Battlefield 1

• 1. Introduction

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  Battlefield 1 takes its name from a belief held by the people who made it. The team at DICE considered World War I "the dawn of all-out warfare," and they titled the fifteenth game in their Battlefield series accordingly. Electronic Arts published it for PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox One.

  The choice of setting raised questions from the start. Why did one powerful executive first say no to the idea? Whose war would the single-player stories choose to tell, and whose would they leave out? And how does a game built around large-scale battles treat a conflict that some writers argued might not suit a video game at all?

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• 2. The Reluctant Executive

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  Patrick Söderlund, the Electronic Arts executive responsible for overseeing DICE, originally rejected the idea of a World War I shooter. His objection was simple. He thought it would not be fun to play. DICE answered with a demo, and the demo changed his mind.

  Creative director Lars Gustavsson described the setting as a concept the team had carried for a very long time, a "dream" project. Game designer Daniel Berlin offered a practical reason for the choice. In his view, the weapons and gadgets of the period suit players with very different playstyles. Berlin also promised that the historical setting would not slow the game down, because gameplay mattered most to the team. The story side, by contrast, was meant to explore the lives of unknown war heroes.

  The public first heard of the project in June 2015, when DICE revealed that it was working on an unannounced game. In January 2016, EA promised three releases before the end of its fiscal year. They were Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and an unannounced game set in the Battlefield universe. The title, the release date, and the plot then leaked before the official announcement on the 6th of May 2016. That day, a Twitch livestream unveiled a reveal trailer set to a remix of The White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" by The Glitch Mob. The Collector's Edition promised a statue of a Harlem Hellfighter. An open beta ran from the 31st of August to the 8th of September 2016, and 13.2 million players took part. The team used it to catch major bugs, glitches, and crashes before launch on the 21st of October 2016.

  Aleksander Grøndal, a senior producer at DICE, did his own research by hunting for visual references. He favored colorized images, hoping to see what the soldiers had lived through. He imagined that footage inside the game with a modern take. Two sources stood out to him. One was Apocalypse: World War I, a 2014 French colorized documentary. The other was World War I in Colour, a 2004 book of colorized wartime photographs by Charles Messenger. Grøndal explained the appeal this way. "It's quite interesting and it sucks you in because it feels much closer when you see everything in color."

  Yet the "big inspiration" he named for himself was not an image at all. It was Blueprint for Armageddon, a six-part audio documentary by Dan Carlin for the Hardcore History podcast series.

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• 3. Six War Stories

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  Six separate War Stories make up the single-player campaign, and each one follows a different Allied soldier. Instead of a single hero carrying one plot, the game works like an anthology. Berlin said the campaign has larger, more open environments than earlier Battlefield games. Players get more choices about their route through a level and how to fight. The prologue breaks another habit. If the player dies there, the game does not reload a checkpoint. It hands control to a different soldier in a different role, anywhere from a tank gunner to a rifleman.

  That prologue, "Storm of Steel," is set in 1918 during the Second Battle of the Marne. Players take on members of the Harlem Hellfighters as they defend positions in France against a German offensive. An unnamed narrator, one of the Hellfighters, comments on the war while the fighting continues. Meanwhile, the soldiers under the player's control are killed. An airship bombards a Vickers machine gun position, forcing the gunner to abandon the weapon and defend the church around it. British tanks push the Germans back until German artillery stalls them, and then the Hellfighters counterattack. In the final perspective, a German soldier swings a shovel at the player, only for an artillery barrage to wipe out every combatant. The player wakes as the apparent lone survivor and meets a German survivor. The two aim at each other, but exhaustion sets in, and both lower their weapons.

