Hardly the most authentic depiction of modern history’s most horrific war. A worried character asks “Were you still safe behind your armour?” to which your Italian hero replies “Of course, nothing could dent it”. Indeed, there’s one section where, encased in medieval-like armour, you take on a squadron of attack planes using an AA gun. While the narrative provides some humanity for the characters, they feel almost superheroes in comparison to the damned men you play as in the opening.
It’s not that it goes on to be a burning wreck of a mission, but none of it caries the gravity of this brutal and harrowing opening ten minutes. The prologue is, unfortunately, Battlefield 1’s best campaign moment. Soldiers often lasted just a few moments in battle, and died tragically young. It’s a genuinely harrowing method of explaining the toll World War One had on the human population. You’ll die and inhabit a new soldier several times in this mission. Instead of respawning you, the prologue instead displays the birth and death dates of your character, and then throws you into the boots of another doomed soul in the same battle. Smoke bellows, soldiers scream, and the screen fades to black as you take a killing bullet very quickly. Ankle-deep in mud and trapped in the ruins of a shelled-out building, you’ll hold off waves of enemies marching on your position. As the title cards roll on the campaign, you’re launched into a stunning prologue chapter that physically demonstrates the horror of the war. You won’t play any of these characters to begin with though. They’re much more defined personalities than anything you’d find in Infinity Ward’s back-catalogue. While you’ll only spend just over an hour with each, DICE have managed to make them all feel full of character. Among your roles are a young British chauffeur-turned-tank driver, a cocky American pilot, and a tough woman fighting alongside Laurence of Arabia’s rebels. They’re presented rather well: each is the recounted tale of a First World War soldier, all from a different front and year of the conflict. The campaign is split into six chapters, or ‘war stories’. Alas, despite the promise, once again DICE have produced another middling single-player game peppered with the odd brilliant moment. With its new historical setting though, Battlefield 1 is well-positioned to offer a grand, epic campaign across numerous fronts and scratch that 20th century itch that we’ve had since Call of Duty left the 1940s behind.
While Bad Company 2 was solid and Battlefield 4 had its moments, these campaigns are quickly forgotten in favour of the war stories players create on their own. The Battlefield series is celebrated for its grand-scale multiplayer, but significantly less so for its single-player. So is Battlefield 1 DICE’s finest hour? Battlefield 1 PC single-player campaign review
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