Totally. There are a huge amount of ways to customise your character without going to such embarrassingly looking extremes. Helmets, camos, scarves, patches, faces, scars, tattoos etc. I wonder if this is the next wave of all the franchises I like changing themselves to chase the newest trend.

Sure sounds like a battlefield game! Extra points for the Churchill tanks and the Cricket Bat BLOODY RIPPA!

They're e3 demo and beta better be super impressive because I could not give less of a shit about a WWII game in 2018. It didn't help that BF1 was horrible.

Is their any modern conflict where bright blue face or the golden katana paint would be appropriate? mp mtx's only ever really with work either wacky customizations Fortnight or grinding something like characters in R6 Seige, people who spend want to stand out no one buys boring stuff.

@thepanzini: if you went with PMCs sure. Blackwater try hards probably carry swords. Recently the Australian army issued a notice telling soldiers to remove Punisher style icons from their gear so it clearly happens in modern conflict because of macho shit haha. Still looks awful no matter how you cut it.

Fun>authenticity. There have been plenty of WW2 games that have aimed to be authentic. Hopefully all the dweebs complaining about the addition of women won't buy the game so I won't have to hear as many racial and homophobic slurs in multiplayer.

I was excited when CoD was going back to WW2, but they missed the mark so hard I didn't buy it altogether. I was hopeful BF would get it right.

They didn't.

This looks sooo fucking unbelievablely stupid. Frankly, I am amazed at how bad they made it look. Hoping the actual game is better but yeesh what a letdown.

Also, bad company 2 is the best battlefield game. If this is more like bad company 3 but set in world war 2 I am 100% down.

I like most of the gameplay changes, although the dive stuff seems a bit silly with how it interacts with shooting.

The tone of that trailer was awful, for a Battlefield game. I like Battlefield because it always felt like it was trying to be authentic, if not accurate. BF1 did a great job with both tone and gameplay capturing what I imagine WW1 combat felt like. The trailer felt like it was more on the Inglorious Bastards side of things, and then some, which isn’t what I want. Hopefully that stuff is relegated to the coop stuff, because I want MP to feel more authentic. I’m sorry but a female amputee being a soldier is ridiculous. Even now you wouldn’t see a soldier fighting with current prosthetic arms. The female thing can be debated but female fighters were incredibly unusual at the time, and as far as I know didn’t really exist outside of a select few locations. I know it’s the era of inclusiveness but it felt odd to me. I’m down with it when it makes sense in context and I love me a lady warrior but if we’re talking about a historical setting I don’t want that decision being made for any reason other than it being a good way to capture the history. I liked the sound of the female Norwegian fighter because that seemed more plausible but some British lady with a damn hook? Come on.

Also the gameplay stuff they showed looked like it was being played by a tester showing off mechanics, especially with the new dive to probe stuff with it almost getting spammed in silly ways.

Hope the gameplay stuff they show at E3 will be more enticing. I loved the hell out of BF1 and some of the gameplay changes they have come out with for this sound genuinely very good. I’m just not sold, and I haven’t had anything but stellar experiences with mainline BF games.

Is anyone else worried about the lack of premium? One of my favorite elements of 3,4, and 1 was the level of content that was released through premium. Yeah it was $50 but for less than the price of the original content you more than doubled the maps from the base game and got new weapons, vehicles, and I think even gadgets. I’m worried that dumping that model means there will be less meaningful additions and more focus on smaller scale/insubstantial stuff.

@hayt: there’s a difference between a punisher patch and a silly looking biker jacket though.

@flatblack: I would agree if a) the tone was actually fun and b) the series so far hadn’t been pretty good about providing an authentic tone.

Had this been something like that Brothers in Arms that never happened, that actually pulled off the tone change in a series that already hit the period and authenticity really well, I would feel better about this.

As for women, I look at that from a historical perspective. If they can justify it there, I’d love to see some lady warriors. So far they have not done that. And then you add her damn arm in and it just feels like a grab for the inclusiveness award and not something genuine, again especially in a series like this.

I think women warriors with character beyond “haha I’m a tough person crackin wise look how clever” are awesome and the image of a soldier with a fake arm is pretty awesome. I’d just prefer it happen in a property more likely to do something with it and where it fits better.

