Hardware Battlefield 1: Gamescom 2016 Hands-On

There's no "the" in "tears in rain"

 

Did anyone play the Open beta? I wrote this a week or so ago, but I've played the open beta since and it's pretty fun. I like the landships a lot.

 

I have played the closed beta and also now the open beta. So I have seen the airship behemoth. The closed one was in a small village in France or something with windmills and destroyed neighbouring towns - more Saving Private Ryan than the beta. Never managed to figure out the train in beta though. Also the gun attachments/mods will be in full game, just not in beta. Yes this game appears to be as good as BF4 or better even. I can't make any decent use of aircraft though in this. Snipers are as annoying as ever though - they seemed to make it easier for them - not much bullet drop.

 

It still feels pretty modern. It's not WW1 battle, it's modern warfare battle with WW1 skins. The tanks move far to fast, armoured cars are as good as any modern tracked vehicle at negotiating sand/rocks/etc. The horse is basically a quad bike. The assault still gets what is basically an assault rifle (i.e. hand held fully automatic gun). The sniper rifle still gets late 20th century optics. The support gets an lmg pretty similar to every other lmg ever. The early 20th century medic is as good at heals/revives as every other medic in all the other time periods was. There's still lots of grenades, including what is basically a grenade launcher.

It plays out like all the other BF games - i.e. far to many people sniping uselessly. Tanks blow people up, planes blow tanks and people up. Everyone else fights over control points in a late 20th century manner (i.e. not like WW1 with trenches, continuous artillery, fixed MG's mowing down men by the dozen).

There are some nice touches - the bayonet charge is fun. Gas grenades are clever - they provide smoke for cover, but only do damage if you aren't wearing a mask (which everyone has) only with the mask on you can't aim down the sights which obviously suits assault and totally messes up snipers. The loosing team sometimes gets a huge train to even the game up a bit. It looks and sounds great. Oh and obviously it has the classic BF selection of annoying bugs.

 

^This

And hands off Blade Runner quotes!*


*Blade Runner quotes should only be used for epic events

 

I don't know enough about WWI weapons to dispute your issues, but.

Considering people who know much more about the time period than me aren't picking as many bones as you (Common ground is tanks moving too fast.. I agree about that, but you have to allow artistic license when it comes to a fast-paced FPS. If you're in a tank at objective A and need to get to C on the Beta map, you'd be there for a month of sundays in an accurately depicted WWI tank), I'm not convinced you're entirely correct.

I'm also concerned you went into BF1(5) expecting ARMA: WWI, and are surprised to get Battlefield..

 

It's just a comment, WW1 was 100 years ago, everything in BF1 handles like it's modern - cars/tanks/weapons. In WW1 there was no "assault class" or "support class". There were rank and file soldiers with rifles and bayonets, and officers got a pistol and a sword. The only mg's were fixed 2 man emplacements, no one was running around with smg's. Medics had no weapons at all (convention, no one was meant to shoot them either). Snipers did exist, but there were only a few (not half the combatants) and you can bet the guns weren't as good as the ones in the game.

Tanks (of which the allies had thousands, the germans had 20) went at about 0.5mph over the battlefield (top speed 5mph on a road). They were used en mass - either you had hundreds of the things advancing towards you or none, not alone as an infantry support vehicle. While there were hand held explosives I doubt most soldiers had grenades (that came in WW2), let alone gas grenades or anti tank grenades. Most exploding was done by artillery of which there was a lot more then this game shows. Tanks were brand new, and couldn't really be stopped by infantry, I suspect they mostly died to artillery or just broke down/got stuck/ran out of fuel.

Armoured cars did exist - but remember we are around the time of the model T ford - they weren't all terrain vehicles with high powered engines. The ones we have in game basically handle like ATV's not an early 20th century civilian road car weighed down by heavy armour and and MG turret (which tbh is more of a between the wars design then WW1).

Planes did 2 things - spot, and shoot other planes. While they could drop the odd small bomb that didn't really do anything compared to the thousands of tons of artillery shells flying around. In the game they are used to take out infantry and tanks, which is what they do now, certainly not what happened in WW1.

The whole meta was trench warfare - i.e. two sets of trenches with a ton barbed wire and mg emplacements meaning any movement between the two was death. None of this running around buildings with smg's lobbing grenades in doors with armour and air support - that is very much late 20th century skirmishing not early 20th century all out war.

Like I say the game is fine, but it's modern warfare with WW1 skins. WW1 warfare was nothing like this game presents it as. As for the ARMA comment well ARMA is modern warfare too, just more realistic. You can have realistic or unrealistic WW1 warfare too, BF1 is neither, it's unrealistic modern warfare with WW1 skins.

 

Agree, battlefield 1 is not realistic but there's always a balance between fun and realism and this game has shifted towards the fun end of the scale

It will be good to see what the games like when the modders get hold of it tho, shouldnt take much tweaking to result in a fairly realistic game