On the Battlefield battlefield, a lot can happen during the course of a single match and in Call of Duty and Halo, should something inexplicably insane happen, you can use Theatre Mode to go back and treasure the memories of that time you fired a Spartan laser randomly and destroyed five Warthogs (that's probably never happened) or the time you threw a grenade three miles and wiped out a group of bad guys.

Battlefield 3 could be getting something similar, according to executive producer Patrick Bach in an interview with Game Informer, as the developer is looking into ways to deliver Theatre Mode content. "We have functionality on our end that can capture movies. The hard part of course is our dedication to creating non-cheatable games contradicts the whole idea of doing that because we are running dedicated servers on everything and that actually makes it harder," said Bach. "We’re definitely looking into ways of delivering our version of this functionality, but I can’t give away any details."

In the same interview, Bach also stated that four classes is the "sweet spot", so there's unlikely to be any changes there, and customisation is being looked into, although there won't be anything outlandish to detract from the "professional" nature of the game. "It’s team A versus team B. It’s always a challenge – how do you personalise a uniform?" asked Bach in the interview. "Giving the pink rabbit hat to someone would make it fun, but if you’re running around and you don’t know what you’re shooting at you don’t take the professional gaming seriously in my book. So there’s a challenge between personalising and keeping it uniform. We will do more in that area, making sure that you can get your character to be more personalised both in a visual way and more specifically in the way you gear up."

There will also be a greater emphasis on persistence in Battlefield 3, so that when you reach a certain level, the experience doesn't simply end. So, you could conceivably play Battlefield 3's highly destructible, large scale battles in 24-player multiplayer, forever. We'll be able to discover whether that's a good or a bad thing when Battlefield 3 is deployed in autumn 2011.