Unmatched in atmosphere, unrivalled in fun.
As I reflect on the Battlefield series on the eve of its 20th birthday, my mind keeps drifting back to the shell-pocked sludge fields of Battlefield 1. I can't help myself, and even though I'd love to reminisce about my early experiences on Karkand in Battlefield 2, and the audacious C4 quadbike charges I'd pull off with friends in Bad Company 2, it's Battlefield 1 that keeps jolting itself into my conscious like a sudden bout of Shell Shock.
The game's PC player numbers are surprisingly healthy in large part thanks to the game made available on Game Pass and Steam a couple of years ago, but what really blows me away - beyond the tank blasts and arty trucks - is how enduringly atmospheric it is: the distant green gas clouds and rhythmic beams of AA gun fire lighting up the skies, the neverending infernos raging in and around the Passchendaele map, that acoustic sense of suction as an artillery shell lands nearby, throwing debris and the occasional Wilhelm-screaming soldier into the air before it all tinkles back to the ground like gory, gravelly confetti.
Before Battlefield 1 in 2016, the series never went all-in on atmosphere like this, perhaps because the underlying tech of older games already had its work cut out trying to sustain 64 players on vast destructible or semi-destructible maps. Battlefield 1 was the first game in the series that embellished the series' combined-arms checkpoint-capturing formula with stunning sound design, dramatic music, and a bold high-contrast filter that made everything from the neon-orange fires to even the most ashen of skies burst from the screen with power and with confidence that we hadn't seen up to that point or - worryingly - since then.
What also worked to the game's advantage was the fact that it was set so much earlier than any other Battlefield game, which left a lot of room for DICE - who were a very different team back then to what the are now - to implement some creative license. World War I happened a long time ago now, at a time when video was still in its nascent years and footage was largely limited to ghostly and grainy vignettes.
This meant that DICE could go pretty leftfield with the source material, giving us a decidedly 'steampunk' twist on the Great War. Rickety automatic weapons (some based on prototypes that never saw the light of day) were abundant; 'Behemoth' vehicles like armoured trains and zeppelins (which were really hardly used in the war, and certainly not as battle-shifting airborne fortresses) would be called in to balance out one-sided battles; and Sentry Kits turned you into an ironclad knight, absorbing huge damage as you lit up enemy trenches with a flamethrower.
Related: Next Battlefield Game Will Still Feature Modern Setting, Leaker Claims Then there were the horses, the bullet-sponge bastards of the battlefield who I still yell at in bewildered rage when they refuse to die after I empty an entire SMG clip into them, before ceremonially cutting me down with a single deft swish of the sword.
Battlefield 1's balance between fantasy and reality carried through to its campaign, which was broken up into several mini-stories (a format later adopted, albeit less successfully, by Battlefield V). The prologue remains a powerful piece of storytelling, throwing you into the fray as a soldier in the little-known all-black Harlem Hellfighters unit, before you get killed then transported into the body of another soldier fighting somewhere else in the world. Its thoughtful, poignant depiction of the Great War earned the game the right to 'gamify' other elements of the conflict, and also to veer off into the decidedly more fantastical (though still reality-based) story of Lawrence of Arabia.
The maps were a great bunch too. They spanned from the trench warfare we typically associated with the conflict, with the likes of Nivelle Nights, St. Quentin Scar and Passchendaele, to old imperial forts and the idyllic Alpine region of Monte Grappa. Argonne Forest and Achi Baba, meanwhile, were tight infantry-only affairs where sometimes it felt like you were clambering over bodies to get to your objective; a perfect embodiment of why certain French soldiers referred to the Great War as 'Marmalade' - which referred to the pulverising effect that artillery, rockets and the general brutality of trench warfare had on the human body.
Sometimes things could get a little too chaotic out there, with the high density of rocket and artillery fire leading to a certain amount of so-called 'explosion spam,' but to that I say better too much than too little, and the occasional spree of dying without being able to orient yourself is a trade-off between immersion and game flow that feels worthwhile. With subsequent Battlefield games suffering from a spooky sense of emptiness despite their larger scale, DICE could still learn some lessons from its own past.
It's testament to Battlefield 1's singular feel that to this day there's an ongoing trend among YouTubers to play Battlefield 1 in 'Immersion Mode' - which means playing with no HUD, no UI, and ultra-widescreen resolution. Just last month, Battlefield savant Jackfrags released this here video showcasing the immersion mode:
Perhaps the worst thing that Battlefield 1 ever did (apart from hosting an admittedly high population of cheaters, on PC at least) is that it set the cinematic bar so high for future games in the series. If people question why subsequent entries couldn't build on its success, it's because Battlefield 1 marked the pinnacle of a certain era at DICE, and for all intents and purposes it was no longer the same development team after that. Throughout 2018 and 2019, DICE went through serious changes and downscaling, experiencing what one former developer called a "mass exodus of talent".
Who knows if the series will see those glory days restored, but for now Battlefield 1 continues to thrive (enjoying similar player numbers to Battlefield 2042, incidentally) and runs like a dream on modern hardware. Until DICE takes cues from the things that made it great, I'm going to stay hunkered down in these trenches.
NEXT: 10 Best First-Person Shooter Maps
Robert is Lead Features Editor at DualShockers, arriving at the DS court after six years of freelancing for sites like PC Gamer, VG247, Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. Enjoys immersive sims and emergent stories, and has crowbarred more mods into games than Gordon Freeman has crowbarred headcrabs.