Review – Battlefield Artbook

Titan Books are one of the gaming industry’s leading sources on purchasing quality artbooks for your favorite titles.  What I’ve seen from them has been very impressive, with their solid hardcovers, thick pages, and vibrant colors.  However, I think they got a bit of a dud when they decided to release the Battlefield 4 artbook, though I think that more the fault of the person put in charge of deciding page layouts moreso than Titan Books themselves.  As always, the publishing is wonderful — it’s the content that leaves much to be desired.

The book starts off much like any other–with a foreward written by Robert Runesson, Chief Content Director at DICE followed by an introduction written by Martin Robinson of Eurogamer fame.  However, the lengthy commentary continues throughout the book, gently sifting between identical rectangular shapes of similar-looking location art.  Only 8 pages are dedicated to characters, and absolutely none to any of the equipment used in-game, weapons or otherwise.  A strange oversight, given the lengths many of these sorts of games go to depict their weaponry as accurately as possible.  The majority of the 192 pages are dedicated only to bare-bones depictions of the many locations in the book, with only a few images in the Naval section showing any sort of action or scenes within Battlefield 4.  A small section in the back of the book shows off some of the multi-player maps.

While the book itself is nice, what lies on its pages leave much to be desired, and with a $34.95 MSRP, fans may want to pass up on this expensive addition to their Battlefield collection.  Unless you’re a really big fan of empty cityscapes.