Battlefield 3

A new mod that hit the internet today removes the custom lighting and color filters from Battlefield 3, making the game and its maps far more colorful. It could also, however, get you banned from Battlefield 3 servers.

The tweak was put together by tehfusion and insanecrimsontid, who on their Realmware Battlefield 3 Tools website provide the mod which can tweak color settings in not only the main Battlefield 3 game, but also the Back to Karkand, Close Quarters, and Armored Kill expansions. Users of the mod can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and sun lighting settings for each map.

Here are a few examples of the mod in action, with the standard visuals on the left, and the tweaked colors on the right:

Of course, this might not necessarily be a case of “turn the filters off and see the game the way it should be see”, just so we’re clear. The visuals of Battlefield 3 were a specific style choice, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the artists for the game created textures and made color decisions with that in mind. It’s very similar to how black & white television shows and movies used to be filmed—they used colors that would produce certain shades and tones in black & white, not necessarily colors that those people would naturally be wearing.

There’s also another catch to this mod: using it could get you a permaban from the Battlefield 3 server. DICE designer Gustav Halling had this to say on Twitter when shown the mod:

[too] colorful. Also I wouldn’t use those hacks if you don’t want a perm ban on your account. FYI warning.

If you’d like to see more of the mod in action, here’s a video tehfusion put up to show it off.