Not wanting to see a female in this game in that context doesn’t make someone a dweeb and not everything is about hating women. It may be hard to believe but a lot of people who take issue with it genuinely just don’t like the errors in authenticity and historical representation.

Brienne of Tarth is a badass. She’s also a character who feels genuine in the world she lives in. She’s not a petite pretty lady who happens to be a badass.

I want to see a female Soviet sniper. There were a lot of those. Lady Death was one of the most effective snipers of WWII. That’s a badass, that’s a character worth emulating, in my opinion.

I feel that forcing female characters into roles that simply don’t fit historical events does very little to honor what women actually DID do during the period.

Besides the obviously fake “gameplay” in this trailer, I don’t see what everyone is complaining about. It looks like a Battlefield game to me. The cheeky “ello govna” quips are pretty lame but they’re no more lame than any other video game. I’m sure if you just want to play the multiplayer it will be the same Battlefield stuff that everyone is used to.

I know everyone here is talking about the trailer and dividing camps on feels, but I want take a moment to comment on the event itself.

Trevor Noah as the host was very unexpected, and surprisingly good for being a host to a game event like Battlefield (or EA in general). He was energetic, charming, and occasionally funny. It was kinda apparent that he wasn't some diehard fan of the series (or maybe games in general), but his confidence allowed him to coast by that stuff with ease. The only thing is that Trevor Noah might be a little too cool to be put in the same room as developers, as you can see the developers were often thrown off or flustered by Trevor's jabs and jokes. Boy did he make them look like squares.

Overall, I wouldn't mind seeing Trevor Noah again as a host of a gaming event, just maybe with other people of the same wavelength, or maybe any company other than EA.

Considering all the crazy shit they showed in the trailer, and the absurd stuff you could already do in Battlefield, it's wild how people still manage to piss and moan about the "females".

That trailer looks like Overwatch had a baby with Battlefield. Pass.

We have had dozens of serious, accurate, bleak ww2 games. Could not be happier that this seems to be taking a different tack.

If this game was at all interested in historical authenticity I think you would have a point. I would never claim off the bat that if there is anyone that has a problem with women being inserted in WW2 that they hate women. What I do want to push back against is the notion that because they chose to focus on the second world war that it has to be historically accurate. That and why women being there is such a big sticking point for people. Wolfenstein had big dog robots, Captain America had unrealistic genetically modified super soldiers, Call of Duty WW2 had zombies, plus all of the other hundreds of thousands of fiction based stories that use WW2 but when Battlefield decides that it wants to include women not being historically accurate in a video game is a problem?

Not saying anyone criticizing this decision makes them a woman hater but maybe these people should ask themselves why this video game doing something not accurate in this way matters to them so much. If you want a real gritty take on WW2 I think you are covered pretty thoroughly with everything that's out there. Not singling you out with this response just anyone really up in arms about his.

The issue with a WWII setting is that it profoundly impacted the world. There's a really good argument that the conflict should be treated with a certain degree of respect, as we're not that far removed from the war itself. Many people have living relatives that experienced all manner of change from WWII. I completely get why some people have major issues with the tone of this trailer.

I personally don't really give a shit about the women thing, but it does feel like it's there to check some boxes more than anything, especially given the amputee factor. The female amputee character apparently respawning to club the dude at the end also fully divorces the whole thing from any semblance of a realistic depiction. I don't need or expect the actual game to have permadeath, but it's pretty goddamn jarring to flat-out highlight the video-gamey-ness of it in the trailer.

Battlefield 1 actually did some interesting things with inclusivity and historical accuracy. Having the Women's Battalion of Death in the In the Name of the Tsar expansion was rad, and the same goes for the Harlem Hellfighters. I wasn't familiar with either, but researched and thoroughly enjoyed reading about both thanks to the game. I hope there is similarly a real-life inspiration here, but I doubt it. Moving on.

My far greater issue is the style of gameplay being advertised here. Everything exploding while people buttslide around rapidly, action-movie dive through windows, and Chuck Norris-roll is ridiculous. Boy, does this series not need to go after hypermobility or flashy bullcrap. I'm assuming the actual game will be far more grounded than what's being "sold" here, but the semi-realistic pace/gameplay is IMO the best thing Battlefield has going for it over CoD, Overwatch, et al. There are arcade shooters aplenty.