  Daniel Edwards, a former chauffeur turned British tank driver, anchors "Through Mud and Blood." It takes place in the autumn of 1918 at the Battle of Cambrai, part of the Hundred Days Offensive. His tank is a Mark V nicknamed "Black Bess." The crew includes Townsend, the commander, and Pritchard, a gunner. McManus, another gunner, is cynical and doubts Edwards. Finch, the mechanic, is friendly. Finch dies to machine-gun fire early on while repairing the tank. Later, the tank is trapped in mud, and Townsend decides to call an artillery strike on their own position using the tank's messenger pigeon. McManus objects loudly. Pritchard is shot while trying to release the bird, so Edwards must do it. In the fog of Bourlon Wood, Edwards scouts ahead on foot to guide the tank. When the tank breaks down, he and McManus go to salvage spark plugs from captured British tanks. McManus deserts, then returns just in time to save Edwards from a German soldier.

  The repaired tank attacks a defended railway station even though it is the only British tank nearby. The aim is to fool the Germans into believing that a large offensive is underway. On the way into Cambrai, artillery immobilizes the tank. A wounded Townsend ignites a gas leak inside, killing himself and the attacking Germans. Edwards and McManus walk on alone. Closing subtitles note that more than 300 tanks took part in the battle. They add that the war ended a month later. Critics faulted the mission as historically inaccurate. They also saw a missed chance to feature a new nation, since it was the Canadian 2nd Division that entered Cambrai.

  Clyde Blackburn is an American pilot and gambler with a habit of deceit. He leads "Friends in High Places," set in the spring of 1917 during the Battle of Arras. He cheats George Rackham, a pilot of British nobility, at cards and steals Rackham's Bristol F.2. Posing as Rackham, he introduces himself to the gunner, Wilson. German aircraft ambush the pair on an exercise flight, and afterward they photograph a German munitions base. Wilson fears being accused of insubordination if they show the photos to British Command. Blackburn talks him round with the promise of medals. Wilson agrees on one condition: Blackburn must bring them both home safely from future missions.

  After the pair escort British bombers in an attack on the base, a bomb explosion sends them crashing behind enemy lines. Blackburn finds Wilson injured and briefly considers putting him out of his misery. He changes his mind when Wilson reveals that he knew Blackburn's true identity all along. Blackburn carries him across no-man's land, only to be detained by British Provosts on Rackham's orders. On the way to a court-martial in London, a German aerial raid hits their vessel and kills Rackham. Blackburn and Wilson commandeer a plane and destroy a wave of German bombers. They crash into a Zeppelin and use its anti-aircraft gun against another Zeppelin. They then jump into the River Thames. Blackburn closes by admitting that accounts of his exploits may differ because the war was so confusing. Even so, he insists his version is the truth. Whether it all happened that way is left an open question.

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• 4. Beyond the Western Front

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  Luca Vincenzo Cocchiola, a member of the Arditi, tells his story in "Avanti Savoia!" An aged Luca recounts his memories to his American daughter on his birthday, years after the war. The events themselves unfold in the autumn of 1918 in the Dolomites of Northern Italy. Luca and his twin brother, Matteo, join a major offensive to seize an Austro-Hungarian fortress. It begins only days after their 21st birthday. Matteo joins the main thrust, while Luca's unit clears barriers for the advancing forces. Luca wears heavy body armor and carries an MG08/15. He spearheads attacks on key positions, captures strongpoints, destroys an artillery gun, and thwarts an enemy aerial assault.

  Austro-Hungarian bombers then trigger a landslide to block the Italian advance. Desperate to save his brother, Luca sets out alone with a Villar Perosa and a Beretta M1915 to find Matteo's unit. He helps trapped Italian units along the way and pushes on to the fort. After clearing it, he finds the remains of his brother's unit and then Matteo, dead. In the present day, the old man says goodbye and wishes his brother a happy birthday. A closing subtitle says the war touched nations, empires, and families. It names the survivors and the dead the "Lost Generation."

  Frederick Bishop, an Australian messenger and veteran of the Second Boer War, is the center of "The Runner," set during the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915. A young recruit named Jack Foster tells Bishop that he is his new charge. Bishop is cynical but reluctantly takes Foster under his wing. He warns him to stay out of battle because of his youth and inexperience. At Cape Helles, Bishop storms the beach, captures a strategic position, and fires a flare to mark the success. Foster has disobeyed orders and followed. Bishop berates him for seeing war as glorious, since Foster had lied about his age to enlist. Foster is appalled by the carnage around him, and Bishop softens and reassures him.

