WWII – TOM CLEMENT | WRITER | NARRATIVE DESIGNER

In my last article I wrote about the opening of Battlefield V. I hadn’t completed the campaign at the time of publishing, just wanting a first snapshot of my feelings. I was a little unimpressed, feeling that BFV had lost the spark that BF1 had due to the latter’s setting and time period.

So with a hint more apprehension I booted up the narrative proper.

And damn, I was hooked. I had missed out on an excellent addition to the opening. So I needed to follow up.

I adore Battlefield V’s campaign and it fixes the small problems I had with Battlefield 1’s (also stellar) campaign. My fears of the War Stories not comparing to BF1 were completely unfounded. The dialogue, performance, and design are of the highest quality (DICE always makes things looks pretty), with each story having a different tone yet all to feeding into one another.

BFV continues where BF1 started (quite literally with the still that opens the game). It features the lesser-known stories filled with misfits and malcontents, the people usually not remembered in sanitised history books. I was particularly looking forward to story featuring the young female resistance fighter in Norway, echoing the story of the female Bedouin fighter from BF1.

bfv nordlys — With throwing knives and hit-and-run tactics (courtesy of a handy set of skis), The Norway section of the game carves its own niche in WW2-set games. (Source: junkee.com)

It was nice that after the bombastic opening that the game settled back into a groove, allowing the player to approach how they wanted. It can be easy to guide the player through a linear story progression and keep up that cinematic edge (I love Remember Me), but having the player tackle each task how they want fits for a series like Battlefield (obviously gearing up for the multiplayer). Compared to the limited open-ended sections in BF1, nearly every story in BFV has a degree of player choice, allowing players to tackle objectives in any order.

While the gameplay is open, the story is a little more guided. The main issue I had with BF1 was the lack of narrative cohesion. Each story was self-contained and focused on a different aspect of the war. While getting to play the levels in any order is great for individual personalisation it means that you can’t effectively have a difficulty curve or sense of progression.

BFV now has that through line yet the story is still free form. You can play the story in any order, but if you play the game chronologically (as they are listed in the menu) starting with “Under No Flag” and ending with “The Last Tiger”, the game builds with each new step adding on from the last one.

“Under No Flag” starts as a stealth mission with an AI buddy and enemy squads far apart. “Nordlys” continues the stealth aspect but with you alone and with enemies in closer proximity to each other. “Tirailleur” puts you as a member of a squad of soldiers pushing through German lines, before “The Last Tiger” casts you against overwhelming odds and fighting alone. Each level builds on the last by putting you in familiar territory yet changing a small aspect each time. This slowly but surely ratchets up the difficulty curve without any immersion-breaking spikes.

Due to “The Last Tiger” not being available at launch a lot of players (including myself) would have played that chapter last. It is a fitting end and not just for having the word “last” in the title (other games such as Timesplitters Future Perfect, Halo 3, and Tomb Raider all follow this model with level names referencing their place within the story).

I had railed against the cinematic introduction to BFV, but “The Last Tiger” pulled the game into morally dark territory (and not just because we’re playing as the Nazis), ending the game on a perfect note. With the surrounding landscape wreathed in flames and the framed Nazi banner on the final bridge burning up, it paints a perfect metaphor for the tank crew and player character Müller’s unravelling allegiance to the Swastika. The darker edge fits better as an ending in general, having the player reminded at the end of the game of the destruction of war.

2002758 — “The Last Tiger” is the high point of not just *BFV* but most campaigns in the franchise. (Source: eurogamer.net)

I also really liked how “The Last Tiger” broke tropes. When the radio in the tank is busted, Müller goes out in search of one. At first I believed we were going to go on an extended on-foot section to find several radios to repair, but it turns out there is a radio right next to the tank. Having a large map to explore would have killed the tension that the final section was building up and it was nice that pacing was chosen over an extended gameplay segment.

After hearing the broadcast on said radio, enemy tanks and soldiers roll in during gameplay. From the POV of the Tiger tank, the following sequence is setup like a stage; there is a slight border (mimicking curtains) and a raised section where the Allies appear. It is a beautiful tableau (in a game full of awe-inspiring vistas) and the fact that it is during gameplay makes it that more memorable.

In the end it almost felt like the opening was a bait-and-switch, aiming for a broader audience by being a bit more “intense” instead of mournful like the opening to BF1. Whether it was deliberate or accidental, I still love this campaign and look on it more fondly than I did when I started.

Photo Banner Source: digitalcentralmedia.co.uk

It was with a mix of trepidation and eagerness that I picked up Battlefield V. I had enjoyed the excellent War Stories in the previous game, Battlefield 1, and wished to see what creators DICE had followed up with. Yet I remained cautious. The previous War Stories had been a high point of my gaming experience of recent times and I didn’t want to raise my hopes too high in case they were dashed.

The sequence started beautifully, reusing the iconic shot from BF1 of the two opposing troops levelling their weapons at each other as the sun breaks through to the battlefield. That was one of the defining moments of BF1; it is abrupt from the carnage that we have been a part of and distinct in its imagery.