Cosmetics are dumb (IMO), but the market basically fucking demands them now, so I don't blame them at all for putting them in. Actual soldiers do some things with appearance just to distract themselves/break the monotony anyway. See: special forces beards, solidarity tattoos, etc. War-style facepaint isn't half as unrealistic as people are making it out to be here, and if it spares us a season pass and the split playerbase, I can deal.

I look forward to seeing actual multiplayer gameplay to hopefully clarify how some of this stuff really factors in.

We've had a nice conversation about BfV on the Discord but here are the thoughts I posted there, more or less.

[Background: I've played a whole lot of Battlefield over the years but fell off hard in Bf4 and have never gone back.]

The things they are saying about slowing the game down and putting more emphasis on the tactical play sounds like music to my ears.

• The best Battlefield can be, in my opinion, is the spectacular chaos and craziness of a lot of things popping off at once, combined with solid, tactical gameplay. If the BfV can nail this, I'm back on board with the series.
• Things like bullet penetration and explosion shockwaves also sound very good.
• No Bf Premium is also great, but I do worry about where else they will be getting their money from. Hopefully it's limited to selling well-made cosmetic items that fit into the game piecemeal.
• Maps as free updates so no more player separation based on DLC bought.

Now, on to the squad mechanics:

The squad leader being able to use points to call in a V1 strike, drop supplies, etc. is interesting but the Jack Frags video mentions that it will bring back the battlefield pick-ups as well. I really don't want to see those again. Being able to summon special vehicles also doesn't sound very appealing. It reminds me of CoD killstreak rewards in a very bad way.

As for promoting squad play, that's an interesting point.

You see the thing is, squads are already incredibly strong. In fact that was one of the big gameplay loop issues in bf3 and bf4. If you had like 1-2 serious squads that worked together on a team they could mop up the entire map no sweat. It became a race to hop from (poorly defended) objective to objective as quickly as possible while the 1 or 2 good squads on the opposing team did the same.

Rinse, repeat.

It was very hectic and yet very boring at the same time.

This is something DICE will have to break. Making squads even stronger might not be the answer. In their idealized world, everyone plays together in strong squads but that's not reality. You'll always have the Jeff Gerstmann-type of player who just wants to spawn as close to the front line as possible, run forward, shoot a bit, get killed, respawn, repeat.

I also worry about their emphasis on the campaign in the reveal. DICE has a terrible track record of making good campaigns. Nothing even remotely worthwhile sine the Bad Company games. I don't mind the campaign being basically a tutorial for the various classes you'll be playing in the multiplayer mode but I worry about the amount of emphasis they are putting on it atm.

All in all, colour me me hopeful that this game could bring me back to a series I've abandoned after spending way too much time with it.

Honestly, assuming that the trailer really did just miss the mark on what the gameplay itself is bringing to the table, if all of the authenticity minded criticism regarding DICE trying on a new style does anything here, I'd love it to be that devs in situations like this where historical accuracy, sensitivity or even just canonical reverence are likely to interfere can just add a checkbox in the options menu for "Authenticity mode" which simply forces all models on the client side to display as an accurate default model. That way, purists can enjoy the game in their prefered visual context and the fun brigade can have their crazy hats and facepaint and then everyone can just go and shoot the hell out of each other in what otherwise seems to be a game that's mechanically full of a great deal of potential.

Do the same to Battlefront 2. Done. Pink Darth Vader justified without limping any purist fanboy johnsons. Rake in cash for silly cosmetic sales on the side and hear zero complaining from folks that don't want to see the kind of stuff that deviates from their vision. Problem solved. Everyone wins.

@petefic: To be honest, I think the only thing that was authentic about 1942 and BF2 were the weapons, vehicles, and locations in relation to the time period. Shooting RPGs out of a looping plane and getting back in, or the infamous dolphin diving of BF2, were not so authentic or realistic, but were fun as hell.