  The next day, Bishop volunteers as a runner in Foster's place. A British officer named Whitehall sends him to a rear command post, which Bishop finds deserted. He learns that the British intend to retreat and cover the withdrawal with artillery fire. Foster, meanwhile, has joined an assault on an Ottoman fortress. Whitehall, distressed, lets Bishop disobey the fallback order to retrieve him. Foster refuses to abandon the wounded. So Bishop attacks the fort alone to cover the retreat, with a flare as the signal that the withdrawal is done. He captures the fort and is mortally wounded. He sees Foster's flare and is relieved. British warships shell the fort as the story ends. Closing subtitles state that the Ottomans eventually won at Gallipoli. Several notable survivors went on to found the Republic of Turkey. Australian and New Zealand troops fought under their own flags and marked Anzac Day.

  Zara Ghufran is a Bedouin rebel who works alongside T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia. She carries "Nothing is Written," set in the spring of 1918. The rebels fight to undermine the Ottoman occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. Zara infiltrates a derailed Ottoman train at Al-Ajdar and takes a manual of communication codes. An Ottoman officer named Tilkici traps her, but Lawrence and several Bedouin insurgents rescue her. The rebels use the manual to plan a trap for the Canavar, an Ottoman armored train. To make it stand down, they need message capsules held by three Ottoman officers.

  Zara goes in alone. She slips into Ottoman camps, eliminates the commanders, and sends two of the capsules off by pigeon. As she prepares the third, Tilkici, who has escaped from Lawrence, knocks her unconscious. He drags her into the desert and taunts her, having already ordered the Canavar to strike Lawrence's camp. Zara kills him before he can kill her. Lawrence has survived by relocating. Together they plan to hit the train while it stops for supplies. Zara slips into the village, wrecks parts of the train to slow it, and the rebels destroy it in an intense battle. Having had her revenge, she joins Lawrence in striking targets at the Suez Canal. Closing subtitles say the Ottomans were driven from Arabia. They add that the Allies refused to grant the Arabs full autonomy, and that conflicts in the region continue into the 21st century.

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• 5. Arsenal and Classes

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  Bolt-action rifles, submachine guns, automatic and semi-automatic rifles, artillery, flamethrowers, and poison gas all appear in the weapon list. DICE reworked melee combat and added sabres, trench clubs, and shovels. It sorted these weapons into heavy, medium, and light groups. Destructible environments and weapon customization return from earlier games, and here they are more dynamic. The vehicle roster is wide. It spans light tanks, landships, heavy tanks, armored cars, ordinary cars, torpedo boats, bi- and tri-plane aircraft, and armored trains. Reconnaissance vehicles, dreadnoughts, M-class zeppelins, and horses complete the list.

  Multiplayer divides its soldiers into four main classes, three spawn-based vehicle classes, and five Elite classes picked up on the battlefield. The Assault class fights at close quarters and against vehicles. It carries submachine guns, machine pistols, and shotguns, and it uses dynamite or anti-tank grenades against armor. Its AA rocket guns hurt aircraft badly. The Medic revives and heals teammates, using semi-automatic rifles and some fully automatic ones. One semi-automatic rifle can even switch to bolt-action mode.

  Support troops carry light machine guns and semi-automatic carbines. They also use smaller explosives such as mortars, limpet charges, and crossbows that launch grenades. They resupply ammunition and repair stationary weapons and vehicles. The Scout uses bolt-action and lever-action service rifles. The Scout's special skill is spotting. A flare gun marks nearby enemies on every teammate's mini-map. A periscope reveals their full silhouettes through walls, a feature called 3D spotting.

  Anyone who spawns in a tank becomes a Tanker, a class new to the series. The Tanker carries a hammer wrench that repairs allied vehicles, damages enemy ones, and also repairs the tanker's own. Spawning in a plane makes a player a Pilot. Out of their vehicles, both classes carry pistol carbines and a sawed-off shotgun. The Cavalry class rides horses and wears a cuirass for extra protection. Its soldiers carry a Russian 1895 cavalry rifle plus a cavalry saber or lance. Cavalry players can restore health and ammunition for themselves, their horses, and their teammates.

