DICE Creative Director Lars Gustavsson, sat down for an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun where he talked about Battlefield V, it’s campaign, different angle of story-telling, the inclusion of a battle royale mode, lootboxes and how they’re being implemented, and much more.

Just to make sure I don’t copy everything from the main interview, I won’t quote each and everything Gustavsson said to Edwin at RPS. There’s something called exclusivity you know. So, you can always head over to the original interview article for more details.

Reinventing World War 2

Battlefield 1942 was just a recreation of all the real war locations. The team behind it wanted to create an interactive experience of the war. Battlefield V, on the other hand, visualises the war from a new, different and unseen angle.

DICE learned a lot from Battlefield 1. Where the implementations should go, what the community thrives and what makes a war game successful. One of the many questions that revolved around the heads of the developers was “is it possible to make a war game that’s ‘only trench warfare’?”

After digging deeper into history books, tens of thousands of references, DICE ended up on a conclusion that the wars are much more than what we see or believe. Of course, perspective plays an important role in everything. War is an experience. And each war witness would have a different experience of their own.

He also mentions about ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ or ‘369th Infantry Regiment’. This regiment consisted mainly of African Americans and Puerto Rican Americans during both WW1 and WW2. It was deployed overseas and it participated in labour and security operations in the Southwest Pacific Area.

War Stories, Combined Arms And Multiplayer

He then talks about the War Stories campaign. Gustavsson says it is the place in Battlefield V where they have an opportunity of taking a step back and getting more of a “feeling for and perspective on the war”.

Combined Arms, the four-player co-op mode, will focus more on adventures with friends rather than historically accurate experiences and stories.

Emphasising on the multiplayer of the game, we should all just let it flow. After all, the multiplayer mode is for fun, challenges and extraction of all the features the game has to offer.

Gustavvson said, “Multiplayer is that wonderful creative sandbox where anything can happen. I think one of the key learnings is that we can be a bit more consistent this time around, capture the different sides of the war, and also, of course, there are the core gameplay improvements…”

I’d say, DICE optimised Battlefield 1 in a pretty decent way. When they launched the Open Beta, I had a small chit-chat with my potato PC and gave up all the hopes of playing it. But still, I downloaded it and to my surprise, it worked just well. Unlike many current-gen PC games, Battlefield 1 is beneficially optimised. Moving on.

“…We learned a lot from what resonated with the community, the slightly larger maps, the greater freedom, the Nothing is Written mission with Lawrence of Arabia.”

Gustavsson concludes his answer with, “I was born closer to the Second World War than where we are today, so it is a question of recent memory that shouldn’t be forgotten.”

Battlefield V will strongly focus on leadership and the players leading their squads. Gustavsson said, “The leader is now empowered to build up those squad points that go into calling in resources.”

Battle Royale

When asked about a battle royale mode, Gustavsson said, “There have been tonnes of talking in the corridors, you know, ‘this would really fit the Battlefield universe’. The dynamic world, the vehicles, you name it.”

But fortunately, at least for me, he added, “Lots of talking, lots of thinking about it, but nothing for us here to talk today”.

Battle Royale is indeed a popular genre now. But that doesn’t simply mean that every game should adopt it. Of course, many games have made their own BR modes now including – Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Battlerite. There are just too many to name, so let’s keep this discussion maintained.

 

Lootbox, pay-to-win, and the never-ending controversy

Rock Paper Shotgun also inquired about lootboxes, pay-to-win and Battlefield V’s way of implementing them. Gustavsson reply to these questions wasn’t crystal clear, but we can conclude there won’t be any.

Following such a big lootbox controversy, EA won’t play cool to bring back the controversial money-making ways back to their games. Instead, Battlefield V will offer heavily-customizable cosmetics in place of lootboxes that’d sure catch some attention.

EA released Battlefield V’s reveal trailer today at 1:30 AM. I was awake and could hardly keep my eyeballs stuck to my small mobile screen. But just before the actual reveal, I was asleep and all I remember was a sweet dream of me and my.. ahem.

That’s all for this article. If you liked it, you liked it. If you didn’t… what’s the point? Tell me what do you think about Battlefield V and the rising hype growing around it.

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