Battlefield V Preview – Get started with the War Stories

If you now ask the question ‘hey, you mention Black Ops 4 in your introduction, but where is that review actually?’, then we ask for some patience. Unlike in other years, we weren’t able to play the game before release this year, so we’re still working hard. In addition, there was a preview session for this other great shooter in between, and we will now share our findings. Earlier we were able to get started with the multiplayer modes, where we saw a Norwegian play map and Rotterdam pass by. This time it is the turn of the single player, where it is a logical question whether you will also see battle royale from DICE. The answer to that has been known for a while, but just to be sure: DICE will only add battle royale to Battlefield V after release, so it is expected that nothing will be seen before then.

More War Stories

Battlefield V continues the course set by Battlefield 1. That game did not offer players a standard single-player mode, opting instead for shorter, loose stories. Each of those stories focused on a certain character that matched a certain gameplay form. You had the soldier in the trenches, the driver of a tank, the RAF pilot, and so on. You will see that approach in Battlefield V, but with even more personal stories and with even more emotion. DICE states that Battlefield V should tell stories that have not been told before. You play with ‘unexpected heroes’; not super soldiers, but people who accidentally became involved in a war that they were or were not waiting for.

These stories take players to different places affected by the war, with DICE deliberately ignoring the most famous stories from World War II. So don’t expect another D-Day beach assault or the ‘Battle of the Bulge’. Too bad, because we found those recognizable scenes the coolest in Call of Duty: World War II last year, and it sounds attractive to see those fragments again, but then called up by the Frostbite engine. However, we won’t see that in Battlefield V. What will? All kinds of different gameplay in less predictable places and with less predictable characters.

Major consequences for the war

One of those characters in the War Stories is Solveig, a Norwegian girl who is part of the Norwegian resistance in ‘Nordlys’. The world was already introduced to this young lady during E3, who in her story is a kind of ‘nightmare’ for the Germans stationed in Norway. Solveig turns out to be quite skilled for a normal citizen in silently eliminating German soldiers. The snowy Norwegian landscape and the cover of darkness are her best friends when she becomes involved in a mission that, if it fails, would have major consequences for the war.

Another main character is Billy. This English criminal has been released in North Africa to wage a guerrilla war and thus disrupt the existence of the Germans. He does this together with a partner with whom he attacks a German air base in ‘Under no Flag’, in an attempt to destroy their Stukas. We haven’t played everything of this War Story yet, so we can’t tell everything about the ups and downs of this fiercely swearing Brit yet. The same goes for the third War Story, in which you play an African soldier sent to France to fight for ‘his country’. Important detail: this Senegalese ‘Tirailleur’ ​​had never seen France until he landed there to fight the Germans. We haven’t seen anything from the fourth War Story yet. According to DICE, that story will receive a separate status. In any case, it revolves around a Tiger 01 tank that players also get control over. Judging by a teaser shown to us, it could be that this story takes place in and around Rotterdam, although we don’t know for sure yet. This War Story, ‘The Last Tiger’, will be added to Battlefield V for free in December.

Battlefield moments

Based on the first three War Stories, or the fragments we played of them, we can already conclude a number of things. First of all, there is DICE’s claim that the player should be able to experience more of the typical ‘Battlefield gameplay’. This is then accompanied by the choice of a play style and with ‘special Battlefield moments’. That’s a term we heard years ago. Then it was accompanied by special moments on multiplayer maps, for example the collapse of a flat, which then had to be a memorable moment. This time it’s a bit more dynamic and it’s about empowering players to create such moments themselves.

Of those two claims, one is very good and one less so. The choice of playing style is obvious, especially in Nordlys and Under no Flag. Both missions give the player the chance to complete large parts while sneaking. In Nordlys, Solveig is armed with blades that take out any enemy with a single throw, and can also find a sniper rifle with a silencer somewhere in the game world. Billy has to do without those knives, but can also pick up a silenced rifle. That makes it easier to approach the end goal of the mission quite silently. In Tirailleur you are sent into a massive fight, so the choice of playing style, at least in the opening act, is less clear. Here, however, there is more room for those ‘memorable moments’ that you can indeed take care of yourself, thanks to findable dynamite sticks.

In any case, each of the War Stories is fun to play. Nordlys not only offers open gameplay where you have a choice in how you approach it, but also good characters and a story that many will indeed not know yet but may find very interesting afterwards. In any case, the same applies to Tirailleur, which revolves around an invasion in the south of France that took place almost simultaneously with Operation Overlord, but is not nearly as well and extensively documented.

It hardly needs explanation that DICE portrays these missions brilliantly. Frostbite is and remains a strong engine that produces more impressive images with each new game. It can also be said that we got a quite cinematic feeling at various scenes in the various War Stories. It seems that DICE has learned a thing or two from working on the Star Wars games the studio has made over the last few years. You could put some shots in the cutscenes in Battlefield V, with just a few other soldiers and some other ships, in Star Wars. That is definitely a compliment.

Preliminary conclusion

Many gamers will buy Battlefield V for the multiplayer, which will always be the foundation of a Battlefield game. Others will be curious about the battle royale mode that DICE promises to add after the game’s release. But after this preview session, we can already say that the War Stories are at least as fun as those of Battlefield 1, which proved the success of the shorter, stand-alone stories. The only question that remains for now: is it enough? With a prologue and three War Stories at the release, the offer doesn’t really seem to last.