The Battlefield series is going back to where it started with its fifth incarnation, but this time with a goal of showcasing the “unseen locations, untold stories, and unplayed gameplay moments” of the second world war.

For the first time in the series, that also includes a heavy focus on female soldiers, with a substantial chunk of the single-player mode starring women, and the option for players to bring female characters into multiplayer games.

Battlefield V (which, depending how you count, is actually somewhere between the seventh and 13th Battlefield game) will see players run and gun their way across fields of war ranging from the Netherlands to Norway to north Africa, according to developers EA Dice.

“All of us have yearned for years for the possibility to go back to this era, to go back to where Battlefield started,” Lars Gustavsson, Dice’s creative director, said. “This is really the war that forged the modern world, science and man. It also has an endless amount of stories to be told … and allows us to challenge our preconceptions of the second world war.”

The single-player mode from the first world war-themed Battlefield 1, War Stories, will make a return alongside large-scale multiplayer combat. The company was tight-lipped about the content of these episodic stories, save for a momentary preview at the London unveiling of one of the protagonists: a woman fighting with the Norwegian resistance. “Here, during the German occupation a young resistance fighter is about to pay the unthinkable price,” Gustavsson said, “not to save the world, but to save her family.”

Bridging the gap is a new gameplay type, Combined Arms, which sees small squads of up to four people playing through dynamically generated missions. “Combined Arms is really what connects the dots between single-player and multiplayer,” Gustavsson said. “There’s no hiding that we as developers have an agenda here, to create a safe haven for new players to Battlefield that feel overwhelmed.”

Promotional image for EA’s Battlefield V Photograph: EA/DICE

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Grand Operations, an evolution of another mode found in Battlefield 1. These multi-stage battles will be fought over the course of four in-game days and many real-world hours. One example given sees a cohort of Allied paratroopers trying to take out Axis artillery in Rotterdam, with their success dictating how scarce their resources are for the second phase, a ground assault. That leads into an all-out battle for control in the third phase.

A welcome addition to the series is that players can now make soldiers of either gender. In Battlefield 1, the game introduced a playable Bedouin woman in the single-player campaign, but left the multiplayer an all-male affair. This time round, anyone can play as any gender, with the option to customise up to eight separate characters – one for each of the classes, for both Allied and Axis powers.



Every few months, a new “chapter” of the game will begin, bringing with it a whole new swath of content for all modes at once. The entire field of war shifts – from Rotterdam to Norway at the end of the first chapter, for instance. “All players will have access to the same maps and modes,” Dice says, “keeping the community unified as they progress through Battlefield V.”

EA had nothing to say about how these live elements will be monetised, or what might replace the “premium pass” that funded previous entries in the series, save to add that the game will not have randomised loot boxes. It did give one hint, however, in the release dates for the game. Yes, plural: the deluxe edition will be released 16 October, with the standard edition following three days later on 19 October.