"Battlefield V": When a game in World War II plays

The new "Battlefield V" - as well as older serial parts - the Second World War to the backdrop. The last thing in "Battlefield 1" of 2016 was World War I, the player leaves the trenches again and enters a world of games that - yes, what actually?

Evaluating a new Battlefield is not an easy task. Where is the focus? On the setting? In an attempt to make historical battles playable - perhaps even to convey history? On the atmosphere created by graphics, sound and varied maps? Or on the mechanics that are below all this? How important is the balance of the different weapons or the feeling when pulling the trigger?

Known good

Most "Battlefield" players may be primarily interested in one question: What has changed? The answer is: not much. And that is not necessary. Because the mechanics of the game work like an oiled machine. "Battlefield V" is a stringent continuation of what the player knows from the predecessor.

Stringent because the Second World War, of course, brings other weapons, tanks, planes or guns, which all play differently. This makes the current section a little less sedate than "Battlefield 1" - the weapons are faster. Once again, 64 players face each other in multiplayer - divided into two teams - who have to compete in modes like "Conquest". In "Conquest" it is about to take bases on a sweeping playing field and then hold.

This small amount of change could be a criticism. But fans of the series get exactly what they like to play. Where the biggest innovation, a so-called "Battle Royale" mode, is still outstanding. This should be replenished in March. Another novelty that could well have been copied from "Fortnite" is the player's ability to build. For example, he can stack sandbags at the touch of a button to protect himself and his teammates.

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Loud atmosphere

Hardly anything is as impressive in "Battlefield V" as the sound. Especially if you wear headphones, this one can really shake you. This mixture of thunderous impacts, whistling bullets, chattering engines and the screams of injured people - it is probably this soundscape that could make an approach to the Second World War possible. Because to this atmosphere belongs the "Next, on!" That drives you. This inhuman rush of war. The sound leaves more impression than any of its stories, as any victory or loss.

The graphics contribute to this experience, with light moods or particle effects that decorate the cards, which are supposed to recreate various battles of World War II. Atmospherically, "Battlefield V" offers an incredible amount. But there remains the question of whether it really needed the Second World War, this particularly inhuman war of extermination, as a backdrop for this experience.

History of the great moments

In the singleplayer, in the so-called war stories, fates are told by people who are rarely mentioned. This is about a Norwegian resistance fighter, which caused in the run-up to the release if the female protagonist for riot. Or colonial troops from Africa who have to fight for the French army.

It is laudable attempts to break the big story of war, the developers are trying to give a voice to marginalized people. So far, however, the singeplayer mode is limited to a short prologue and three such stories. At the end of the year, a fourth is added, in which the player controls the crew of a German tank shortly before the end of the war.

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History as retold past can not be objective. It always consists of an infinite number of perspectives, experiences and utilizations. But "Battlefield V" has a premonition: Such a war brings big moments. Exactly this sentence falls in the intro. It is an assumption without which, above all, the single-player mode can not work: In everything that is cruel in the war, it also brings good sides of man. And so the game lets the player especially those big, replay the good moments.

BackgroundProduct tests in the network world department

The Holocaust is left out

Small, impressive experiences are more likely to be found in multiplayer games: when the player is revived by a team member. When he gets into the tank, which is controlled by another player, looks out of the peephole and trusts that this stranger will properly steer the tank.

It is these moments that hide a question, such as whether it is really right to fight here in multiplayer on the side of the Germans (where no swastikas are shown). In terms of mechanics and narration of the game, the backdrop of the Second World War changes almost nothing. Whether this war or another - it's the same.

Incidentally, the Holocaust is completely spared in "Battlefield V" as in many other World War II games - but the game does not want to portray any horrors of the simulated time.

"Battlefield V" by Electronic Arts, for PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4; from 20th November 2018