  Five Elite kits are there to be picked up. The Flame Trooper gets a gas mask, a Wex flamethrower, three incendiary grenades, and a trench club. The Sentry wears plate armour and carries an MG 08/15 or a Villar Perosa, a frag grenade, and a trench club. Its helmet stops headshots but prevents wearing a gas mask. The Tank Hunter wields a Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr, which does massive damage to vehicles and infantry. It adds a sawed-off shotgun, a periscope, and Geballteladung anti-tank grenades. A respirator and goggles give this kit a permanent gas mask without obscuring the view down the sights.

  The Trench Raider arrived with the They Shall Not Pass expansion. This kit has a trench club that kills in one hit, smoke grenades, a medical crate, a No. 3 Revolver, and three frag grenades. The Infiltrator came with Turning Tides. It carries a Martini-Henry Grenade Launcher, a sawed-off shotgun, and a signal flare gun that calls in artillery. A heliograph serves as its spawn beacon. Its scuba mask lets the player swim farther underwater than other soldiers can. Like the Sentry, though, it rules out a gas mask.

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• 6. Modes of Battle

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  Up to 64 players can share a server in Battlefield 1 multiplayer. A new squad system lets a group join and leave servers together. Berlin said that playing without a squad makes the game significantly harder. The maps draw on fronts from around the world, including the Middle East, the Western Front, Gallipoli, and the Alps. At launch the game offered nine maps and six modes: Conquest, Domination, Operations, Rush, Team Deathmatch, and War Pigeons.

  Conquest is a standard Battlefield mode. Teams capture objectives across the map and earn points for the objectives they hold and the eliminations they score. A team far behind on points gets a Behemoth-class vehicle, such as the Zeppelin L 30, an armoured train, or a Dreadnought. Domination is a smaller version with only 3 control points and no vehicles.

  In Rush, an attacking team with a limited number of respawns tries to plant bombs in two telegraph stations within one sector of the map. The defenders try to protect the stations and defuse any bombs before they explode. A successful attack replenishes the attackers' respawns and pushes the defenders back to the next sector. A new twist lets defenders use the telegraph stations to call artillery fire on the attackers.

  Operations is the new mode that stretches across several maps to simulate a campaign from the war. The attackers command a battalion with limited respawn tickets and must capture control points to advance. Running out of tickets costs them one of their three battalions. If they clear every map without losing all three, they win. The defenders win by eliminating all three. Behemoths even the odds in both directions. Attackers receive one after losing a battalion. Defenders receive one if they lose every sector of a map without costing the attackers a battalion.

  Team Deathmatch is the familiar race to a target number of kills, or the highest count when time expires. Back to Basic strips the game down so that only standard-issue rifles work as main weapons, with vehicles and Elite kits disabled. The strangest mode is War Pigeons, a capture-the-flag variant. Two teams fight over a messenger pigeon that signals artillery fire. The carrier must be defended while preparing the message. The pigeon must then be released outside, where the rival team can still shoot it down. The first team to release 3 pigeons wins.

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• 7. Four Expansions

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  In December 2016, DICE announced They Shall Not Pass, the first major expansion. It arrived on the 14th of March 2017, with a two-week head start for Premium holders. It introduced the French Army as a playable faction. Four maps are set at the Battle of Verdun and the Second Battle of the Marne: Fort de Vaux, Soissons, Rupture, and Verdun Heights. Two more, Nivelle Nights and Prise de Tahure, are set during and after the Nivelle Offensive. They followed in Summer 2017. The expansion also brought the Char 2C behemoth and Frontlines, a tug-of-war mode mixing Operations and Rush. Five control points lie along a line between the two bases. A team pushes toward the enemy base by capturing each point in turn, and a recaptured point drives it back. At the enemy base, attackers must destroy two telegraph stations, which defenders can use to call artillery. On the 5th of May 2018, the expansion became free for all players. It stayed free until the 15th of May as part of The Road to Battlefield V.

