Battlefield 1

The Battlefield formula focused on large-scale clashes and goal achievement is more intense and spectacular than ever by choosing to cover the period of WW1. The single player campaign in Battlefield 1 features a short but astonishing collection of “human-sized” scenarios that brilliantly shed light on key military technologies of the time.

Its exhilarating multiplayer mode, which capitalizes heavily on the weaponry potential of the era, brings its share of subtle changes that make the clashes balanced and strategic, even in the midst of the characteristic chaos that makes Battlefield a major franchise of the world. genre FPS.

The Battlefield franchise hasn't really been known for the quality of its single player campaign in recent years, but the one offered by Battlefield 1 represents a welcome change of pace. The way in which each scenario skilfully juggles charm and tragedy makes it possible to humanize with calm and restraint this terrible conflict and its representatives. While its simplistic goals keep it from becoming the momentous saga it could be, the emphasis on Battlefield's most significant elements - like capturing objectives and motorized battles - makes it a great introduction to the mechanics of the mode. multiplayer.

Rather than being limited to a single character and a single location, Battlefield 1's approach (like thumbnails spread over a planisphere) allows it to tackle under-explored events that contributed to making this first world conflict so nightmarish. Its short prologue and five "War Tales", each lasting between 30 minutes and 1 hour, took me from the muddy battlefields of the Western Front to the scorching deserts of North Africa. Due to its many chronological and geographical leaps, the campaign never dwells on the complex political context of the Great War, but its effective narration keeps it from slipping into superficiality - these slices of warlike life prefer to tell us stories to human size rather than inflicting a bombastic history lesson on us, and they do so with devastating grace and power.

Storm of Steel, the mission serving as the prologue, portrays the war with tragic honesty. You play in turn different soldiers of the 369th American Infantry Regiment, made up almost exclusively of African Americans called "Harlem Hellfighters" by the German soldiers because of their courage and their unwavering determination. I especially enjoyed discovering the historical significance of these soldiers (mostly African-American and Puerto Rican) so early in the adventure, but I would have preferred to discover their seldom-told stories in the course of 'a real scripted mission centered on one of them.

As you and your loyal Hellfighters desperately try to push back the German forces, death is never far away, and it is all on purpose. Sometimes your death is forced when you resist longer than the script hoped for, but that's all part of the plan and makes this intro particularly poignant. While the Storm of Steel mission is roughly akin to an effective tutorial that introduces you to basic Battlefield mechanics - how to shoot, reposition, or reload - its grim reminders highlighting the terrible toll of this planetary conflict set a tragic tone. .

It's a heartbreaking campaign - perhaps not the apocalyptic horror this Great War deserves, but a fine attempt that breaks free from the warlike and patriotic clichés that undermine more modern conflict-centric games. This doesn't mean that heroism and excitement are missing, however - rest assured they are there. Battlefield manages to capture the essence of war values without adding more, and each of these “little” stories turns out to be grandiose.

Sluggish start

Into Mud and Blood, the title's first scripted mission, is by far the least interesting when it comes to its characters, and the much higher quality of the following missions made me wonder why DICE had chosen it to launch. truly hostilities. The answer probably lies in his most familiar approach - you play Daniel Edwards, an inexperienced young soldier from an English Mark V unit, and attempt to push through the German lines all the way to Cambrai.

It's not so much that the story is bad, but Edwards is such a bland character as the mission given to him. Capturing various points en route to Cambrai is obviously a nice introduction to Conquest mode (one of the most popular multi-mode in the Battlefield franchise) and the game mechanics associated with tanks, but which remains rather shy when it comes to narrative possibilities. .

Edwards is the perfect shot of the young recruit. The latter struggles to operate the capricious tank Mark V and ultimately proves to be the handyman when it comes to completing the mission: spot enemy camps on foot, fight against infantry and FT. -17 while his tank, Black Bess, gets repaired, before finally facing waves of vehicles in the middle of a devastated train station. This does not mean that these tank fights are boring, however - the last section of the train station is undoubtedly the highlight of this first mission.