Any other company is welcome to take up the challenge of creating an authentic and realistic WW2 game, but it was 1942 and BF2 (and Bad Company) that attracted me to the franchise because of all the dumb unrealistic shit I can do. I'm onboard with this Battlefield take on WW2.

I really like this idea, in theory. In reality, the people who buy cosmetics would go apeshit that others would have the option to not see their beloved outfit and would endlessly whine "why would I pay for something no one is going to see" as if that's some kind of unfair hardship.

@ghost_cat made the point I was going to already so I'll confront your other point by saying I don't buy that being the reason why people are bummed. The vast majority of people I've seen are mad because of some perceived "checking off of boxes" or "playing the diversity card", "giving into SJW's" etc. in the guise of being sticklers for historical accuracy *eye roll*. To be fair I haven't seen that much on these forums so I'm not calling out anyone in particular on this site. With that said Rage 2 isn't based on or playing off of real world events so there is little reason for calling the diversity police or whatever. Battlefield having real events associated with it sets off the signals to say "hey, woman don't belong here you including them is historically inaccurate" but very little mention of the katanas.

If you wanted the game to be something realistic and accurate I don't know why you think this game would be that but I generally don't begrudge you that. Though I don't think it's something worth being up in arms about but that's just me. The responses sticking to the historically inaccurate/women angle are silly. Which is what my original post was responding to.

@opusofthemagnum: I'm with you regarding the tone but its not the female soldiers so much as she (and all the other people in that trailer) look extremely stupid.

I've seen more than a few people mention the katana.

Being one of those people that is upset that they aren't going for a more authentic tone, it really bums me out that there are so many people acting like cretins about this. Being on "that side" is uncomfortable for me.

I think what is really riling people, myself included, is that they say things like this but we got the trailer that we did. Just say you are doing an alt-history game or you are really taking some artistic license with the setting and theatre. People don't give a fuck about these things in Wolfenstein or any game like that because they say from the start that "yo this shits crazy and not historically accurate".

@fatalbanana: It's pretty bogus to dismiss anyone who thinks the tone is bad as using it as a guise to protest "SJW" stuff when by your own admission no one here is doing that. Battlefield has always been a mechanically goofy game but this is the first time outside of the free to play sphere it has looked so goofy. Part of the appeal of Battlefield to me as always been the authenticity. The games look good and capture the tone of their eras well. Authenticity being distinct from realism. Gladiator looks authentic but isnt at all realistic. The face paint, false arms and katanas is a bridge to far for me. You don't have to agree. I know some people don't give a shit and that's a-okay but I think telling people disappointed in the change that they're not really upset they're just using it as an excuse is pretty uncool.

The internet is capable of some pretty profound mental gymnastics when they've premptively made up their mind they don't like something

I think what they should have done was Wolfenstein it up and make an alternate history where the Axis made all the right decisions during the war, making the war effort last longer to an area where the Allies were so desperate, they gave women and other minorities the permission to enter the war, including the disabled. If they did this, I would be perfectly fine with the zany aesthetic they're going here.

Fortnite has been out for less than a year and it was out for a couple months before they decided to copy PUBG to save their game and that's when it got popular - considering the amount of time that has past I'm not sure how any game, especially one so big, would be able to copy them so quickly. Battlefield should do battle royale since they have far better shooting, vehicle mechanics, gunplay, etc than 99.9% of shooters out there. My only problem with that is, I'm not sure if I want battle royale with WWII gear, I'd much rather it be modern day. Nothing in the "gameplay" looked that different from past BF games, it was just very stylized and choreographed to show it off in a trailer. I'd wait for more gameplay before deciding on if they've strayed too far.

I think your complaints are fair, but most the blow-back I've seen is from "tough and fair" right wingers calling the devs lame and SJWs for showing women and black people so much. I think that's to be expected when you have a character creator, which is something I'm glad is back, but considering Rainbow Six Vegas did that a million years ago, it's something that never should've left online shooters to begin with. I do think video game devs and Hollywood pushing women isn't as nearly altruistic as they'd like people to think. They know guys will play video games, go see Star Wars, etc pretty much no matter what, but if they put a woman as lead then they might get more money by bringing in a woman who wouldn't have paid attention to it before, which isn't a bad thing either, but it can feel gimmicky and lame, but I don't think that applies to this game at all like so many people online are saying.

