Battlefield 1: Initial Thoughts

After playing the Battlefield 1 Beta one thing has become immediately clear, it is the most realistic war game I have ever played. I discussed my hope for this in length in a previous post. While playing, I genuinely felt anxiety as I started the game running across the desert with my comrades. As we made it to the first town we were ambushed by an enemy tank and we had to quickly dive for cover in a freshly made crater from artillery. As a medic I tried to revive my squad mate but when I made it to him I was gunned down by a German sniper. I respawned into the machine gun of an allied truck and quickly found myself returning fire at a bi plane that was trying to rip us apart and all of this was just my first game. Never before has a war game been this realistic.

The magic of Battlefield 1 lays in the fact that you are going to die, a lot. Death is simply around every corner. If you are not blown up by a tank, shot by a sniper or gunned down by a plane, you will certainly be ran over by a truck. But believe it or not this isn’t a bad thing because it never feels like you are “cheated” when you die. In Call of Duty I can’t even begin to count all of the times I shot someone first but somehow I would be the one who ended up dead on the ground. In Battlefield 1 when I die I sit there thinking “yep inhaled poison gas, seems about right.” Or “yep definitely just got blown up and stabbed by a bayonet, seems legit.” Part of the reason you don’t feel cheated when you die is because the game runs so damn smoothly.

Battlefield 1 is planning to support a whopping 64 players in a match! That is huge and with that you would expect to find framerate drops and lag. But during my playtime I did not experience any framerate issues at all. With all of the chaos of planes, tanks, artillery and infantry shooting at each other, no framerate drops at all? Well that is not just amazing, that is a Christmas miracle! This is due in part to DICE (the developers of Battlefield) tweaking their Frostbite game engine to a point of perfection but also because the game is most likely going to have dedicated servers. So no more crappy player hosting by Joe Schmo with the dial up connection. Phew!

DICE has also implemented a server browser that allows players to pick individual servers based on their game preference. Want to play rush with less than 64 people? No problem! Want to play a game of conquest with more players? Sure! Players can now choose where they want to play instead of praying they don’t get stuck joining a server where one team left because they were losing so badly.

What I believe will be the biggest change for Battlefield 1 fans is emphasis that been placed on squads. Squads may single handedly be the most important feature of a game which can be a good or bad thing. The good side is that you, and a group of your buddies can join a match together and be able to communicate with each other as you tackle objectives.  This will not only make winning easier but will also help you to survive longer. The negative side of this is for people who play solo and get stuck in a squad that has zero communication. They will almost certainly be running around not sure what to target and will end up dead more often. The large maps makes communication nearly essential for victory and not having it will almost certainly mean a loss. It is up in the air how DICE will fix this problem if at all.

I can now confirm that Battlefield 1 is easily the game I am most excited for. The sheer scale and chaos of matches makes Battlefield 1 one of the most fun games I have played in a long time. Leaving the modern/future warfare theme and returning to war in the 20^th century is a breath of fresh air. It is hard to say how well it will sell this holiday season but if other players feel similarly to how I do, Battlefield 1 is primed to be one of the hottest games this year.