‘Battlefield 1’: Horses, Planes and Automobiles

  Back in the day, the FPS genre wasn’t known for its balls-out, fearless innovation. This was the era of the me too ‘WW2 shooter,’ when players took the legendary Colonel Brown through tedious brown environments, shooting brown guns at brown enemies while wading through a brown swamp. A couple years back, this was the way of the (brown) world.  

Lately, there’s been a paradigm shift. We now live in the brave new era of the futuristic, space marine-y shooter. Silver corridor after silver corridor, creepy-ass lumpen aliens to shoot in the scrote, admittedly cool looking weaponry, usually some kind of funky grappling tech that lets you climb buildings… the whole genre now seems to have a Halo sheen to it.

When Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was revealed, the first trailer quickly became one of the most disliked videos on the whole of Youtube. It was only bested by Bieber’s Baby, and being as shit as Bieber, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a real problem right there. Something had to be done. Luckily, there’s still a little room to break the mould, to drop something actually kinda different on our asses.

On the other side of the FPS coin, Battlefield 1’s announcement was very well received. This’ll be because it’s trying something new with the setting, harkening back to the First World War. What makes this such a great opportunity, as the devs have said, is the techtastic advancement of the conflict. We went from soldiers on horseback to planes and tanks in a few short years.

We knew all of this already, but we haven’t had the opportunity to check out some of these vehicles in action in the game yet. Which is where this spangly new trailer comes in. Heavy tanks, fighters and driver assists amundo!