This thrilling battle sometimes forced me to spare my capricious Mark V between two assaults, in order to go out to repair it with a key (faster alternative but also much more risky than the simple fact of putting the machine cover to repair it from inside), and zigzag between enemy vehicles for a better chance of hitting the less armored parts of their tanks (located at the rear).

The bugs present during this first mission prove to be even more puzzling than its sluggish plot, but this state of affairs fortunately does not concern the rest of the campaign. During my first game session, I spent nearly 15 minutes combing a deserted battlefield in order to trigger some event allowing me to access the next scene.

I actually noticed that an enemy tank got stuck in a trench at the edge of the level, which had the effect of crashing the mission script. Finally, another short passage inviting you to control a carrier pigeon (meant to represent a breath of fresh air amid the horrors of war), turned into a sadly comedic scene, due to its ill-adapted controls and of its camera and collision concerns (I had the good fortune to go through the textures of a building).

Highlights

Originally I thought the passage allowing you to control a carrier pigeon was a disguised way to introduce you to handling biplanes, but it actually happens a little later, during the explosive second mission, titled Des Amis High Placed, which excels in both gameplay and storytelling. This is a level filled with highlights. You spend most of the mission in the air, playing an intrepid American pilot who infiltrated the British Royal Flying Corps just to have fun and have the opportunity to take the controls of the Bristol F2 (a legendary biplane fighter ). Taking control of a biplane in Battlefield 1, solo or multiplayer, turns out to be a liberating experience. These slice through the air with fluidity and are controlled with ease and precision.

As our American troublemaker shared his escapades with his innocent British co-pilot, I crossed the air while shooting down the German fighters, luring them at full speed close to the huge airships blocking the sky, before diving upwards to see them crash , while taking the time to bombard the air defenses.

High Placed Friends is also excellent when you land your biplane and leave the dogfights to cross the rugged terrain behind enemy lines on foot. I approached this section in different ways, first focusing on stealth by doing melee kills through the trenches, before finally firing on all cylinders. Each level of the single player campaign is large and relatively open to offer you different ways to approach an obstacle, and focused enough to guide you without limiting your freedom. The stealth approach is effective thanks to the possibility of throwing casings to distract enemies, but also because of a not very shrewd AI that lets you sow death without risk of being spotted.

As for the frontal approach: Ammo is extremely limited but weapon crates plentiful, and you can always pick up weapons from the spoils of your enemies. This approach is obviously the best. The Battlefield formula is not really focused on stealth, and having the chance to experience the typical weapons of the Great War (among which we also find the first machine guns or the simple but effective bolt-action rifles) and to evolve my strategy depending on what I could pick up while surveying enemy encampments turned out to be an even more satisfying experience.

This brief, stealthy foray through the trenches, those veritable muddy "graveyards" filled with smoking Mark V tanks, bodies, torn trees and barbed wire, made No Man's Land a disturbing halt after the explosive aerial battles that preceded it. , and Battlefield 1 handles these types of transitions elegantly. While other military FPSs turn battlefield horror into a fun experience, Battlefield wisely uses storytelling to balance things out.

The following levels also preserve this balance in different ways. The scenario putting you in the shoes of an elite Italian soldier braving an enemy fortress to save his brother takes for example the form of a measured tale and told with sadness by a father to his daughter. In the last (probably the most surprising) level, you play as a Bedouin rebel who fights alongside Lawrence of Arabia to break free from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Each featured character fights for personal reasons far less than those that decide the fate of a war, and these human-sized stories resonate with an echo as magnificent as they are heartbreaking.

Overall, Battlefield 1's single-player campaign feels like an effective collection of adventures filled with memorable moments, but the main focus of this campaign is to familiarize you with the vehicles, classes, and weapons you'll be using in its - much more addicting. - multiplayer component.

Go to page 2 for our review on Battlefield 1 multiplayer