The Guardian has published an interesting interview with the producer of Battlefield 3, Patrick Liu and in it a selection of reader's questions were put to Liu. The choice of maps and the meaning of what a "beta" and a "demo" seem to be causing confusion amongst players are just two. It appears that players were disappointed with the Paris map, because it doesn't have any vehicles, but there was a good technical reason for that. The alpha game had a quickly designed "rush" map just to test the basic code, performance etc. To make testing comparisons between the alpha and the beta as similar as possible, the map used in the beta had to be essentially the same but it looks like gamers were expecting a demo with lots of different maps. However, providing those isn't necessarily appropriate for a beta test. On top of that Liu is confident that the various technical glitches will be ironed out by the time of the launch on 28th October.This remains to be seen, as there have been plenty of games from various publishers that were released very bugged indeed to meet a deadline and only properly fixed some time later, giving a poor experience for the gamers who have invested their hard-earned cash in the product and helped the company's bank balance.

There's also goodies such as being able to fly a jet aeroplane. Apparently, it's very hard to master and crashing features a lot in the training experience, but once you do, flying it is "very very dangerous". Just what you need in an adrenaline-fuelled first person shooter!

Two things weren't answered though: no word on whether it will be released on Steam; the question wasn't even asked in the article, which is a shame. The interviewer asked about the projected sales figures, but a PR spokesperson explained that "EA aren't discussing expectations for the title".

Tom's Hardware also has an interesting take on this interview here.