ever closer to launch. And don’t forget there’s an upcoming Open Beta in September!

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Hi again, Playstation fans!

As we get closer and closer to the European launch of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam on December 22nd, let’s take a look at the hard-earned medals you can be awarded for your heroic actions in combat. Below is the complete list of every trophy in the game (these are bronze).

Can I Go Home Now?
Achieve a team victory on all Vietnam levels

Every Gun has a Silver Lining
Get silver stars on all primary Vietnam weapons
(Veteran weapons not included)

Ecstasy of Gold
Get gold stars on all primary Vietnam weapons
(Veteran weapons not included)

(more…)

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Hi, PlayStation fans! My name is Tommy Rydling, and I’m a Jr. Product Manager at DICE.

I’m here to tell you about the cool community challenge we’ll be running for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam. Maybe just a quick recap on this digital expansion pack first: It’s Battlefield: Bad Company 2 gameplay only set in the 60′s in the jungles of Vietnam, featuring new weapons, new vehicles, and two hours of era-specific music – all played on five brand-new maps.

Actually, this is where the Community Challenge kicks in. Our fifth map is a bonus one – a treat that you need to earn by showing us you know what Battlefield team play is all about.

This is not just any bonus, by the way: it’s the classic Operation Hastings map, made famous in our PC game Battlefield: Vietnam from 2004. If you didn’t play it back then, it’s one of the favorite maps among our fans – it features everything awesome in one fantastic arena: boats, helicopters, tanks, jeeps, temples, and the signature bridge dividing the map into two strategic areas.

To make things a little more interesting, we’re giving you, the players, the power to unlock this fifth map!

So what do you need to do? Easy. You and all your friends playing on PS3 need to perform 69 million team actions across Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam. So what’s a team action? Well, it’s any and all of these: resupply, revive, heal, spot, and repair.

As soon as all of the players on PS3 have amassed 69 million of these team actions, we will unlock Operation Hastings for you to play. As with all other maps in this expansion pack, all four game modes (Conquest, Rush, Squad Rush and Squad Deathmatch) are available on Operation Hastings.

For an action packed preview of the map and this community challenge, just watch the video at the top of this post. Oh, and if you want something to hold you until the launch of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam, I’d like to remind you that we released four new maps for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 a couple of days ago in VIP Map Pack 7.

If you’re a VIP player (if not, you can always get a VIP code at the in-game store), you get four maps never before available in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 multiplayer.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam is out on PS3 on December 21 in the NA and December 22 in Europe. VIP Map Pack 7 is out now. For more info on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam and the current standings in the Battle for Hastings, visit the Official Site.

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