EA has a tendency to put out a lot of shiny, cinematic trailers for their games in lieu of showing a ton of gameplay early on. Needless to say, fans of the Battlefield series have been chomping at the bit to see something — anything — of the upcoming Battlefield 1. Battlefield 1 takes a departure from the more comfortable modern and near-future settings of recent war games and returns to the era of World War I, a bold move considering World War II was always the go-to for games before the recent trend in modern warfare.
Today at EA’s EA Play conference they finally gave fans a look at the much-anticipated Battlefield 1. The official trailer blends together cinematic action and a bit of gameplay like we’ve come to know and expect, but footage from the event has also made it’s way to the internet and it’s definitely looking pretty interesting thus far. There’s little additions, stuff like the new spawn-in camera that takes advantage of the overhead map being an actual view of the battlefield from overhead that updates in real-time that helps to add a sense of freshness to a genre that relies on yearly iterations with minor changes.
The host of celebrities hanging out and playing the game only made this whole presentation all the more strange, with a long camera pan on Snoop Dogg hanging out inside of a trench smoking something. The thing is, everyone looked to be enjoying the series’ return to larger-scale maps and a bit more “grounded” gameplay that the World War I can provide. The idea of mounted combat in a world of tactical blimps and old, clunky tanks sounds like an interesting mix.
If the changes are enough to entice you to buy this is the other question. Now that we’ve officially gotten a taste of Battlefield 1, how are you feeling about it? Is going back in time to World War I the right call, or should they have kept trying to push modern war? At least it’s not World War II, there was just so much of that in the prior generation of consoles.