I had previously written about how even though I liked the War Stories of BF1 and the opening, it could have toyed with player expectations a little more with its use of death. BFV’s opening reuses this defeatist attitude and makes it work. We aren’t told that are characters are destined to die yet most of them do. But unlike BF1 we do not see their names upon death, an aspect that is sorely missing. While I am happy that DICE isn’t directly lifting from BF1 for the semi-sequel, the inclusion of character names added a sense of humanity that can usually get lost in the larger stories of a world war.

battlefield-ed — A shot from the opening of *BF1.* It is an excellent and artistically significant image that helped set DICE’s new tone for the series. Source: fraghero.com.

BFV also switches characters through its opening, circling around the locations that appear in the later War Stories. On the surface this is good. The major problem with the shorter stories in BF1 was the lack of narrative cohesion. With each story lasting around an hour, the overall arc falls flat with predictable peaks and troughs, leaving the game without a strong climax and resolution. The opening of BFV helps aid the previous lack of narrative structure by having the opening focus on the locations, but not always on the playable characters.

The paratroopers dropping into Norway, the German tank crew driving forward in the desert, the Senegalese troops providing covering sniper fire, and the German planes flying overhead, they give us a taster of what is to come and also help set up the story. For example, the paratroopers in Norway get slaughtered in the first few minutes of gameplay, with the playable character in the Norway section being the resistance member they were meant to rendezvous with.

The opening is also a beautiful example of editing within gaming. Each scene leads into one another and connected with excellent scene transitions. The tank in the Norway section rolls out into Libya, the plane flying overhead in the Kasserine Pass moves into dogfights over Germany, before said plane crashes into the Netherlands right in front of our new character. It is a nice flow of scenes and heightens that feeling of a world consumed by war.

However, while the changing characters help create that crux for the larger narrative, it means it loses something of its previous identity. BF1’s opening was set entirely on a singular battlefield. The fight was contained to one narrative with sweeping long shots taking us across the lines to the next solider after one had died. It told a solid story on its own and helped set that “anything goes” precedent of that game.

Swapping between five different fronts and fighting styles in the BFV opening feels disjointed and uneven and it is partly because of the change of scenery. The stakes change on a dime and the enemy we were previously charging is now half a valley away. It loses that excellent pace and momentum that the opening of BF1 had. This isn’t helped by the gameplay. In BF1 you could fight for as long as you wanted, but eventually you were going to be brought down by the enemy soldiers. In BFV the onus is on you to continue the story. This was especially evident in the Senegalese sniping and the German dogfight sections.

As I was getting to grips with the controls, my sniper aim lacked finesse, with shots widely missing the enemy targets. Only when all the targets are down will the prologue continue. In the German dogfight section I managed to shoot down several Allied bombers, but was unable to see the tiny red marker that indicated the ONE plane I was meant to shoot to continue the sequence.

With gameplay swapping every few minutes, *BFV* assaults us with a flurry of imagery. It is just sad that none of it feels connected. Source: VGR.com.

The whole pacing is off. Each section starts the same; the player slowly moves forward before being presented with a few enemies and then ends with explosions. At least BF1 kept the explosions as a constant, throwing the players into disarray and keeping them on edge. It feels like there is a distinct lull in BFV’s opening and feels antithesis to the tone that it seems to be aiming for.

This comes to a head at the final playable section. After shooting some soldiers on a turret, you turn said turret around and direct the fire back. Your squad is bombed and you are paralysed, trying to hold off the oncoming enemies with only your pistol. It feels so odd to go from the excellent Remarquism of BF1 to this Hollywood-ised, last-man-standing depiction of battle.

I understand why it was done. This is the final scene, the gameplay needs to end at the same time as the narration for the pacing, but it doesn’t have that brutal edge that worked wonders in BF1. This final scene could have worked if we had control of our movement, if we were allowed to charge, retreat, anything other that having to sit still, playing out a sequence ripped straight out of Call Of Duty 4.

It is also a context problem. BF1 worked because it wasn’t about the grand ideas, rather focusing on the little person caught in the whirlwind of history. It was a pointless war with both sides fighting for pretty much the same reason and therefore could focus on the personal stories.

While there are flourishes of these individual stories in BFV’s campaign, the grand ideas can’t help but push through. Every fight (bar the Tiger tank story) is about pushing back the forces of darkness from enveloping the world. Every fight is about how to weaken and dismantle the Nazi war machine. It can’t help but BE that.

That’s not to say that grander stories are bad. Grand ideas work well in several games; Civilization, various CoDs, the first Assassin’s Creed, but the smaller stories are what gave BF1 a bit of bite and it is sad that BFV is without it. It means the characters in BFV don’t get a chance to shine since we don’t focus on them.

Characters like Zara Ghufran and Frederick Bishop in BF1 get small moments in between all the fighting, giving us hints of their personality and time outside the war. This makes them richer, making them more than the “stoic badass” or “stealthy assassin” archetypes. And I haven’t got that from a single lead in BFV yet.

Either way, I’m still enjoying BFV. I’m blazing through the campaign and will hopefully look fondly on my time spent with it. And while the opening fixes a lot of the issues I had with BF1’s, it can’t help but produce a few of its own.

Edit: Now that I have finished the campaign my feelings on BFV have changed. I started to really like the story and have written a follow up. You can read it here.

Banner Photo Source: wccftech.com

Tag: WWII

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