How do we all feel about that lack of historical accuracy?

I'll take interesting over accuracy but a part of me will still feel uneasy about it.

At first I was like "Why is the German using a Springfield" in the early art then I saw how totally freewheeling it is with British A7Vs, black Germans and armoured trains rolling through Amiens so I stopped giving a fuck. Game itself looks fun. Reminds me a bit of Bad Company 2 but we'll see how that pans out.

Yea, giving all the weapons to all the factions kinda bothers me. I already expected that they would be scraping the prototype and unusual weapons/setting bottom, but I never really liked playing a WW1/2 game where you can choose the opposite faction weapons from the get-go. Different countries with their own distinctive weapons is what makes WW2 (and 1 I guess) games fun to play.

I'm sure it'll be fun, but I'm in the group of people asking why even bother making it a WW1 skin. It's like putting on the appearance of doing something different to get attention without actually doing anything different. In the end it doesn't matter but it still bothers me.

I think I'm ready for a return to WW2 at this point as odd as that may sound. I kind of miss it after all of this modern and future stuff. That's probably the only reason why this game interests me. This'll likely be the closest Battlefield or Call of Duty will do to that for awhile.

It depends. I don't think it matters if a video game is historically accurate. I don't think it matters if a movie is historically accurate either as long as it doesn't try to imply it's "based on a true story" and then has things in it that could never have happened in that era.

So, it just depends on how it's being angled. If it's being shown as something they want to imply really happened when it clearly did not then I have a problem. If they're not doing that, and just using a historical setting as the stage for the game they want to make, that's fine. It really only matters if people are having fun and since specifically we're talking about an EA game it also matters if more people buy it. I personally don't mind bolt action rifles (I loved it in the old Medal of Honor games) but they don't have to use them if their going for a more stylized caricature of World War 1 rather than a historically accurate simulation.

So, ya, it just depends.

I am shocked that a series known for it's historical accuracy has seemingly dropped the ball on this one.

Most of you either have too much time or need a new hobby.

Big thing about this one was we are setting Battlefield in World War I but in the end it looks like we are squeezing World War I into Battlefield formula. For me that is just wrong. Waste of great potential and it makes all that silly talk about being afraid of using the setting and people not knowing about WWI just plain dumb on their part.

The more inaccurate it becomes the better in my mind. I couldn't care less about historical accuracy, I want triplanes that handle like eurofighters and panzers with the firepower of an abrams tank. Granted I've played very little of previous Battlefield games, but the silly "helicopter in this cave"-chaos always seemed a lot more appealing than realism.

I'm not offended that the game is inaccurate, but the failure to adapt the gameplay to its new setting in any discernible way speaks to a lack of original thinking (or lack of appetite for risk?) that feeds into the generally low opinion I hold of EA right now.

I mean, at the end of the day, this is a series where you can be flying a jet that is going about 40mph, eject out of it, shoot a rocket at a helicopter, parachute back into the jet, and then fly under a bridge. None of this shit is accurate in any way, historically, physically or realistically. It's a hell of a lot of fun, though.

I'm no historian, but I can only imagine the Quick Look of a more historically accurate, completely changed-up mechanically version of Battlefield1 might go something like;

"Hey Jeff", "Hey Drew, what's this?"

"This is Battlefield1"

"No seriously, Drew, what is this? It looks like a card game"

"Oh right, yes. I am indeed playing cards in my hospital bed while I recover from the 15 seconds of combat I took part in a few weeks ago. It was awesome, though. I got to fire upwards of 3 rounds at something off in the distance before I was incapacitated by an artillery shell going off nearby. I then got to take part in the "dragging myself back towards the trench on my bloody stumps" mini-game for 30 minutes followed by the "you passed out from blood loss" black screen. Thankfully they started me back in the hospital bed, but I still have to go through a lengthy period of recuperation before I can finally "respawn", obviously with the addition of prosthetic limbs and a healthy dose of psychological problems.

"Um. Sounds fun!? Why don't you load up one of your other saves. Show me another class so we can get a look at some of the more action-oriented parts"

"Okie Dokie, Jeff. here we go..."

"WTF?"

