With Battlefield 1, DICE are finally returning to their strengths, crafting a historically authentic sandbox multiplayer shooter experience that emphasizes dynamic and emergent gameplay over linear narrative based campaigns. But a lot of people, burned by the triple whammy of Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline (which may have been great games on their own merits, but were marked departures from classic style Battlefield), have been skeptical, assuming that Battlefield 1 will just be a World War 1 skinned modern era Battlefield.
However, in an interview with AusGamers, DICE’s Daniel Berlin, who serves as the game’s lead world designer, has specifically emphasized how the development team will try to make maps and modes that make sense in context of the era being depicted.
“We’re crafting some modes that look at the era, and we make the mode fit that era. So that’s something we’re also doing,” he said.
This is good to know- on the whole, modern Battlefield games simply wouldn’t fit with the kind of game that would be necessary to make the World War 1 setting work believably- and it’s good to see that DICE is also cognizant of that fact.