BATTLEFIELD 5 WAR STORIES SERIES

In “Under No Flag,” a young London criminal is drafted into a special ops unit and sent off to plant explosives in sensitive enemy installations. The next two, I played about a third of each. “Nordlys,” which I completed, is about a Norwegian girl tasked with skiing to a German camp and liberating a freedom fighter. The firefights don’t sit comfortably with the narratives that surround them

BATTLEFIELD 5 WAR STORIES SERIES

But in Battlefield 5, developer EA DICE says it’s more interested in individual stories of struggle and desperation.Īnd so the campaign is presented as a series of shorts, taking place in disparate parts of the world, at differing years in the war, and from a variety of perspectives. EA DICE/Electronic Arts Big little storiesīig-budget action video games usually present World War II as a grand stage, augmenting the prestige of the victorious nations, feeding off Hollywood history and cherished myths. They are, in essence, extended commercials for EA’s good intentions and for the multiplayer stuff that makes up the bulk of the game. The stories are expensively disguised exercises in weapons experimentation, systems tutorials and ponderous discourse about the nature of global conflict.

The noble pursuit of indie-film-influenced human stories comes packaged with a series of linear maps in which dramatic cutscenes are interspersed with so-so action sequences. Unfortunately, based on playing a few sections of the Battlefield 5 campaign at EA’s offices, the reality fails to coalesce. Let’s move on from grizzled, white GIs, and embrace the heroism of women, children, reluctant working-class draftees and marginalized people of color. Let’s get away from the same old scenes on Normandy beaches. Let’s take a look at World War II from new perspectives, EA says. To be clear, Electronic Arts’ pitch is very good. It’s not that the campaign is bad - it’s just less good than the promises made by its grandiose marketing. The trouble with Battlefield 5’s single-player story is that watching its rip-roaring trailer is a lot more enjoyable than playing the actual campaign.

Battlefield 5 war stories