The Battlefield franchise has taken players through the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of WW I, and even the crime-infested streets of Florida, but now where will this year’s Battlefield V take players next? Electronic Arts and Dice are going to take them back to the very beginning of the franchise, with a World War II setting with an additional twist.
As publicized during the Battlefield V live reveal event earlier today, the companies are working together to keep the community playing the game for longer, which means that expansion packs and the classic “premium pass” which has been a feature of Battlefield titles will not be making a return. Unlike previous entries in the series, where players had to purchase additional content to play it, the players will have free access to additional weapons, vehicles, and maps when they buy Battlefield V. This includes access to the live-service mode “Tides of War”, which will focus on various periods of the war. The first addition to this mode has already been announced as “Fall of Europe”, which will portray Nazi Germany’s push across the Europe in the early days of WW II.
Fans and analysts have already praised Electronic Arts for this decision, after the publisher was met with wide-ranging criticism for adopting a “pay-to-win” model with loot boxes fueling player advancement in last year’s Star Wars: Battlefront II.
During the live event, host Trevor Noah asked the development team a major question that was representative of the present concern players have had with many of the future Electronic Arts releases: “will they be pay-to-win?” The development team assured Noah that all available weapons, vehicles, gear and maps in the game will be accessible by playing through the game. Gear that can be purchased will be strictly cosmetic-based.
Battlefield V sees the return of co-operative gameplay to the series, with the “Combined Arms” mode, which is playable with up to three friends online. This mode ties into the “Company” system that the game will utilize, which incentivizes player progression by granting players rewards for their custom soldiers. The only way to unlock a specific camouflage for your sniper rifle is to keep grinding and playing with that specific soldier. There are additional perks and abilities that you can unlock through similar means, similar to the Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare mobile game series from PopCap. The game will also see the return of “Operations” from Battlefield 1, with the “Grand Operations” mode. The mode will use the same idea of having more elaborate multiplayer campaigns and takes them further. It will include custom rule sets and map layouts. These “Grand Operations” matches will take place over four fictional days, each one a different mode like Conquest and Rush. There will be a story/narrative connecting each one of them and how you accomplish one objective will have a major impact on how you get to the next one.
The game will also push players to work more as a squad, according to DICE Design Director Daniel Berlin, who insists that it is a “squad based game and you should player with your squad.”
Every squad during a match has a designated squad leader, who can call plays and issue out special orders to their squad members. Squad leaders and their squads will be rewarded for successful actions with reinforcement points, which your squad can spend on special vehicles and special attacks like the V-1 rocket strike, similar to the score streak from Activision’s Call of Duty.
Berlin further elaborated that squads will be important if players want to survive the round. Battlefield V will have ammunition and health becoming scarce as the fight weathers on. Players will be unable to regenerate their health and will not immediately gain enough ammunition to run across the map to mow down their opponents, like they have in previous games. Instead, they will have to heavily rely on coordinating with support and medic players to heal them and provide them with the ammunition to win or seek out specific supply stations to recover.
Like Call of Duty and numerous other games, Battlefield V will be borrowing concepts from Epic Games’ Fortnite. Every player, regardless of their class, will be able to repair and build fortifications such as sandbags whenever they need them. The support class, which has been commonly used to dole out ammunition for players and repair vehicles will see an increase in importance in the game. Support players will be able to repair vehicles faster and build larger fortifications to help turn the tide. Presently, there is no footage of this in action and we have not seen the full roster of what players will be able to build, but it is clear that DICE does want to fundamentally change the way people play Battlefield with all of the immense changes they are making to the dynamic and mechanics of gameplay with Battlefield V. Hopefully, this will further enforce their belief in large-scale battles and encourage people to play the objective. We will all get a chance to see how this will look in action at EA Play next month on June 9th.
What this could mean for the future of the Battlefield franchise is not unknown but it is certain that it will likely be a successful and send ripples across the first-person shooter genre.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ZpQadiyqs]
You can pre-order your copy of Battlefield V here.
What do you think of this news? Are you excited for Battlefield V? Let us know in the comments below!