  DICE released the first images of In the Name of the Tsar in April 2017 and confirmed it at EA Play 2017. It centers on the Russian Empire and features a female Scout representing the Women's Battalion. Four maps lie on the Eastern Front: Lupkow Pass, Galicia, Brusilov Keep, and Albion. Two others, Tsaritsyn and Volga River, belong to the Russian Civil War between the White Guard and the Red Army. The expansion added 11 new infantry weapons and several vehicles. Premium Pass holders got it on the 5th of September 2017, and the worldwide release followed two weeks later. Its Supply Drop mode, inspired by the vast Eastern Front, has teams fighting over drops of ammo, health, vehicles, and Elite pickups. Vehicles and Elite pickups are meant to tip the battle toward the attackers.

  Turning Tides turned to naval and amphibious combat. Its first half reached Premium Pass holders on the 11th of December 2017. It brought two Gallipoli maps, Achi Baba and Cape Helles, and six new infantry weapons. It also revived the Conquest Assault mode. One team starts out holding every objective, and the other must take them all or outscore the defenders. The L-Class Destroyer was the new naval vehicle. The second half, Turning Tides: North Sea, followed on the 30th of January 2018 with the maps Heligoland Bight and Zeebrugge. It added the Royal Marines as a faction against the German Army, and the C-Class Airship.

  Apocalypse, the fourth and final expansion, arrived on the 20th of February 2018 with five maps, six guns, and a new mode. Three infantry maps reflect some of the bloodiest battles of the war: Caporetto, in present-day Slovenia, Passchendaele in Belgium, and River Somme in France. Each has a stationary Livens Projector, also called the Gaswurfminen. The other two maps, Razor's Edge in the Alps and London Calling over London, were built for the Air Assault mode. They are not based on real battles. The mode centers on frantic dogfights, and each destroyed enemy vehicle earns points. Razor's Edge allows only single-seat planes, while London Calling offers many planes and a zeppelin. The expansion also brought two air vehicles, the Airco DH.10 Amiens and the Hansa-Brandenburg G.I.

  A June 2018 patch added one last mode, Shock Operations. It is a shorter, faster version of Operations that plays on a single map with 40 players instead of 64. Five maps support it: Giant's Shadow, Prise de Tahure, Lupkow Pass, Zeebrugge, and River Somme.

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• 8. Reception

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  By the 9th of May 2016, the reveal trailer had become the most liked trailer on YouTube, with over 2 million likes. Electronic Arts expected the game to sell at least 14 million units in its first year. Opinion writers were split. Julie Muncy, writing for Wired, worried that the game might not capture the complexity of World War I. She thought the war might not be an ideal video game setting. Robert Rath, at Zam, noted that popular culture had largely forgotten the war. He suggested that Battlefield 1 could revive interest. Alex Hern of The Guardian saw hypocrisy in the objections. He wrote: "Asking whether the First World War is an appropriate topic for a first-person shooter may reveal a more pressing question: why do we think any war is?"

  After release, Metacritic recorded "generally favorable" reviews. Critics praised the unique, refreshing setting and the risk DICE took in choosing it. The multiplayer drew praise for solid mechanics, the Operations mode, the soundtrack, and the maps. International Business Times liked the campaign's story and level design but called it too short. PC World pointed out that all six stories are told from the Allied side, with no view from the Central Powers.

  The sales figures were large. Battlefield 1 was the best-selling retail game in the UK in its first week. Its launch-week sales beat those of Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline combined. In Japan, the PlayStation 4 version sold 113,083 copies in its first week and topped the charts. By January 2017 it had reached 249,053 copies there. It was the top-selling game in the US in the month of release. Over 15 million copies are believed to have sold worldwide.

  Awards followed across three years. The game appeared on the lists of the Game Critics Awards 2016, The Game Awards 2016, and the 17th Game Developers Choice Awards. It also appeared at the 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in 2017. In 2018, the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Awards listed it under Best Writing in a Video Game. Battlefield V followed that same year, taking over from a predecessor estimated at more than 15 million copies sold.

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