No season pass, a focus on squads/teamwork, a co-op mode, and other changes sound very good to me. I just wished they announced that it'll sooner or later get a battle royale mode.

@tru3_blu3: Full blown alternate history would've been fantastic, holy shit. Have levels set stateside and stuff as well. Don't even sell it as that. Just have things go differently in-game and suddenly you the player are like "wait, okay, this stuff definitely didn't happen," then hit em with the Wolfenstein-esque shit.

But in all fairness, the whole "unseen" thing they're pitching here about showing uncommon and unfamiliar stories really does sound great.

Though I will admit, the kind of pulpy vibrant tone of the trailer did give me pause in a "oh, this modern vibe being retroactively applied to a real time period is a bit gross for an entry that isn't a spinoff," but as long as they're not tryin to be like "we're making a profound and respectful rendition of what it was like blah blah blah," then it's fine. If it's like "hey we made the most video gamey-ass WW2 we could," then yeah, have at it.

Thank you for saying this because it means I did communicate my point very well so let me try again. Anyone who takes issue with the tone I have no problem with at all I think that's totally valid and I'm not lumping them in the same group at all. My issue is with the people that have a problem with women being in the game and using things like its tone or authenticity as a way to get around what they are actually saying because those arguments on there face don't hold much water. To hammer my point all the way into the ground there is a difference in saying "I wish the game was more realistic" and saying "Having woman in the war isn't historically accurate". Maybe the game isn't trying to be historically accurate much like the insanely large amount of stories told using WW2 as its setting but for some reason, Battlefield is one of the only ones they are choosing to go to bat for. If you want realism that's totally understandable and your needs are met elsewhere, not to dismiss it, but it is what it is. I hope that is clearer.

I answered this above but just to be clear I am not lumping the people that have genuine issues with the game's tone (or katanas in this case) in the same group. You're totally free to be unhappy with the direction the game is going and anyone who says that take is invalid is wrong. Just don't shieth yourself in coded language to cover up perceived outrage over a non-issue like the inclusion of women.

@fatalbanana: mainline Battlefield has never had this tone, I think that’s why people are reacting so negatively to all of this. People who like Battlefield like the way the previous games handled the tone. Few seem to like the new tone. If that isn’t justification for why it should have been more authentic I don’t know what is.

What’s wrong with wanting a historically authentic experience? There are a lot of games from a decade ago, there is one Battlefield game from two decades ago that address this setting.

And again... I’d be less vehemently against the attitude of the characters, the freakin prosthetic arm on a female soldier, the dumb character customization if it came off as genuine or well done but it doesn’t at all. It feels very generic and bland despite trying to be more energetic and exciting.

People who play Battlefield clearly like the authentic feeling as much as the crazy gameplay moments. I don’t get the argument of “but it isn’t” against someone saying it should be. Yes, it’s not trying to be authentic. That’s the issue. And to make it worse, they aren’t even doing a good job of not being authentic, in my opinion.

The reason people are against it.... is because they wanted authentic. I don’t get why anytime someone says that, they are told or it is implied they are harboring other thoughts.

There are a lot of dudes and even dudettes out there that just want an authentic experience. They don’t care about social issues they want it to be authentic and they want that experience with Battlefield. Because that’s been the way Battlefield has handled mainline games. Had this been a spin-off like Bad company, and had been able to go further and take it full alternate history with chicks and amputees and all the rest, and a genuinely compelling reason for all that stuff like Bad Company had for it’s more lighthearted experience, that would have been cool. I probably would have preferred a realistic, authentic experience but I’d be excited for either one. This just looks poorly done.

We’re nerds, we like things a certain way. I’m a military geek, and about to enlist. I like that stuff and know a lot of people who also like that stuff. It obviously has huge appeal because we’re only now starting to get out of the modern warfare era of games, which surged with the release of Call of Duty 4 many years ago. I feel like you’re making a lot of assumptions that there aren’t a lot of people genuinely into authentic war stuff. Guys love shit like Saving Private Ryan, they like WWII history, they like guns. They know when things aren’t right and this is one of those moments. I don’t think it’s fair to assume anyone is hiding behind authenticity and no one should need to feel the need to explain how awesome female characters are just because they said they don’t think it fits in what they want the game to be based on the general themes of past.

