Tommy Rydling, junior product manager at DICE, has elaborated on Battlefield 3’s cooperative campaign gameplay following its first demonstration at Gamescom.

“We designed co-op to be the perfect blend between the strong narrative from single player and the open-ended action from multiplayer,” writes Rydling on the PlayStation blog. “We are fusing the replayability of multiplayer with a pick up-and-play mentality to create a totally new flavor of Battlefield.”

To that end, cooperation won’t be strictly mandatory says Rydling but “working together will make things much easier and — more importantly — lead to victory.”

Taking place in the same “world” as the singleplayer game, the co-op campaign missions are largely asymmetrical, meaning that one player will be piloting a helicopter while the other takes up the firing position, for example. Other cooperative mechanics include defending your teammate as they defuse a bomb, or performing tandem kills to ensure the alarm isn’t raised. “There are also other mechanics requiring teamwork, such as spotting enemies to make large firefights easier,” continues Rydling, “or the essential concept of reviving one another to avoid ending up at the game over screen.”

Battlefield 3’s “Man down!” mechanic allows a prostrate player to fire with their secondary weapon and crawl to safety. Their partner will need to revive them: “You fight together. You die together,” says Rydling.

“And you score together. After having cleared a co-op mission with your friend, your total combined score will be displayed via Battlelog, our suite of free social features that connect all Battlefield 3 players. Missions are designed to be shorter than single-player missions, so you can easily do multiple rounds in an evening to try and beat your friends’ high score. The best score of your friend will be displayed for each mission, so you know what to aim for.”

Rydling expects that players will find the cooperative mode more challenging than the singleplayer mode. “We are definitely going for a tough challenge in all missions. Also, since competitive players will likely try each mission several times, all of the co-op missions contain randomized elements to keep every playthrough fresh.”

Additionally, playing through the cooperative campign will unlock weapons that can be used in the game’s multiplayer. “There are a number of weapons that you can unlock in co-op and take with you to the regular multiplayer modes. These unlocks are based on your combined scores accumulated throughout the co-op campaign.”

Battlefield 3 is coming to PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 late in October. You can find Gameplanet’s coverage of the game here.