When so many first person shooters have their gazes fixed firmly on the future, it’s been quite refreshing to see EA go against the curve and take Battlefield to its earliest setting yet, in World War 1.
After having a hands on last week, we sat down with Andres Morell, Producer on Battlefield 1, to talk about some of the many changes that the new setting gives DICE the opportunity to play with. Yes, there’s probably a drinking game to be found in some of the answers, but it offers an insight into some of the thinking behind what DICE are doing.
TSA: Along with some of the more vocal parts of the internet, were you guys getting a bit tired of jet packs and high speed first person shooters as well? Was that part of why you decided to try and find a setting that’s been done very rarely before?
Andres Morell: I think Patrick Soderlund said it really well in the EA Play live stream, where it’s almost like a passion project. Once you start digging into this era and you realise that it’s the dawn of all out warfare, the birth of modern warfare, everything that took place during these years really matches the Battlefield all out war formula perfectly. We started scraping the surface in the beginning, and yeah, there was something here that could really work.
I remember the first time I got my hands on it and we played it, and yeah, this is Battlefield, this is epic. There’s so many opportunities that this setting allows us to do. Like, what other war did you have big airships in?
TSA: Yeah, I can’t think of any others either… [laughs]
Andres: We just saw the opportunities here, and the more we iterated and worked on it, the more we saw that this is the perfect match for the Battlefield franchise. So it’s something that we wanted to do, and it’s something that we truly believed that our players would enjoy, because we really enjoyed it.
TSA: The First World War as a topic in general is still a very difficult one, and while I think a lot of people accept that there’s a divide between what happened and this being a video game, but do you feel there’s a responsibility, a duty of care to represent the brutality and horrors of the war? If not in the multiplayer, necessarily, in the single player?
Andres: I think DICE’s track record with previous games – we’ve done Battlefield 1942, we’ve done Battlefield: Vietnam – any war is brutal, but we’ve stayed respectful to those settings, and I think we’ve done that in a good way. It’s no different here.
Especially with World War 1, I think a lot of people don’t know about it? We know about Remembrance Sunday and the legacy from it, but I think one way of being respectful is to get people interested in it and understanding it by highlighting these untold stories that there were in this war. We want to get players to go on the same journey that we’ve gone on in trying to discover this birth of modern warfare, and really dive deep into it.
TSA: So are you building deliberately on specific key battles that happened? Or is it more about finding an appropriate but non-specific setting?
Andres: So, like I said, it was really the dawn of all-out war, and we’re really trying to push this through the visuals and portray it as it was. There’s so many untold stories and epic places to go to, so you as a player will be going to France, but instead of having those black and white, muddy trench documentary images in your head, we’ll also take you to the deserts of Arabia, we’ll take you high up in the Italian Alps.
It’s giving the players a different image of what it was, and it was a truly global war.
TSA: Do you think people are going to be surprised by the pace of the game? Because the first images that spring to mind are of those trenches in Belgium and France.
Andres: Exactly. I think, again, that’s the beauty of this era, and that’s why we felt it’s such a perfect match with Battlefield’s all out warfare. You’ve got the epic scale of the deserts, and it’s not just the stalemate that people are taught in history lessons, you have the horses in Arabia, the mountain fighting in the Alps and some really interesting battles on the Western Front.
For us, it’s about opening players’ eyes to something they might not know about and still being respectful toward history and authentic. That’s where the beauty of it is, in being able to go back to the birth of modern warfare and see that a tank that was first introduced over 100 years ago, automatic weapons… it’s all come from there, and I think that’s what’s so fascinating about it.
TSA: One thing that stuck out for me was how familiar the classes you have in the game are, with the assault, the medic, and similar archetypes. But there are two new vehicle classes, and how do they fit in to the game alongside those four foot soldier roles?
Andres: So, if you look at the new deploy screen, as we like to call it, we’re really pushing immersion and we don’t ever want you to leave the battlefield. So now, when you respawn and you’re looking from up in the sky, you’re still connected to the battle and can see it raging below.
When you decided that, OK, the enemy’s going to take the village so you’d better spawn in the tank; now you take on the role of the Tank Commander. When you spawn as a bomber pilot, you can have your squad mates jump on, because a bomber has three seats, but you become a Pilot.
Having dedicated vehicle classes that specialise make you commit to playing that role, the same as I take on the role of a Medic as I play as it.
TSA: And so if, heaven forbid someone blows up your tank but you manage to get out, you’ve then got different weapons, different abilities? It’s not that you’re suddenly an Assault class again?
Andres: Same as you can’t just decide to be a Sniper, spawn on a plane, find a hilltop and waste that plane for the team.
TSA: It was always a bit annoying that people would do that in Battlefield 4.
Andres: Well, not in Battlefield 1! We want you to play as a squad – team play is very important – and we are reinforcing that by you taking on dedicated vehicle classes when you spawn in them.
TSA: Of course, the biggest vehicle, the Airship, is a big show-stopping set piece, especially when it gets blown up. That’s an interesting one from a gameplay point of view, because I understand it’s there to help the losing side try to regain the upper hand?
Andres: Yeah, it’s a reinforcement.
TSA: So, are you trying to get closer fought battles, having seen that battles in the past could get a bit one sided? What’s the goal with adding these to the game?
Andres: The goal with the Airship and the Behemoth, again, having this setting, the birth of modern warfare, we can build these ships because they existed back then. These are the biggest ever vehicles we’ve done, and we’re putting them in the hands of the players.
It ties really well into having no battle be the same, which is a big thing for us. We really want the players to feel that whenever you play it, it’s going to play differently. The Zeppelin could go down in the middle of the village and completely change the scenery, with the huge destruction, the same as if you played on a sunny day and then the fog rolls in.
So it’s more about adding the replayability and the fact that no battle is ever the same.
TSA: And speaking of the weather, you have had little glimpses of changing weather in the past, but that’s a big new feature and changes the audio as well. How important is that to the game’s atmosphere?
Andres: I think that having that sense that things can change and you have to adapt to it is really important for us.
I remember when the fog rolled in for the first time when we were play testing at DICE, and it just all goes really eerie. It was almost like everyone stopped shooting, and it just makes you think that, OK, maybe I need to change my play style here. That’s what it forces you to do, it forces you to adapt to the conditions, and really whoever’s the best at doing that is going to get the upper hand.
If you still insist on sniping in heavy fog, well… you’re going to be at a disadvantage.
TSA: Unless you’re really good at no scoping… [laughs]
Andres: Well, still, you’ve got the odds against you, but fair enough if you want to take on that challenge!
I think that’s the beauty of it. The weather in combination with the dynamic destruction that we have, just makes this truly unique sandbox where you get those Battlefield moments that all our fans are going to love.
TSA: And you’ve really taken that destruction to the next level. It feels like practically everything can be levelled, the ground can be pitted with craters, and so on.
Andres: So, you might have open, essentially killing fields, which are easy to be defend and suppress it. Give it a couple of minutes of the ‘Only in Battlefield’ kind of intense fighting, and it’s going to be littered with craters, and that’s going to mean you can essentially run from crater to crater to get across and capture the objective.
It’s all in line with the epicness of Battlefield 1, where we really want to make the player feel like they’re there. The explosions should be a physical force as you play; you should feel it, you should see it, it’s intense. It’s Battlefield, and it’s only in Battlefield where you get that.
Thanks to Andres for talking to us. Be sure to check out our hands on preview from last week.