Heck even the marketing team knows people want an authentic WWII Battlefield experience, that word is used specifically. But they have yet to deliver on that and that bums people out.

Dice isn't a small studio. and if EA was chasing that Fortnite money, then I would bet they'd also rope in some other developers to help bring in some assets. The gameplay changes I was talking about come from here, and here's a fun game: every time they list something, see if you can say "Like PUBG or Fortnite?" Even if the thought was 'Battle Royale, but in Battlefield' they're changing the shooting to make it more arcadey, so it isn't even that, core pieces of the game are being changed to fit this new mold. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll turn out great, and boy do I hope I am, but when the first thing we see is this terrible trailer and a list of core gameplay items they're completely changing, I'm not given a lot of reason to believe otherwise.

The character creator stuff I have no problem with, and if that's in there I think its super smart to include disability/non historically accurate skin colors. If you're building the assets, let everyone make themselves, not just white dudes and palette swapped white dudes to be other colors too. You're playing a game with respawning, dudes who can magically pull ammo out of their ass and magic flags that make your team win if you hold them long enough, if their 4th wall is broken with women and black people they have some other issues not related to the game. My problem is that most of that trailer was really bright and goofy, which hasn't been the tone of Battlefield. Go back and watch the Battlefield 3 TNTs, those are perfect examples of what makes Battlefield fun, you can pretend you're in a war movie with your bro's and check your corners and use cover intelligently, or you can fly a helicopter into the tunnel or blow up a jet with a pistol. The dichotomy between those two ways to play was part of the fun.

And there are ways to even do the stuff in the trailer with more historically accurate pieces: sabres and trench swords were still around in WWII, face paint was used, people quipped back and forth in combat. But instead, we got barbed wire cricket bats, bright blue accents and lame one liners that feel disconnected from what's actually happening. If this was Bad Company 3 and they wanted to lean into having a sense of humor, then that would have made way more sense. Fight over gold and have conversations about how clean the tanks are. This feels like a game where I can spend money to buy dances.

@notnert427: I agree with you on that front. Oh, well. Can't make everyone happy all the time. It's the developer & publishers choice and the game may well live or die on the divisiveness of their stylistic decisions. It'd just be a shame if the game ends up enjoyable, evolutionary, fundamentally solid and also tries a more consumer favorable business model than we've seen from most major publishers in a good long time and then fails because they had to draw a hard line down the middle of their fan base on the style issue.

@ghoti221: I’ll say a few things: first of climbing on the wings is a byproduct of the engine, not the design. Single handedly driving a tank while controlling it’s turret is a gameplay conceit because few people would be engaged by just being a driver. I’m a mil-sim guy who doesn’t mind being just a driver, who learned way more about combat medicine than I ever expected to playing ArmA with an advanced medical add on. Authenticity isn’t accuracy or realism. It’s the impression of both however. And the history enthusiast in me cringes at some of this stuff. The shooter side of my brain cringes at the idea of any sniper being an amputee who has no ability to drive the rifle back in their shoulder or manipulate the weapon with the level of finess often needed.

If people were concerned with realism they would complain about respawns, revives, ammunition counting, ballistic models, vehicle simplicity, etc. Realism and 100% historical accuracy isn’t the question, authenticity is. I view those as being very different.

I also mentioned that I would be stoked to see females in roles that were more authentic, specifically mentioning Lady Death and soviet female snipers.

As for combat support roles, in most at least western forces very few if any ever held in the presence of, let alone took up, arms against the enemy. Women played a huge role in WW2 from manufacturing to support roles in and around the battlefield. However they were not combat medics. They were not smart allecky British amputee snipers.

And as for non Caucasian combatants, I and many others have no issue with that and in fact I want to see more theaters of WW2 they took part in represented in games just because they don’t get the attention Europe gets and they are really interesting to me, especially Africa and the surrounding theater.

