EA Details the Four Battlefield 1 Expansions

[Hawki]

...alright, so, that happened.

I just hope they don't fuck up the Gallipoli fight in the 3rd expansion. Well, ok, it's an EA war game, so hopefully they don't fuck it up too much and have, I dunno, a bunch of Americans roll up in tanks and Zeppelins during it or something. Just let the Australians have this one this time, please? Just for once? We kinda got ignored with all the other war games, but Gallipoli was kinda our 'big' one so it'd be nice to actually play an Aussie during it.

I'm Australian, but to be fair, Australia has never really been that major of a player in wars. Even in Gallipoli, the majority of Allied troops were British and French, and IIRC, there were a sizable portion of troops from India in addition to the ANZACs. I don't think it's intentional dismissiveness to Australia, just that we're hardly in the 'big boys club' as far as world powers go. We certainly weren't in WWI at least.

Still, I can't complain in of itself. If an ANZAC faction does come along, that means I get to have a whole new level of argument as to whether the ratio of Australians to Kiwis is correct (should be about 5:1 or 4:2 in Australia's favour).

Oh yes, because it's not like literally EVERY other game company is guilty of the same shit or anything... The industry in general has been circling the drain for years and is headed for a major crash. I've reached the point where most video games these days are so bad, I don't even care if the whole industry goes down in flames.

I've heard the "heading for a crash" argument for years now. Still hasn't happened. Course you can play what you want though.

I don't complain about France not being in the game because I personally don't really care for the French to be honest. Almost all French I've ever met were jerks.

That's hardly an excuse to not include France.

And as someone who lives in a suburb with a noticable percentage of French migrants, I've had the opposite experience from you. I mean, the French brought in a crepe shop at the local village. Crepes! C'est tre bien!

As far as the Ruskis go, it's no surprise they weren't included. Their army was a complete mess, the Czar was asleep at the wheel, to the point where he had to recall the troops due to the communist uprising, and they were out of the war after that. Hardly a "major power in the war".

You're correct about the Russian army being ineffective, but that's simplifying the issue. Russia was a major Entente power. It was of great concern to the Central Powers due to how Germany was now flanked by France to the west, and Russia to the east (hence the creation of the Schliffen Plan). Russia was also arguably one of the key instigators of WWI, given how they backed Serbia, and were one of the first major powers to mobolize. Also, they did keep German troops occupied on the Eastern Front for a significant period of time - enough so that when German troops were rotated to the Western Front, it could have turned the tide of the war, if the US hadn't intervened, effectively balancing out Germany's troop surge.

So, no, Russia was a major power. And considering how little I've heard about the Eastern Front, I think it would be nice to see some battles of that era. Same way Battlefield 1942 highlighted areas such as North Africa, which is rarely featured in WWII media.

You're missing the point; this is bigger than video games. Battlefield 1 is a fun game, but the over representation of the blacks and the overall trend it fits into in our media and society right now is disturbing. We have to call it out and push back against it when we see it.

There's many trends in the world I'd call disturbing. Diversity, multiculturalism, and more equal representation isn't among them.

You want to "push back" against it, go ahead. I'm under no obligation to follow you into the battle though.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

50 bucks is pretty damn expensive, but at the same time the season pass gives you more multiplayer content than the vanilla game, plus exclusive benefits. I think 50 bucks for BF4's seasons pass was justified (frankly, it had too much content), but I'm not so sure about BF1.

And since we seem to be on the topic, I don't agree with the so called "blackwashing" of things, or having diversity for diversity's sale, but when what is being "blackwashed" (I hate having to use this word) are unnamed soldiers for classes used by everyone in a multiplayer game, I don't see the problem. Of course, the most preferable option would be the ability to select your appearance, but this is a class based game and visual identification of an enemy's class is key to strategy. I think having these races show up in the multiplayer as classes was a nice way to showcase and respect their involvement in the war.

If they had been in the singleplayer in a shoehorned way, yeah, that would have been annoying. But no, the African American troops were shown only in the start, at the beginning for a short period of time. It showed that there's more to WWI than people think (I sure didn't think troops of African descent were allowed into armies, considering how non-black WWII seems). This I think is one of the central themes of BF1. War on such a massive scale led to a lot of new, weird things like suits of armor being used with guns or shovels being used to bludgeon people to death. It also made sense for what the opening (which I think is everyone's favorite part of the singleplayer) was trying to do, to show that in war and death, we are all the same.

 

[Zulnam]

It would be easier to agree that historical accuracy is rarely a strongpoint of games, especially EA ones. Instead of arguing over what's already out there, why not promote reading up on actual history? Besides, the simple fact that EA released a game based on WW1 can be enough to stir the curiosity of some people and look into the actual facts.