‘Battlefield 1’ reminded me that before war was a game, it was hell

The Battlefield games aren’t exactly known for having the best single-player modes. In fact, players ignore the series’ solo experiences so routinely that this was actually a reason we didn’t see a campaign mode in Star Wars: Battlefront last year. “Very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games,” EA’s Peter Moore said at the time. “That’s what the data points to.” So, naturally, when I picked up a copy of Battlefield 1 earlier this week, I planned to skip directly to online multiplayer — but the game didn’t let me. First, it had to teach me a history lesson. “Battlefield 1 is based upon events that unfolded over one hundred years ago,” the game told me immediately after booting up. “What follows is front line combat. You are not expected to survive.”

Normally, a game that automatically shoves me into its single-player campaign would have me scrambling for the skip button — but that lead-in text lingered in my mind. Why had the game bothered to tell me I wouldn’t survive? The Western Front appeared onscreen, along with a directive to defend my position against waves of German soldiers. I fought valiantly but, like the disclaimer said, I was doomed to fail.

As my fictional soldier fell to the ground, I expected the game to cut to the Battlefield 1 logo. Instead, the camera zoomed out to reveal an epitaph for the character I had just failed. A somber voiceover touched on the futility of war as my view settled behind the eyes of another soldier. Soon, he fell too. Then another, and another, each expiring under their own floating epitaph showing the character’s birth year and time of death. The narrative’s emotionally manipulative hook was obvious, but still effective. This wasn’t a game — it was a war. I left the experience feeling like a soldier myself. One who might not make it home.

This isn’t what I was expecting. Most first-person shooters border on power fantasies — walking the player through a series of overblown, high-adrenaline sequences designed to make them feel like action heros. Battlefield 1 shatters that illusion by putting the player through a carousel of death, complete with narration. “We came from all over the world, so many of us thinking this war would be our right of passage. Our great adventure,” the voiceover coldly explains. “Instead of adventure, we found fear.”

This helps players empathize with the soldiers in a way other war games often don’t and gently reminds them that this is more than a game — it’s history. Battlefield 1’s intro isn’t just hinting that its campaign is story driven; it’s asking you to respect the memory of the soldiers of the war it’s based on. “Behind every gunsight is a human being,” says the voice, driving the point home. That’s not a sentiment I’m used to hearing in my war simulators.

By contrast, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor and previous Battlefield titles are games first, offering great action experiences and more than enough danger to keep players on edge. That’s perfectly fine — and exactly what these games are supposed to be — but as a result, they almost never break free of the typical tropes. Namely, the player is the hero and the good guys always win. Real war isn’t like that, and neither is Battlefield 1’s prologue. Despite being scripted and even a bit preachy, it’s poignant too. That’s enough to get me to do something I’ve never done before: Play the campaign mode of a Battlefield game.

Unfortunately, the harsh realism of the game’s introduction doesn’t quite carry over to the rest of the game’s single-player experience. The five “war story” vignettes that make up Battlefield 1’s campaign mode take players to five different fronts of the Great War, following five soldiers through their respective adventures. Each story is unique and uses a distinct narrative to draw you in — but they all also fall back on the same heroism tropes used in other war games. It’s easy to forget the bleak prologue when you’re running across the bow of a German airship in a last-ditch effort to single-handedly take out the rest of the Zeppelin fleet.

Even so, Battlefield 1’s single-player stories are still worth playing. Clever writing goes a long way toward softening some of these war hero cliches. One story has you questioning if the over-the-top adventure you’re playing is reality or the exaggerations of a braggart. Another is framed as the somber reflections of a soldier struggling to cope with being his team’s only survivor. These stories didn’t hit me as hard as the game’s opening sequence, but they’re still strong, character-driven narratives deserving of your time. In fact, they’re good enough that they made me go back and see if I was missing anything in Battlefield 4’s single-player mode. I wasn’t, but I’m glad Dice tricked me into trying Battlefield 1’s campaign. Next time they release a game, maybe I won’t forsake the solo experience in favor of mulitplayer.

‘Battlefield 1’ will challenge your preconceptions of WWI

Battlefield 1 is shaping up to be a return to form for DICE, the EA-owned development studio behind the famous first-person-shooter series. After handing the franchise keys to Visceral Games for Battlefield Hardline, the studio is back at the helm, and returning to historical warfare with its first game set in World War I. The announcement was met with mostly positive reactions, especially in the face of Activision’s continued focus on jetpacks and other future tech with the Call of Duty series.