I’m not denying that there are some people who just use it as an excuse to push their prejudice. But I don’t believe it is even a major minority especially in this community. It’s disappointing when someone feels the way I do and is automatically assumed to be pushing some sort of prejudice. The reality is women had very few combat roles outside of certain forces and usually then it was out of necessity for forces. The reality is being any kind of rifleman (or woman) would be incredibly hard with a prosthetic arm. Etc.

I'm just extremely tired of 'authenticity' coming into play when it suddenly involves an extremely specific thing someone suspiciously thinks is too far. It was exhausting when Kingdom Come was floating around and moreso now.

I don't see anything all that "Fortnite" about the trailer or the additions that they said they're adding. Dice is a big studio, but I doubt they could reshape Battlefield to be more like Fortnite in a few months. Fortnite is so popular largely because it's free, on a bunch of platforms, decently made, and riding the wave of battle royale that PUBG started. It's not like Fortnite invented games being colorful and wacky. The Bad Company Battlefield games were wacky and certain games like Sunset Overdrive are way more colorful and have more style than Fortnite. The changes that I've heard about sound more hardcore, not more casual. The idea of limited ammo, different roles having more powers/abilities, and other things should make the game more intense and squad heavy. I just think this was a lame trailer, all they needed to do was show a match, even if it was very edited.

The trailer was pretty cool. I wouldn't have thought that was a Battlefield game, though, without the title. Definitely see some Bad Company vibes from it.

@opusofthemagnum: You wrote pretty much everything I've felt about what we've seen so far, and I completely agree with you not only on your original comment but also on your replies. It seems weird to me that we're usually supposed to expect more from most games coming out nowadays, but suddenly we should lower our expectations for this specific game just because.

But, to sum it up, I think the trailer looked bad overall. The trailer seems tonally deaf with clashing styles. They need to decide what direction to take and go through with it.

A curious debate, the one that's going on here. I don't have enough of a superiority complex to seriously believe that I understand the root of the problem better than anyone else, but I think there's only really two issues behind this contention that some people may not have noticed, so I'm gonna chime in.

First of all, there's the use of setting. World War 2 is a real thing that happened in the real world. It carries with it a set of extremely specific connotations. If a work claims to use the WW2 setting, then it is everyone's right to expect exactly those connotations. The locations, events and aesthetics that we already know about. Isn't that the point of deciding on a setting in the first place? Because everyone has a baseline understanding of what it entails? You don't have to make a historic game. Bad Company doesn't reflect something that happened in real life. Nobody complained about Battlefield Heroes being inauthentic. If someone says it's gonna be WW2 and then it isn't, then the person who set the expectation is at fault. It's like making a game set in the Wild West but out of nowhere everyone has assault rifles with no explanation. It's like, are you sure you really wanted to make a Wild West game in the first place? Should you maybe have chosen a different framework?

Second, there's definitely an issue of tone in that trailer. It may not be obvious, but the Battlefield series has been extremely consistent with its tone from the very beginning. It was way back in BF2 that I realized that part of why I loved that series as much as I did was because it has a tendency to look absolutely authentic while playing very video-gamey-like. Looking and sounding realistic makes it really easy to get immersed in that adrenaline-filled "oh boy I'm in a war and shit's popping off" state of mind, and that's consistently been one of DICE's biggest strengths, while the relative simplicity of the gameplay makes it fun and effortless to actually play. Every game in the main series has had this trait. They always look realistic in screenshots, but have a surprisingly light-hearted feel to the gameplay. Instead of creating a disconnect, I feel like that's what makes the games work as well as they do. It's what makes those "Battlefield moments" shine, like when two jets collide head-on and just drop out of the air onto an enemy tank in five seconds of comedy gold, in the middle of this gritty and violent setting. A setting that works because it takes itself seriously, without getting in the way of the players having fun.

Enter Ms. Robot Arm Cricket Bat Warpaint McGee. Man, watching that video again, that doesn't even make sense in the context of the rest of the trailer. The part that's supposedly gameplay, those ten seconds with HUD, looks just a grounded as I'd expect, dirty and loud and scary, and then whoop here's your comic relief out of nowhere with goofy music playing on the radio. I can only hope that this is merely a fault of the trailer, or at least just the campaign. If the multiplayer manages to stay consistent, I can overlook a crappy campaign. Still. Very strange choice and it doesn't feel like Battlefield at all.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that there's a couple of good reasons for people to feel strange about this product outside of "but it's WW2 so it's gotta be respectful" (it doesn't) or "battlefield is supposed to be more realistic than this" (it isn't). There are two big things that, based on what I know about the game so far, just seem to be wrong. The use of the setting, and the tone for the series. Perhaps this will be smoothed out later. We can hope. I think the gameplay seems good enough to give it a shot. But I will not give the trailer a pass.

