Is the Battlefield franchise losing touch with what made it successful?
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To be fair, I have never been a huge fan of the Battlefield games. I just recognize their significance for many friends and gamers as a whole. From what I know, Battlefield has been loved for its gritty, squadbased realism in a more approachable format than ARMA. Contrast this with the whimsicality of CoD or Halo and you will bee why BF is still around today. Having seen the trailer, I'm getting a bad feeling about the game's direction.
For those who have seen the trailer, you will notice most of my criticisms.
Place
If is wasn't for my unhealthy ability to recognize small arms of WW2, I wouldn't have been able to tell this was supposed to be a WW2 game. The location of the trailer could have been just about anywhere. All they would have had to do was to change up the guns you see people carrying, and you could make anew trailer for a new era. It was so uninspired, especially to fans of realism.
Pace
WW2 was fought with bolt action rifles as the mainline weapons. The combat was slow and brutal. This game does a poor job of staying true to the original pacing. Sure I expect the game to be faster than real combat because it needs to be modified to be game worthy, but this was a Rambo or Delta Force movie thrown kicking and screaming into the 1940's, not a game built with the realistic pacing in mind at all.
Visuals
The high contrast visuals, lush foliage, screen effects, lens flare, and flashy animations are not what Battlefield is all about.
(well maybe the lens flare is)
Battlefield has always been spartan with its application of effects and animations. This reminded me more of Ubisoft's Farcry series than the most recently Battlefield set only 30 years prior historically.
Sum it up
I think the game is losing what has made it successful for years, and the consumer response has been very 50/50 about the material as seen thus far. I am expecting lackluster performance for this entry into the franchise.
I definitely agree with your thinking on this one. I have always loved the battlefield games for their more realistic outlook on FPS war games. This.... really just seems to be a diversion from that. The thing that really brought this home for me was the female soldier with the overly advanced arm and hand prosthetic. It just isn't realistic to the time period. I really wish they would have stuck to the realism that separated it from CoD. Just having a larger player count than CoD isn't enough!
World War II is one of the most historically significant and important wars to ever take place. I think it's a little hard to critique a game based solely on its trailer, we don't actually know the finer details of the game and what they're planning to do.
All I know is World War II was a horrific war that resulted in a lot of lives lost and we also can't forget that WWII wasn't just bolt action rifles. The Americans fought with SMG's, primarily the Thompson, M3 and M50 Reising. Then you have grenades, grenade launchers, mines, M18 Recoilless rifle, flamethrowers (M1A1, M2-A1, Ronson) and the trove of advanced tanks and all-terrain vehicles.
From a gaming content perspective, World War II lends itself well to being recreated in a fast-action game environment and Battlefield V is not the first game to explore World War Two. Weapons wise, just purely on the American side there is a tonne of options, then you have the likes of Germany and other countries who brought their own technological might to the battle.
If you're after a basic war, that's World War I and Battlefield 1 did a great job capturing the basic nature of that war, a lot of on-field combat with limited technology assisted battle. But World War II was quite a technologically advanced war, even if it took place during the 40's.
Battlefield V looks to improve upon Battlefield 4, the graphics look fantastic and the gameplay is familiar so existing players can jump right in and not have much of a learning curve. It's an accessible game with a great engine powering it and if you're a fan of Battlefield, then this game will be enjoyable.
I'm not sure this really is meant to improve on Battlefield 4. Battlefield 4 is a modern war shooter. This doesn't look to be anything like that in a thematic sense. I think this is meant to separate more from BF 4 rather than improve it. I do definitely agree that WWII is a much more advanced war than WWI, but the prosthetic on the female soldier reall isn't that realistic to WWII. When people got injured they died or went home. That being said, I am okay with some small stretching of reality. I just want it to be realistic like BF4 was.
Separate the storyline from the game and you're left with a game engine, in this case, it's the FrostBite engine. So what I meant was Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 5 are alike in that the gameplay mechanics, settings and underlying game mechanic technicals are mostly improvements, but very similar.
yeah I understand what you said about armaments of the war and it was certainly more advanced than WW1 and lends itself to being faster paced than a WW1 game could be, I just worry that will be overdone.
I think that they r trying to go the call of duty rout of just stop giving a shit about realism and just trying to make everyone happy. I dont have anything against women but i can asure you taht tehre was no women with a fake arm fighting in ww2
Yeah after that reveal I feel as though fps genre as a whole has lost its touch trying to adopt to pc ideology. There's just a huge lack of authenticity in gaming in general since the exposure that was "Gamer Gate"!
Battlefield 1 was a terrific game, with its visuals and gameplay however I don't generally play shooters because they are the same things hashed over and over again. But if I were you, just from the trailer don't judge the game until you have actually seen gameplay of the actual game.