‘Battlefield 1’ Dev Wonders If We’ve Ever Heard Of World War One

  As a lot of rich nerdly smartasses will tell you, the standards of education have gone to hell lately. Just take an ogle on that thar Interweb. There are grammar warriors all over the place, trying and failing to fight the tide of terrible typing and general butchering of the language.   

Then there are the fail compilations, full of people who think elevators are dumb because they have a button for the floor they’re already on. Not to mention Facebook dumbassery like the Drink Battery Acid Mixed With Plastic Explosive Through A Pair Of Your Mama’s Soiled Undercrackers Challenge (there’d be a hashtag there, natch, but Twitter couldn’t spare the character). Tag four friends, they have twenty four hours to do it themselves.

With all of this in mind, maybe it’s not surprising that the Battlefield 1 developers had their doubts about our book-smarts. Or our knowledge that one of the most devastating and defining moments of the twentieth century even happened.

As we know, the new Battlefield is to be set in World War One. This is quite a departure, for the series and the FPS in general (nowadays, anyway). It took a lot of boardroom bitching for this decision to be made, as the team were concerned that younger gamers ‘wouldn’t know that World War One was a thing that happened.’

So says EA bossman Blake Jorgensen, anyway. In a recent interview, he sold us on the fact that trench warfare can work in a video game. It’s not all crouch-nipple-deep-in-shit-rats-and-ratshit-for-hours-and-hours-while-nothing-happens-and-then-everything-happens-at-once, he said. Or rather, this is what he actually said:

"I think what people don't understand about World War 1 is the technology shift that went on during the war. People started the war on horseback and ended the war with airplanes and tanks and battleships and submarines. And that's a huge opportunity for us to be able to do a video game around."

So there’s going to be variety-amundo in the combat and missions and such, which is nice. It was just a shame about the whole

"World War 1, we were worried that many of the younger consumers out there didn't know that there was a World War 2 or Vietnam, so World War 1..."

thing.

Via Escapist Magazine.