"Oh right, yeah. For this save I chose the Chef class. Now don't let me forget about that pot of potatoes over there while I chop these carrots"

I already mentioned this, but I just want to say, Verdun is a good game in its own right - and at least trying to be historically accurate - but it's clearly not what Battlefield is about and just not the same kind of game

I think I prefer it to be historically inaccurate. When I first saw rumors that it was going to be a WWI game, I just knew that couldn't be true. That isn't a game that you can sell to the masses. The players that Battlefield games target aren't the people that games like Verdun do. The online multiplayer FPS crowd at large wouldn't latch on to an accurate WWI game. Battlefield players seem to be most interested in sprawling battles with exciting vehicle fights, faster paced close quarters combat, and long distance sniper battles. I just don't think you could sell a AAA shooter that mimics the trench warfare and distinct lack of movement that WWI is known for.

All in all, I can't say it was a great idea to go with this setting. But at the very least, the gameplay is still Battlefield, and I think that's what is most important.

Games are games, and unless that game says, "We are 100% historically accurate" then it just a game - entertainment. Its always nice when the historical facts are provided in away where you know what is historical and what is part of the loose 'story', but unless it says it 'educational' you should assume all entertainment is entertainment.

I do enjoy recieveing 'a bit' of a history lesson in a game. The Medal of Honor games on PSX were actually rather nice in that they had historical WW 2 footage and actually game a primer on how that war started and who was on what side.

The problem with history is often the facts of any conflict are "political". How do you explain how Vietnam started? Do you start with the Kennedy's escalation in 1961–63 or do you start with a botched CIA attempt to fix an election in Indochina in the 1950s? Do you talk about the fall of Japanese rule in 1945 or do you start in the Nixon Doctrine in 1969 like Platoon? The FACTS are that the United States OSS/CIA sowed the seeds for non-democratic/non-elections rule in Vietnam by fixing elections, but is THAT the story you want to go with. The truth is messy and it a matter of perspective for The US, UK, France, China, Japan, and Indochina/Vietnam.

I don't feel like a twitch shooter is the right type of game for historical accuracy. The pace of action in a historically accurate WWI game doesn't jive with what people want out of a Battlefield game. That's just a fact. It's better suited to a game that doesn't hinge on reaching mainstream audiences and selling multi millions of copies like Verdun or like a turn based strategy game where the slower pace of play lends itself to an authentic WWI experience.

Well, as far as our education system goes, the extent of WWI in K-12 here is pretty much "WWI happened and it was bad." The US was only involved for the last year of the war or so, and if we weren't involved, then it clearly wasn't important. If we learn it at all, it's only as a prelude to learning about WWII so we can all pat ourselves on the back about how awesome we were.

In terms of the actual game, I guess I don't find it that surprising that historical accuracy looks to be item #4557 on EAs list of importance. Outside of the strategy arena, you don't see a lot of WWI games for the same reason you don't see a lot of American Civil War games - hewing to historical accuracy would make it NOT a fun game to play. I mean doing WWI accurately, particularly the Western Front, would pretty much involve either an officer yelling at the player to go over the top, followed by you getting immediately sawn in half by a machine gun, or walking around followed by a message stating "You have died of trench foot."

I don't mind as long as it's fun. I can't take another modern battlefield game.

. . . It's a video game.

If it was serious I wouldn't play it. I play video games as an escape, the last thing I want is to be depressed; it's the same reason why I stopped watching dramas and thrillers years ago.

I was playing World At War, which is really kind of random, and had asked myself, as fun as it is, I wonder how disrespectful it can be seen as, not only to the accuracy, but from a violence perspective. Going into the accuracy perspective, I was also thinking how I really hope they get some accuracy down with Battlefield 1. I just want games to do some kind of teaching along with the violence now if it's going to take into account a real event in life. I love Valiant Hearts, and I loved that they had collectibles that told you what had gone on and what the soldiers used. There needs to be something in the game that tells the audience of what was true, perhaps even contrasting it to what the game doesn't do accurate. The game actually being accurate doesn't bother me as much as just wanting to know how accurate it is, and being able to tell how realistic it is to the fact. I'm not just saying that for myself, but I want everyone to know the difference.

well, it didn't help Hardline.

I don't care. Showing the bleak reality of WW1 would be cool, but I have zero expectations that the Battlefield franchise is going to be the one to do that. Instead they'll make some big dumb loud game, and I'm fine with that too.

