Battlefield 3 and EA Sports titles may seem to be a no man's land apart, but a recent interview with Tobias Dahl, lead animator on the shooter, reveals how DICE turned to the company's sports juggernauts, like FIFA and Madden, to enhance the new Battlefield's animation.

"I started to look inside EA and see what we had there," Dahl said in a video featurette posted by Game Informer. "And, quite naturally, I started looking into the sport games because what they have is animation -- that's what drives their games [...] and it looks pretty good, I'd say."

The animation tech used by EA teams, dubbed "ANT," was created 7-8 years ago, by Dahl's count, and has evolved into a "powerful" tool, combining the knowledge of EA's otherwise separated programming teams over many years of iteration.