Instead, classes like Assault and Scout must now work together to counter vehicles, creating more interesting interplay between class-specific gadgets and the wealth of field guns on most maps. This is an era incompatible with a class like Battlefield 4's Engineer, who could whip out an RPG and take out vehicles with ease. “Vehicles, from the lumbering moving fortress that is the A7V tank to the speedy fighter and bomber biplanes, are more fun than ever and also serve a much more important, long-term function on the battlefield. Capturing points along the way to Cambrai serves as an easy primer for one of Battlefield’s most popular multiplayer modes, Conquest, as well as a how-to on operating tanks, but offers little else in the way of storytelling opportunities. It’s not that the story is bad, but Edwards is painfully bland, as is his mission. The answer is probably familiarity - you play as Daniel Edwards, a young, inexperienced soldier part of a British Mark V tank unit pushing through German lines into Cambrai, France. A Weak BeginningThe first story-driven mission, Through Mud and Blood, is by far the weakest when it comes to character, and the huge jump in quality that follows makes me wonder why DICE kept this one as the opening to begin with.

Each war story is grand in its smallness. But Battlefield 1 manages to capture the grit and valor of battle without being disingenuous. That’s not to say there isn’t excitement or heroism - there is. This is a sad campaign - perhaps not quite the horror game that the devastation of the Great War deserves, but still one that confidently forgoes the patriotic pomp and war fetishization seen in most modern military shooters. While Storm of Steel effectively works as a way to introduce you to some Battlefield basics - how to shoot, reposition, and reload - its grim reminders of World War I’s overwhelming death toll establishes the tragic tone.

Sometimes death is awkwardly forced upon you if you end up surviving longer than the script expects, because death is part of the plan. “As you and your fellow Hellfighters desperately try to push back the incoming German forces, you’ll meet death time and time again, but it won’t necessarily be your fault.

Battlefield series