I’m not a massive fan of either of the big FPS franchises. I don’t look down on Call of Duty or Battlefield games: They’re expertly crafted multiplayer experiences that millions of gamers love. They’re just not for everyone. My colleague Timothy Seppala, a long-time Battlefield fan, spent most of E3 explaining to me just how impressed he was with what he’d seen so far. “I haven’t loved a Battlefield game since 2010’s Bad Company 2,” he wrote back in June, “but during a single round of Conquest set on a map in northern France, I caught a glimpse of the game that had me smitten five years ago.”

After that first reveal, I wasn’t happy about the choice of war. Growing up in the UK, my main frame of reference for World War I was the poetry of Wilfred Owen, and the various movies (and comedies) set in the trenches. I think of mustard gas, trench foot and men marching in formation to their death. I remember no grand, “exciting” battles, no bold victories; just hopelessness and unnecessary death. How do you set the multiplayer mayhem Battlefield is famous for against that backdrop? It just felt wrong.

Lars Gustavsson, design director at DICE, researched World War I extensively before and during development, and told me during an interview at Gamescom this week that my view of the war, of trenches and terror isn’t the whole story. “It was so much more than trench warfare and single-bolt action rifles,” he explained. Like me, Gustavsson and the team at DICE had some strong preconceptions about the war, which he says are in part due to the entertainment industry largely ignoring WWI. “We see movies, pop culture, about World War II, about the Vietnam war, about contemporary warfare, even future warfare, but we haven’t seen that much on WWI.”

“We have no intent of being a historical lesson line per line.”

Battlefield 1 isn’t looking for historical accuracy in either its campaign or multiplayer games. “We have no intent of being a historical lesson line per line,” Gustavsson said. But the game blends together elements that all existed in that era, and will “try to give extra information to players.” It wants gamers to be able to contextualize the events they see, and the weapons and vehicles players will use. DICE hopes that choosing World War I as a setting will generate interest in that period, and lead players on their own paths of discovery.

It’s easy to scoff at that notion. As Gustavsson and I spoke at EA’s Gamescom lounge, dozens of Battlefield 1 fans were very excitedly blowing the crap out of each other behind him. I didn’t see anyone giving pause for thought on the reality behind the in-game events. But Gustavsson himself has been changed by his learning experience, and it’s not outlandish to think that some gamers will want to learn more.

“This war shaped the world much more than I ever had thought,” he told me. “It took the world from old empires and old belief into a modernized, highly mechanized, highly technological world. [One where] empires fell, women went into factories and started to work instead of being at home. It changed so much. That really shaped the world we live in today.”

I, too, learned a few things. Not by playing Battlefield 1, in which I was taken apart by players far more adept at the game. But in talking to Gustavsson, I discovered that our desire for oil, which deeply changed the world in the 20th century, really began in earnest during World War I, because Dreadnought ships began to switch from coal to oil for fuel. Perhaps I should’ve known that already, but I had always assumed this began with the Chaco War of the 1930s.

“Just as I now, at the age of 48, have learned so much in the last years about this war that I didn’t know before,” said Gustavsson, “we hope that it will spark the same interest for people that play the game.”

So far, I’ve only demoed the multiplayer part of Battlefield 1. I’ll be honest: None of Gustavsson’s seemingly fastidious research into the war was apparent. Sure, the notion of this action-packed, all-out warfare taking place during the era challenged my preconceptions, but that was all it did. When it comes to the single-player campaign, I hope that DICE can stay true to its word. I hope it will offer some knowledge along with its zeppelins, and really get players interested in what was a fascinating period of history.

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‘Battlefield’ TV show has an Oscar-winning executive producer

The Battlefield TV series is inching closer to fruition. Electronic Arts recently revealed that Michael Sugar, one of the producers behind last year’s Oscar-winner for Best Picture, Spotlight, will be working on the show. Along with production house Anonymous Content’s Ashley Zalta, Sugar will serve as executive producer. It’s also the first time Anonymous and Paramount TV have worked on a video game property. Previous projects include The Revenant, both seasons of True Detective and Mr. Robot. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of talent with the team that’s been announced so far.

The question is, will the program crib from the Mirror’s Edge TV show the way Battlefield 1 has from Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst? If you missed Spotlight last year during its theatrical run, it’s currently available to stream on Netflix.

Source: Electronic Arts

‘Battlefield 1’ learned a lot from ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’

When Electronic Arts and DICE released Star Wars: Battlefront last fall, fans complained that it was far too simple; a shell of a game. The reaction was justified, but as shallow as the game was, it wasn’t without merit. A lot of what Battlefront got right (a massive sense of scale, easier to control aircraft and monstrous mechanical instruments of war) has made its way into Battlefield 1.

