Battlefield V [PC, PS4, XBone] - V is for Victory

[Quietman]

Apparently I will get to fight the nazis in the city that I was born in ^_^ Rotterdam here I come!

[Lee]

I think they did it to themselves by claiming to be the most historical accurate version then people pulled them apart for the trailer afterwards. People are going to shit on you for it.

[STuG]

Exactly.

There are multiple ways a female component could have been added without any fuss whatsoever which could also have surprised and engaged people with a casual wartime knowledge.

Despite the calls to the contrary, the great mass of the gaming public don't have the slightest problem with females in games. Where was the outcry over Rainbow 6, Ghost Recon, Overwatch, Fortnite, The Division, Borderlands, Tomb Raider etc because females were involved?All of which have strong female representation. It's a red herring.

Dice find themselves in this position with this game over inept PR, poor aesthetic design choices with character design (simply put, period soldiers look nothing like their digital counterparts) telling people they were going to honour the stories and memory of the generation that fought and then along came that reveal trailer and for good measure then telling their customers they were free to not buy the product if they disagreed with the choices made by the studio.

Well played Dice, well played...

[Pew-Pew]

I'm with STuG on this one. The ridiculous characters and customisation in the first trailer (which was dog shit anyway) made me feel incredibly disappointed when I watched it the first time. I don't think that the 'it's an unrealistic shooter so who cares?' argument stands up really. If you are giving your game a particular setting, the game's aesthetic should fit to that setting. How realistic or unrealistic the gameplay is has no bearing on that. The whole point of the setting is to immerse you in the events/time period. If it was some alt-history game I wouldn't care.

Obviously I have no problem with having 'women in muh gamez!!11!' - but the way they appear to have done it (i.e. just crowbarring in everyone together onto a frontline) just makes it look a bit silly. Do it in some way that is more faithful to the time period and I would be happy (e.g. the standard example of Russian snipers). The war story with the women resistance fighters looks cool. They could have had a multiplayer map that involved resistance fighters fighting off the occupying forces or something. A map set in Burma where it is Gurkhas vs. Japanese. etc etc. It is easy to faithfully demonstrate the diversity of the conflict without making things up/having strange situations.

The same thing goes for all of the other cosmetics and customisation as well.

I always see the comment about how when we are going to have the Japanese in the game, they are going to be a bizarre mixture of asian, white and black people (assuming they are not hypocritical and don't decide to limit customisation for some factions). It just highlights how strange some of the customisation will be.

All this aside, the gameplay looks alright. Nothing has particularly drawn me in when I've watched the videos of the closed test TBH. I was quite interested by the fortification system, but it looks a bit too limited (which is understandable) in a way that makes it look less interesting. As a BF fan who has played all of the games since BF1942, it will take more to convince me that it is worth my money.

[Raid]

I really must learn not to comment on controversial topics late at night.

Until EA decide to alter the Battlefield gameplay to prevent people with bolt-action sniper rifles raising the scope to their eye and headshotting someone in half a second, followed by two or three seconds of bouncing from side to side to avoid being hit while they reload before repeating, they can't claim that the game is supposed to be realistic. Hell, the latest trailer features a soldier jumping through a first-storey window, rolling, and then jogging on, all set to a cover of House of the Rising Sun, a song popularised 20 years after the period the game is set in, so it's not as if their marketing is claiming that. That's why I think the "unrealistic" claim doesn't hold up; it's no more realistic than Counterstrike, it just has a broader scope.

It's also painfully obvious that gamers *like* avatar customisation (I don't have the statistics to hand, but I've seen reports of the absurd amounts of money spent on cosmetic items), and while it's going to lead to entire games without a single realistically dressed soldier, I just don't see how that's going to detract from the main experience, ie: bouncing around a map like lunatics. Female avatars are just an extension of this, and if this helps to bring more women to the game, I think it's a good choice.

Frankly I think this is one of those manufactured gaming controversies that everyone will forget the minute that the game launches and the detractors remember that Battlefield is not Band of Brothers.

[DjchunKfunK]

Yes it's EA's fault that people were annoyed at the female character, not the backward attitudes of those people.

[Mantis]

I don't think that's what people are saying.

