Battlefield 1 was finally revealed after months of hype and speculation, and, dumb name aside, it seems to be a major leap ahead for the franchise and the genre. DICE seem to finally be breaking away from trying to chase Call of Duty, and are instead doing what they do best- provide great, multi layered and nuanced, historical multiplayer combat.
Not much is known about the World War 1 based shooter yet, but thanks to Gamespot and LevelCap, we know some things about the game already. A summarization of some of the information that we have received from these sources follows:
Gamespot claim they have seen the gameplay of the game, and that it greatly resembles the trailer- in other words, DICE is not lying or misleading people with the CG in engine trailer that they debuted the game with. At least one of the maps shown off is huge- it seems to be in the spirit of classic Battlefield games, rather than Battlefield 3 or 4. The maps in general seem to be vast, open ended, and dynamic- for instance, one of the maps described is one with a forest and a train running through the forest. A specific style of gameplay shown repeatedly is players running besides the train on their horses, implying that it may be possible to even board the train from the horses directly.
With the campaign, DICE are ditching the Battlefield 3 and 4 style campaign; instead, they are trying to have a more open ended single player mode, that yet again recalls the classic games in the series. According to Gamespot, the new campaign seems to be a lot like the campaign in the fan favorite Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
There will be air combat. There will also be naval combat, and you can take control of battleships. The game will have new melee capabilities, including, it seems, the usage of sabers. Bayonets will have some kind of a charged attack. If you are curious about horses, it seems they are best used for flanking- similar to bikes in modern Battlefield games.
On the whole, this sounds like the kind of game that Battlefield was known to be, before DICE decided to just ditch their unique identity, and instead tried to become a Call of Duty clone. With Battlefield 1, it is great to see them going back to what was decidedly their niche- and I can’t wait to see more of the game as a result.