The latter series has always prided itself on being a thinking-person’s shooter. But recent releases have become bloated, with a diminished focus on what made the franchise great in the first place. In particular, these recent installments have tended to emphasize spectacle over strategic gunfights, with each player serving a distinct role in combat. Some of Battlefront’s simplicity made its way into DICE’s version of World War I, but based on what I played at E3, that isn’t a detriment — it’s an asset.

Battlefront and Battlefield 1 were developed in parallel, so it’s no surprise that there was some cross-pollination. The overlap was sometimes unexpected, though. The Battlefield series has always had aircraft of some sort, but simply getting in the pilot’s seat didn’t ensure success; being a proficient (and genuinely helpful) helicopter or fighter jet pilot takes a lot of practice. Battlefront took an arcadey approach to controlling the sci-fi universe’s iconic spacecraft and made each ship easy to pick up and have fun with.

“There’s been a lot of crossover between how [we] think about air combat between Star Wars and Battlefield 1,” DICE general manager Patrick Bach said. “That doesn’t mean it’s the same. It’s actually far from it.”

Bach is right. Battlefield’s biplanes aren’t just X-Wings with machine guns bolted on. They’re fragile, heavy-feeling, and susceptible to small arms fire from the ground. And, most noticeably, they’re an awful lot slower to maneuver. “There’s much more of a physical presence to the biplanes,” Bach said. They’re a little easier to fly than before, sure, but I still crashed more times than I care to admit.

One of the most unique aspects of Battlefront were the lumbering AT-AT walkers from The Empire Strikes Back’s assault on Hoth. Bach said that even though they’re quite different, Battlefield 1’s tanks are the equivalent of Walkers. “They have a lot of stopping power and you probably behave the same way when you see a tank as you would when you see an AT-AT — you fight or you run; there’s no other option,” he said.

That doesn’t mean you’re helpless should you find yourself facing one down. Bach noted that foot-soldiers have more options to take them out this time around. “I compare it to meeting a dragon [in other games], and feeling like you can actually take it down, but it will be a struggle,” he said. “It’s almost like meeting a miniboss on the battlefield.”

Then there are the zeppelin warships. The difference between these and the Walkers is that they’re actually player-controlled and you can direct where they float above the chaos below — a departure from the autonomous AT-ATs. When a zeppelin arrives, it can dominate the area it’s floating above with massive firepower from player-occupied turrets. This is especially helpful when you’re playing Conquest and are defending control points from above. If you’re feeling gutsy, you could even exit the upper turrets and use a rifle to take potshots, on foot, from the top of the blimps. Based on my experience, however, I don’t recommend that. At all.

That’s because in a turret I had a bit of protection and a lot of firepower. That wasn’t the case when I was aiming down the sights of my gun.

Like the other aircraft — and unlike the Walkers — these blimps are particularly fragile. One teammate making couple of passes with their biplane guns, combined with anti-aircraft fire from the ground make short work of them. When the opposing team knocks one out of the sky, it erupts in a ball of fire and the wreckage will destroy whatever (unfortunately) is below it at the time. Seeing it happen as satisfying as tripping the Empire’s most fearsome ground unit and watching it fall on its “face.”

I haven’t loved a Battlefield game since 2010’s Bad Company 2. But during a single round of Conquest set on a map in northern France, I caught a glimpse of the game that had me smitten five years ago. I’ve been chasing that figurative dragon with each successive sequel since and come away disappointed. From the admittedly small portion I played, Battlefront’s influences haven’t hurt Battlefield 1; they’ve helped bring the series back to its roots.

The revamped class system distills each to its core duties, and the medic (my personal favorite) finally feels like a full-on support role again. It isn’t a combat medic with an assault rifle, similar to what Battlefield 4 did to the class in 2013; it’s just a medic. I tried rushing in and taking out enemies with a single-shot rifle and was mowed down time and time again, not helping my team at all. Once I remembered that the way to play was reviving downed teammates and dropping health kits during firefights, I was much more effective and having a lot more fun. It’s something I haven’t felt about the series in years.

I can’t help but feel that Battlefront helped DICE strip back some of the bloat that has creeped into Battlefield over the past few games. But for all the influences, Battlefield still feels like Battlefield. If you were worried about it being last year’s hollow LucasArts game with a World War I skin slapped on, don’t be.

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