[Pew-Pew]

I really must learn not to comment on controversial topics late at night.

Until EA decide to alter the Battlefield gameplay to prevent people with bolt-action sniper rifles raising the scope to their eye and headshotting someone in half a second, followed by two or three seconds of bouncing from side to side to avoid being hit while they reload before repeating, they can't claim that the game is supposed to be realistic. Hell, the latest trailer features a soldier jumping through a first-storey window, rolling, and then jogging on, all set to a cover of House of the Rising Sun, a song popularised 20 years after the period the game is set in, so it's not as if their marketing is claiming that. That's why I think the "unrealistic" claim doesn't hold up; it's no more realistic than Counterstrike, it just has a broader scope.

It's also painfully obvious that gamers *like* avatar customisation (I don't have the statistics to hand, but I've seen reports of the absurd amounts of money spent on cosmetic items), and while it's going to lead to entire games without a single realistically dressed soldier, I just don't see how that's going to detract from the main experience, ie: bouncing around a map like lunatics. Female avatars are just an extension of this, and if this helps to bring more women to the game, I think it's a good choice.

Frankly I think this is one of those manufactured gaming controversies that everyone will forget the minute that the game launches and the detractors remember that Battlefield is not Band of Brothers.

Like I said, the level of realism in the gameplay doesn't have to be reflected in the aesthetic. You could have the same things w.r.t. bringing more women to the game with more accurate portrayals of their roles in the war too. I'm sure lots of people like the cosmetics. I don't! Hence why I am complaining.

[Pew-Pew]

Yes it's EA's fault that people were annoyed at the female character, not the backward attitudes of those people.

Yes of course, it's my 'backwards attitude' speaking, and my hatred of women.

[DjchunKfunK]

Are you annoyed at the female character?

[Pew-Pew]

Are you annoyed at the female character?

More the fact that they're in every battle and army in the game.

[DjchunKfunK]

Well that's different to being annoyed about them being in the game period and those are the people I was talking about in my post.

Mantis, stug's post is pretty much saying it is PRs fault that people are annoyed. The people up in arms on the internet and complaining about SJW ruining Battlefield are not upset because of bad PR, they are upset because they have regressive attitudes.

[Pew-Pew]

Well that's different to being annoyed about them being in the game period and those are the people I was talking about in my post.

Mantis, stug's post is pretty much saying it is PRs fault that people are annoyed.

The thing is, everyone seems to lump the tiny amount of people that dislike women being in a game in with the people like me. I'm not even sure I've ever seen anyone complain purely about it just being a game that has women in. For example: Fortnite and PUBG are two massive BR games (probably full of 12 year olds) that don't really have any limitation in their setting for men/women/different races etc. There are loads of female characters etc. No-one cares! I've never seen anyone complaining about it.

As for that individual character: I mean, I've seen people complaining about the one in the first trailer/tests because she had a stupid cockney accent and weird catchphrases ("'ello old friend!", which would get shouted out at random in the battle too) along with the strange robot prosthetic thing she had going on.

[Pew-Pew]

Just watched the newer Gamescom trailer. Still not looking forward to it tbh. I think it exemplifies the change that the BF series has taken over the last couple of iterations from a slower paced game to a more clusterfucky over the top one. Nothing has beaten BF2 IMO.

[Mantis]

Well that's different to being annoyed about them being in the game period and those are the people I was talking about in my post.

Mantis, stug's post is pretty much saying it is PRs fault that people are annoyed. The people up in arms on the internet and complaining about SJW ruining Battlefield are not upset because of bad PR, they are upset because they have regressive attitudes.

Yes his post does say that, but you aren't really addressing the context of his post and the initial sniping post you made regarding it being EA's fault and not those with backwards attitudes seemed to imply that someone on this forum was making that argument. All I've seen is people largely being annoyed at the general way that EA has presented the game.

How can you possibly know how many people on the internet are annoyed at the game simply having women as opposed to those who are annoyed for various other reasons, like the ones highlighted here where EA claimed it was the most accurate portrayal of the war yet? I think you're generalising a lot. I'm sure there are people with regressive attitudes who outright object to there being female avatars in the game simply because they're women, but I think they are a very small minority.