Yesterday I witnessed the Battlefield V reveal by DICE, EA and Trevor Noah. After the typical marketing BS bingo, some concept arts were shown and confirmed the World War 2 setting. The concept arts looked great and were very similar, almost identical to those of Battlefield 1. Finally, they showed us the reveal trailer everybody has been waiting for so long.
After a few seconds in the trailer I startet to feel completely irritated when I watched it for the very first time. I repeatedly told to myself: This is not Battlefield. This is a Call of Duty trailer. What happened? Here are my three main issues with what we got.
Issue #3 - Over-customizable mercenary gangs instead of regular armies
There is an official screenshot by DICE/EA with a squad of some Battlefield V soldiers standing in line. There is a woman and four guys holding different armory. The woman is not the problem. The probleh here is, that they all wear completely different uniforms or no uniforms at all, they have all sorts of different face paintings and give an impression of a punk gang with World War 2 equimpent instead of an authentic squad from the Allied or Axis armies who fought in this brutal conflict. This cartoony troop style is also omnipresent in the trailer while the artworks mostly look like authentic WW2 troops.
Issue #2 - Call of Duty style gameplay and speed
The trailer is paced and presented exactly like a typical Call of Duty game instead of maintaining a good mix between arcade and realism everybody loves Battlefield for. Yes, if you look back at the legendary Battlefield 1 reveal trailer, that was also faster and looked more arcadey than the game itself, but it was nowhere close to the extremes we now see in the BFV reveal trailer. Everybody is running and gunning in close formations, explosions every two seconds in every direction, airplanes falling from the sky frequently like raindrops, chaos whereever you look. I caught myself laughing out of agony somewhere near the end of the trailer in the gameplay-section, when I realized that even the CoD WW2 trailer was more authentic, better paced and interesting than what we got at the BFV reveal event. One has to admit, there are some interesting gameplay changes shown like the ability to crouch lying on your back while being able to shoot, but all of that is like a quiet echo in an ocean full of chaotic nonsense, which is this trailer.
Issue #1 - This does not feel like a game set in the deadliest conflict in human history
Think about that for a second. How horrible it must have been to live in the first half of the 20th century. After a devastating Great War to end all wars, the biggest economic crisis the world has ever seen, the Spanish flu; you find yourself in another huge war. You get the Holocaust, industrial killing of innocent people in masses, the Rape of Nanjing, Hiroshima, Stalingrad. Now compare that to the look and feel of Battlefield Vs reveal trailer which is showing us the war as if it was some fun paintball party with cool explosion effects. I am waiting for a reaction video on Youtube from a real WW2 veteran watching this sad piece of videogame material. They could have implemented that look and feel way better in a Bad Company themed game set in the modern days. Here, in the history realm of the World Wars, it just feels completely out of place.