A date for you: September 29. That date is when the much-awaited open beta for Battlefield 3 will commence. It will run until October 10.

Another date for you: September 27. That date is when people who pre-ordered BF3 PC via EA’s trouble-makin’ Origin platform or who made the mistake of coughing up for the Limited Edition of last year’s Medal of Honor reboot will get to access the beta.

More details and FAQs and things here, and there are system requirements and some singleplayer footage we may not have already shown you below, if you like. Oh, and some no doubt divisive news regarding the PC beta specifically: “ORIGIN WILL BE USED TO DISTRIBUTE THE BETA INSTALLATION AND RUN THE GAME AND THEREFORE NECESSARY TO PLAY.” Their capitals, not mine.



System requirements for you:

Minimum:

PROCESSOR: 2 GHZ DUAL CORE (CORE 2 DUO 2.4 GHZ OR ALTHON X2 2.7 GHZ)

MEMORY: 2 GB

HARD DRIVE: 20 GB

GRAPHICS CARD (AMD): DIRECTX 10.1 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 SERIES, WITH ATI RADEON 3870 OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)

GRAPHICS CARD (NVIDIA): DIRECTX 10.0 COMPATIBLE WITH 512 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8, 9, 200, 300, 400 OR 500 SERIES WITH NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 GT OR HIGHER PERFORMANCE)

Recommended:

PROCESSOR: QUAD-CORE CPU

MEMORY: 4 GB

HARD DRIVE: 20 GB

GRAPHICS CARD: DIRECTX 11 COMPATIBLE WITH 1024 MB RAM (NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 560 OR ATI RADEON 6950)

And now that footage. This is from the singleplayer mission Operation Guillotine, which I had a look at myself recently:



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NOISY, and sadly from a 360 build. But looked really good in non-compressed motion, I assure you.