Bandar Desert — The inspiration, biggest map ever!

Since Iran was a major area of operations in Battlefield 3, it felt natural to get inspiration from there as a first step in creating some maps in “Xpack 3”. Seeing the desert scenery from the real Bandar Desert area, I really got inspired, and immediately knew we could create something really exciting out of it. When it comes to gameplay, we here at DICE have been enjoying Atacama Desert in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 a lot, just like many of our players. I started thinking about how the best parts of the gameplay on Atacama could make the transition to a new map like Bandar Desert.
Some of the things I like in Atacama and that I wanted to carry across into Bandar Desert is the mix between the built up village areas with lots of destruction and the barren desert where tanks and other vehicles were in their strongest element. Out there, vehicles could duke it out between the sand dunes, using them in large strategic maneuvers to hide or partially hide, protecting the lower parts of the tank when firing. There were also always a few areas where infantry could have the upper hand at times without making it hard for vehicles to enter the area.
With extra-large maps though, some of the additional possibilities I wanted to implement were: Being able to plan ahead when encountering enemy tanks (without always being able to hit them directly as they would be too far away)
Having a better chance to retreat and regroup
Being able to dig in if opposition is too strong
Perform large flanking maneuvers or get support from friendly air units
Size and gameplay
In Bandar Desert, supporting 64 players and jets, everything would have to be larger and build much more on vehicle gameplay on a grand scale than Atacama Desert. At the same time it should be scalable for consoles with fewer players without it leading to compromises for the 64 player version.
These were a few of the major requirements that I set for Bandar Desert. It should:
Support grand scale vehicle gameplay with freedom of movement at long range
Provide exciting dogfight gameplay for jets in huge mountain ranges
Contain diversity in gameplay and intensity between different themes
Offer a great visual diversity both in terms of palette and character
Support all game modes without compromise
Differ from the other three maps in the expansion both visually and in gameplay (I knew what the other maps would be after initial design discussions)
http://blogs.battlefield.com/2012/07/build...ontent=blogpost wow the map actually called "bandar" dessert..