(Also, real talk, what's with the name? Why is it V instead of 5? Maybe the game itself will provide an answer to that in time, but it's seriously throwing me off. When I first saw it I managed to convince myself it was gonna be a new Vietnam. Is this Battlefield Venom? Did I slip into the other timeline??)

Keep women in the game or take them out, no one cares. This is all just viral marketing for a game that might not be tracking all that well. Throw a modern day cop from Hardline in there as well, just make the game fun to play.

To be honest, looks like utter schlock. I like WWII as a setting, and this is just corny and disrespectful. Given the like to dislike ratio on the trailer, I'd say at least half of BF's audience feels the same way, so I don't know what Dice is thinking with this. Why even base it in WWII if you're gonna add lousy fanfiction level tropes? Makes more sense to just go for modern setting again.

Some people are subscribing to the idea that the V is supposed to also stand for Victory as well as 5. Like VE-day and that famous picture of Churchill

The whole "there where no <insert sex or race here>" in WWII debat is fucking dumb if you wanna play some "authentic" stuff pick up Red Orchestra. Plenty of women fought in WWII at the Russian site comrade. And the French resistance had a bunch of women. But hey people only look at the American site of the war... O yeah and the V is the victory sign everybody use to show for the war effort English propaganda turned into a peace sign. Cause hey shedding so much blood for peace you might as well turn it into something...

Also i have being to Normandy at least 5 times it's never that sunny there LIES.

I just watched a dunkirk documentary and now i just hope there are spitfires in this game somewhere.

Spitfires are nice. I think i’m drawn to their rounded wingtips.

@soulcake: why is it okay for red orchestra to be authentic but not for Battlefield, despite Battlefield having a much longer track record of being authentic?

I go to Red Orchestra when I want the next step in realism. But it’s not a mainstream game that will appeal to the BF community as a whole. This is a big swing for a mainline BF game.

My argument is: if you want women and fake arms and cricket bats in WW2 BF games, why not make it a Bad Company prequel and do it well? Because I’d be down with inglorious bastards level of quality in a sideline game but I, and quite a bit of the BF audience, want to see authentic first. Then I’d be happy to see the people who made Bad Company such a charming and enjoyable set of campaigns do something new.

TLDR: stop kink shaming us.

I've said my piece on this and don't want to be drawn into any further argument but a good example of the tonal whiplash is evident even between this games own concept art and what the trailer was like.

https://imgur.com/a/8MYm1bN

In the games settles closer to these than the trailer I'll be happier but all the devs say wait til E3 so that's what I'm doing.

@opusofthemagnum: Battlefield a game where you fly a plane and crash it to recap a point. "realism". A game where you can get shot multiple times! and get a medkit and just be fine, Real realism in games isn't fun it's waiting half a hour for a troop transport it's cleaning gun barrels cause they got filled up with mud. I totally get your point but they have to appeal to a mainstream market in order to get there sales up. And i myself am a big fan off the bad company series. And DICE even proposed to make a third one. But EA wasn't having it according to Paul Barnet ex EA dude and friend of the site. I played nearly every battlefield game ever excluding 1943 and i am fine with all this as long as the gameplay is fine. O yeah and those prosthetic lims where a real thing they used in WWII maybe a less Freddy Krugery but a real thing i even seen one with my own eyes. Here's a pro tip if you don't like it don't buy it.

Realism and authenticity are completely different things.

A game doesn't have to be realistic to be authentic to a certain time period. A game can try to be authentic without being realistic and still be fun to play.

Most people who aren't happy with the trailer aren't asking for more realism, they are asking for more authenticity (and a better tone).

It's a really simple logic to understand but, somehow, people keep mixing authenticity with realism on their counter-arguments.