Games will always choose gameplay over historical accuracy. I'm not a pro historian but I have seen hunderds of documentaries and read many books on WWII. Not as much about WWI but still a few and I am currently watching the Great War channel on Youtube which I recommend to everyone because it goes into detail about WWI in hundreds of episodes.

I prefer games to be historical but I understand that they need to think of gameplay first. I think BF1 has managed fairly well from what I've seen. I mean yes it feels like they are trying to make it play like a more modern shooter but at least there are no Stukas or Spitfires and from what I've seen the tanks look like WWI tanks even if they might not be as shitty and slow like they were back then. If carrying around a heavy machine gun makes the gameplay more fun then I understand why they do that even if in real life they were not portable.

A mass market FPS game is not where you will learn history but it might make people interested in learning the real history. Again I recommend the Great War channel on Youtube talking about the war week for week as it unfolded.

After the intial announcement I was wondering what kind of drastic gameplay changes they would make, be it slow reloading, or trench based warfare. I pondered a slower, more lethal battlefield, and was excited to see what they would do. When we saw the gameplay at E3, my first reaction was laughable disappointment that they've done nothing more than re-skin their existing games. I'm no history major, but I always did enjoy details of authenticity. All in all though, after watching a good amount of that gameplay, this still looks like the best BF game to date, and if you compare the way that warfare is conducted today and the way that its reflected in BF4, this is really not that different.

Not too happy about it, but at the end of the day I don't think you can make a fun battlefield set in too accurate of a WOI setting.

That being said. I just don't like battlefield anymore. They either need to go way crazier, or way more real. Now it is this terrible middleground, along with it being too team based. And from a casual level that teamwork never comes together in any real way besides throw a bunch of bodies at the objectives.
The blimp seem like a neat addition, but that seems like one of those things that are in their to feel spectacular to make people excited and sell copies, but will actualy end up being shallow or annoying.
That map design in 4 was also quite terrible, a shooter can really stand or fall by that, so I have my doubt if they can pull off some good maps. I also won't give a game that makes me pay for more maps a second look.

It's a video game, I don't give a shit in the slightest if it's historically accurate. If I did I'd be reading a history book. What I care about is "is the game fun or not?".

I hesitated about whether or not I should put another post in here considering I seem to have kicked a hornets nest a little bit but just to clarify my points a bit:

- I was not suggesting that they should have made the game 100% historically accurate. I agree that an actual depiction of WWI would not be fun.

- I will have to wait and see what the campaign is like but wouldn't it be good if you could play a video game about WWI which was fun AND learn something about the actual conflict at the same time?

- I realise that Battlefield has never been about accuracy but I feel they are wasting an opportunity a bit with this setting if it plays just the same as their other titles.

- I am aware of Verdun and play it often. I think it is great and I hope everyone who is even slightly interested goes and checks it out.

As others have said, hopefully if this game does nothing else it might mean that some people go and look up the actual conflict as well as inspire some other devs to develop games set in this period. I will cross my fingers that there at least some Commonwealth soldiers in the campaign.

@mrfizzy: I too am a History teacher at a High School in Aus. Generally I don't get too bothered by historical accuracy in video games or other media, provided that they try to capture the feel of what they're depicting. Battlefield 1 does irritate me because it doesn't appear (maybe I'm wrong) to be representing WW1 in any real or proper way.

I used to like the Brothers in Arms method of providing details and videos about the actual campaign that was being depicted. It would be great if Battlefield 1 did something similar (it won't). WWI being a relatively unknown or untaught conflict in US schools is intriguing to me, though it does make historical sense. For Aus, Gallipoli and the Western Front are pretty significant for our national heritage, so of course they're significant. Billy Hughes and Woodrow Wilson were engaged in a similar argument:

"Hughes argued that the Australian nation had earned this right (to be represented at the Treaty of Versailles) by the great sacrifice and loss of life it had made in fighting the war. President Wilson from the USA questioned Hughes’s authority to intervene in world affairs because he was ‘speaking for only five million people’. Hughes replied: ‘I speak for sixty thousand dead. For how many do you speak?’"

Actual WWI:

Alt history is rad

All I expected out of Battlefield 1 was for a game with bolt action rifles and more options to set up defenses during a match. Unfortunately I didn't even get that. Bolt actions rifles as the main weapons are a solved problem in video games since the late 90's so am disappointed that all we are getting is a 1 to 1 reskin of battlefield with superweapons added.

