The next Battlefield will still have machine guns, don’t you worry.

Battlefield 1 not just muskets and trench warfare, says DICE

Battlefield 1 is going back to World War I, but that doesn’t mean there’ll be a downturn in variety of weapon, vehicle and gameplay.

“There’s this common misconception that WWI was just muskets or something,” lead designer Danny Berlin told Gamespot.

“But it wasn’t. It was a time of new weapons–bolt-action rifles, automatic rifles, semi-automatic rifles. The freedom we have is massive.”

“This was the first time ever that people saw light tanks, heavy tanks, armored trucks,” DICE design director Lars Gustavsson added.

“If you pop your head up from a trench and see a tank about to roll over you, you should get out of there. In the air, we have bombers to clear the way for your troops. If you’re in a bomber, you might want to have a buddy scouting for you on the ground. Dogfights with multiple people in planes, someone in the rear seat shooting at the person behind you. And of course battleships can demolish entire shorelines.”

Gustavsson said that DICE’s research made the team aware that World War I was the “dawn of all-out war”, with loads of different fronts to explore.

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“This was a worldwide conflict. It stretched from China to Europe and all over the globe. Trench Warfare was just a small part of it. The fights in the deserts, the fights up in the mountains of Italy – there were so many things that I, at least, hadn’t heard about,” he said.

“I always thought the battle for oil started later, in the Second World War, but it started within this era. So we went from the picture you’re painting, but realized that there’s so much more to World War One than trench warfare. There was the invention of new technology, the need for new weapons, the creation of light machine guns.

“The world changed during WW1. There were four great empires that ceased to exist just because of it. Lots of great inventions came about during it, even things you don’t think about like trench coats and zippers and teabags.”

Follow the source link above to read more; there’s a lot to unpack in the full interview.

Battlefield 1 launches in October for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.