Battlefield 1 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA DICE and published by Electronic Arts. It is the fifteenth installment in the Battlefield series, and the first main entry in the series since Battlefield 4.[1] The game was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on October 21, 2016.
Battlefield 1 received positive reviews by critics and was seen as an improvement over previous installments Battlefield 4 and Battlefield Hardline. Most of the praise was directed towards its World War I theme, multiplayer modes, visuals, sound design, and single-player campaign.
Similar to previous entries in the series, Battlefield 1 is a first-person shooter that emphasizes teamwork. The game is set in the period of World War I, and is inspired by historic events. Players can make use of World War I weapons, including bolt-action rifles, automatic and semi-automatic rifles, artillery, flamethrowers, and mustard gas to combat opponents.[2][3][4][5] Melee combat was reworked, with DICE introducing new melee weapons such as sabres, trench clubs, and shovels into the game. These melee weapons were divided into three groups: heavy, medium and light.[6] Players can also take control of various armored vehicles, including light and heavy tanks, armored trucks, cars, torpedo boats, biplane aircraft, an armored train, Reconnaissance vehicles, a Dreadnought and an LZ 30 Airship, as well as ride horses into battle.[7] Destructible environments and weapon customization, features present in the previous games, returned in Battlefield 1 and are more dynamic.[8]
The game's world designer, Daniel Berlin, said the campaign mode has larger and more open environments than those in previous installments in the franchise, with more options and choices in terms of paths to completing levels and how to approach combat.[9] Players can control several characters in the campaign. If the player dies in the prologue, they will then take control of another soldier and role instead of reloading from a checkpoint. These roles can range from tank gunner to flametrooper to rifleman. When the player dies, a name appears on the screen of a real soldier, along with their birth year.[10] Unlike its predecessors, the game features a collection of war stories, similar to an anthology.[11]
The game's multiplayer supports up to 64 players.[12] The new squad system allows a group of players to enter and leave game servers together.[4] According to Berlin, playing without joining a squad would make gameplay significantly more difficult.[13] Multiplayer maps are based on locations around the world, including Arabia, the Western Front, and the Alps.[14] The game launched with nine maps and six modes, which include Conquest, Domination, Operations, Rush, Team Deathmatch, and War Pigeons, a mode in which players must secure war pigeons and use them to call for an artillery strike.[15]
Multiplayer modes[edit]
Battlefield 1's multiplayer modes feature a number of game types seen in previous entries in the franchise, as well as new modes;
Conquest: one of the standard game modes in the Battlefield series. Teams capture objectives across the map, earning points based on the number of objectives they hold. If a team is suffering from a major point deficit, a Behemoth-class vehicle (such as a Zeppelin L 30 or an armoured train) becomes available for their use.
Domination: a version of Conquest with a smaller map and fewer control points.
Rush: another standard game mode in the series, played between a defending and attacking team. An attacking team with a limited number of respawns must attempt to plant bombs in two telegraph stations located within a sector of the map, while the defending team must protect the stations and defuse planted bombs before they explode. If the attackers are successful, their respawns are replenished and the defending team falls back to the next sector. The game ends if the defending team exhausts the attackers' respawn tickets, or the attacking team captures the final telegraph stations. Unlike Rush modes in previous Battlefield games, the telegraph stations can also be used to call for artillery fire against the attackers.
Operations: A new mode which takes place across multiple maps to simulate a campaign from the war. An attacking team controls a battalion with limited respawn tickets; similarly to Rush, they must progress across sectors of a map by capturing their control points. If the attacking team exhausts their tickets, they lose one of their three battalions, and must try again. If the attackers are successful, the teams move onto a different map. The attacking team wins if they successfully clear all three maps without running out of battalions, while the defenders win if they eliminate all three of their opponents' battalions. Teams can be granted a Behemoth vehicle if they lose a battalion or map.[16]
Team Deathmatch: a standard game in which teams compete to reach a target number of kills, or the highest number of kills before time expires.
War Pigeons: a new, Capture the flag-like mode in which two teams must attempt to capture a messenger pigeon used to signal artillery fire. After the pigeon is captured, the player must be defended while they prepare the message to be sent, and the pigeon must be released outside. However, the opposing team can still shoot down the pigeon. The first team to successfully release 3 pigeons wins the game.
Frontlines: A new mode added in the They Shall Not Pass DLC, described as a "tug of war" combining aspects of Operations and Rush. A map contains five control points along a linear path connecting the bases of the two teams. Beginning at the centre of the map, a team must progress towards their opponents' base by capturing each successive control point. If the point is captured by the opposing team instead, they are pushed back towards their own territory. If a team reaches their opponent's base, they must then destroy the two telegraph stations within to win the game. As in Rush, the defending team can use the telegraph stations to call for artillery fire. If the attacking team does not destroy both stations before they run out of tickets, they are pushed out and must capture the final objective again before they may can make another attempt.[17]
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Overwatch is Blizzard's fourth major franchise and came about following the 2014 cancellation of the ambitious massively multiplayer online role-playing game Titan. A portion of the Titan team came up with the concept of Overwatch, based on the success of team-based first-person shooters like Team Fortress 2 and the growing popularity of multiplayer online battle arenas, creating a hero-based shooter that emphasized teamwork. Some elements of Overwatch borrow assets and concepts from the canceled Titan project. After establishing the narrative of an optimistic near-future Earth setting after a global crisis, the developers aimed to create a diverse cast of heroes that spanned genders and ethnicities as part of this setting. Significant time was spent adjusting the balance of the characters, making sure that new players would still be able to have fun while skilled players would present each other with a challenge.