The only reason I'd play it is if it has a thoughtful story mode that somewhat respects history (not bloody likely). But if it did have a compelling story, I would forgive it for having mechanics that create a power fantasy completely disconnected from the narrative.

I expect, however, that both story and gameplay will be a hollow power fantasy and I won't be interested in this game.

I think the idea of turning a real conflict into bangbangshootyfun is going to raise eyebrows regardless if it's historically accurate. I for one would've loved if they took a risk and made the act of shooting and fighting in trenches a tedious, albeit tense, affair. Pulling that off would be hard, very hard, but I'd be actually somewhat interested in the product instead of the Michael Bay explodyfun they are showing us now.

I want it. I want it so bad that it hurts. I love history and the way this game is showing itself simply makes it look fun to play. History itself is all kinds of messed up, but this is a game. I play games for fun.

I mean, the list of video games that turned World War II into bangbangshootyfun is pretty extensive, why would World War I be any different?

The First World War was the main subject of history in the UK when I was at school in the Eighties. There were many documentaries and events to commemorate the centenary.

I think a game needs to be fun, first and foremost, and if it is, and draws people to play it, it can only highlight to conflict to people. If they want to find out more they can.

It would be a welcome compromise if they give us some sobering facts about the conflict during loading screens.

I'm certainly going to play it, and am more interested in this than another future warfare game.

I play many of the Paradox Grand Strategy games and for all the historical inaccuracies for the sake of gameplay there is so much real history you absorb that it is typically worthwhile.

The moments when I find something that genuinely surprises me is when I do self study and improve my own understanding. That is what makes a good historical game great. Promoting self learning and interest in real history.

It isn't different. That wasn't my point. Using any real war/conflict in a video game as a catharsis when said conflict caused suffering could be seen as questionable. There are certainly going to be criticisms levied at the game for various reasons and I can't say they are going to be invalid.The point I'm trying to make is that choosing to base your game around a real war and making it look like fun is probably going to raise a few eyebrows. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it or that it hasn't been done in the past (it certainly has), but it's not going to go without consequence or discussion regardless if it's 'historically accurate' (which it certainly isn't).

I feel it's fine. Usually the more fantasy in my videogames the better.

[needle_scratch.wav]

The USA is included as a multiplayer faction but France isn't?

I didn't care about historical accuracy of this game until right now. How do you leave the French out? That's bullshit.

Honestly I think what they should have done is just gone full fantasy World War 1 era with this one because that's exactly what it looks and feels like when I play this game. It's an interesting art style to say the least, but having this being paraded around as historical WW1 is pretty bullshit... this is basically WW1 with a nice dose of completely ignoring anything that actually happened to keep in pace with the gameplay from the rest of the series and "rule of cool". After playing the beta my general impression of the WW1 era is... why bother trying to be historical? It's misleading, it has the potential to piss people off, and it's jarring when you recognize a French tank rolling around, but no actual French side in multiplayer. It's like playing a WW2 game with U.S. vehicles, but no actual U.S. side to play as. Also seeing all these prototype weapons/vehicles being used as if they were standard issue is really weird.

It's tough to say.

I play these war games not just for the fun of it (although that will always be big part of it), I also play it to experience what it was like to fight in these wars, to witness what these soldiers endured and went through with all their bravery and effort. That moment in a CoD2 campaign when a mortar strike hit me near by and I got completely shell shocked, seeing my allies get shredded to pieces by machine gun fire, are things that I won't ever forget because of these games. It's exciting, intense, and most of all, interesting.

Do I think they could make WW1 interesting if they tried to work around what it actually was? Fuck yes. Hell yes they can. They can definitely arcadify it and make it work. And the only reason why they're not is because of large production values, the opinion on focus groups, and just an overall lack of confidence these AAA developers have on their audiences. People still think that progression systems, unlocks, and class customization are still relevant and addicting - they think that having static classes with restrictions as to how many players can have the automatic weapons wouldn't be fun. Fuck that bull shit.

However, how BF1 is now is alright. But it definitely shows how no one is doing anything to break the mold of these multiplayer FPS's. Even indie developers are barely doing anything with this genre. Red Orchestra 2 and Insurgency seem to be those very few games that scratch that itch that less is more, and slow paced combat is enough to make the human mind activate endorphins. No matter how a game is, if it lends some emotion other than boredom, I think people will buy it as long as the marketing makes people aware of its existence and what it is.

I don't really care. At this point I'm happy if a video game is fun to play and is not totally broken.

I played the beta and it left me cold. I think mainly I'm just over the Battlefield die-respawn loop, it takes too long to get back into the action too often.

As for the historical accuracy or lack thereof...for me, the game just seems silly because of it, almost cartoony. Like we could all be running around in our parents' back yards wearing cheap Cowboys and Indians costumes.

You stand there in the middle of the desert, trying to shoot a horse in the head enough times for the game to be happy that you've shot the horse in the head enough times, before a man swipes a sword in your general direction and you die.

It's just not for me.

Last Battlefield game I've played was 1942 and that didn't last long either. It was just too chaotic for me (the bad netcode didn't help either, with vehicles warping all over the place). I didn't care much for the modern take on it, so I gave this one a try and to my surprise I really like it.

The only big complaint I would have is that the classes don't matter much. I've been a medic for several rounds and never healed or revived a person, simply because they die too fast to heal them and respawning is so fast that they don't want to wait for a revive. I felt totally useless. The other classes are more like different weapon loadouts as well. You can drop ammo with one of them, but no one is ever running out of ammo, so it's just as useless as the medic.
In these games it should've been all about teamplay, but everyone is just doing their own thing.

Still fun to play a few rounds of chaotic warfare now and then, though :)

Well yes, as a matter of fact I do want the Siegfried Sassoon simulator with just the right amount of Blackadder Goes Forth much more than I want another Battlefield game. That brings up the question though of what kind of game that should be.

First person seems the most appropriate way to really delve into the dreadful experience of such a terrible war. Any other viewpoint of WWI creates the very distance from combat that allowed the war to going as long as it did. There's the potential for an amazing RTS or other grand strategy game that plays into that genre's designs to properly convey the distance from the war, both physically and mentally, of those civilians and upper echelons of the military not right on the frontline and the period's romanticized idea of war that sent so many soldiers into the grinder. But I can think of only a few game designers nuanced enough to make a game that so effectively combines tone and design for such brilliant satire.

That'd be a very different way to skin a cat though than the idea of a WWI game people imagined after the announcement of Battlefield 1. A first person game is how I believe a game could give the best experience of feet in the trenches and trench in the foot. Not a seemingly similar third person game as video games have an illogical nature where third person games tend to focus on the character the player plays as while first person focuses on what happens around the player and what we seem to want out of the great WWI game is immersion into the horrible setting of the Western Front. So I think an FPS would be the way to go.

As has been said abundantly before though, WWI is the war of the 20th century least in common with the designs of the FPS genre. As the documentation shows its a war of sitting around in squalor and waiting to die in a variety of harsh ways. Maybe the best a game can do is a 60 minute walking simulator of some elaborate trench before the player is ordered over the top to be gunned down by a machine gun and lay dying in no man's land in a slow fade to black and credits backed by the cries of his fellow doomed soldiers.

I feel fine. It's a game about infinitely respawning men shooting eachother over and over for fun. This time around it has WW1 set pieces and backdrops. It might even lead to some people wishing to educate themselves on WW1 and education is usually a good thing.

I think it's really dumb that they've included minorities into the battle to feel more inclusive even though they were in less than 1% of the war, but decided that having women in battlefield was silly. Sweden NO.

It's fairly unsurprising to me. When this was announced there were a lot of questions about how you make WW1 interesting as a game and the answer seems to be 'by stripping out a lot of what it actually was'. It may have been more factually accurate to describe it as a WW1 style setting as opposed to being an actual WW1 game, but that wouldn't go down well with marketing I imagine.

@mrfizzy: thank you for posting! I have my degree in history as well and teach middle school history. I was psyched for the game when it was announced but find myself losing interest. I know games aren't supposed to all be factually accurate, but this one is bugging me. I guess I had a very different take on the initial trailer compared to what we got with the beta this week.

I actually went back to BF4 this weekend and had quite a bit of fun. The BF1 beta just did not do it for me. That being said I'm more excited for Titanfall 2.