Battlefield 1 – a new era for DICE

GameCentral speaks to the manager of DICE about Battlefield 1’s WWI setting, its amazing graphics, and Blackadder Goes Forth.

Patrick Bach is always one of our favourite developers to speak too, and not just because of the soothing tones of his Swedish accent. Bach is an important man – general manager of one of the largest and most technically accomplished developers in the world – but we’ve always found him happy to discuss DICE’s games with an impressive degree of honesty and enthusiasm. And that includes Battlefield 1 and its unusual World War I setting.

We spoke to him before the closed alpha, but given the limited access to that event we assume most ordinary gamers still haven’t played the game. That will change with the promised beta, but already Battlefield 1’s setting and graphics have enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive reception. You’d expect no less from DICE in terms of the visuals, but what’s also obvious from playing the game is a kind of back to basics approach to the gameplay. And it’s clear from talking to Bach that stripping away the complexities of modern weaponry was actually one of the main reasons for setting Battlefield 1 in the era.



The destructibility of the environment exceeds even Bad Company 2, while the use of Zepplins as game-changing aerial super weapons is oddly reminiscent of the sci-fi Battlefield 2142. It’s as if Battlefield 1 is pooling together all the best bits from the non-modern day iterations, including pulling itself back towards the slightly slower pacing and tactics of the original Battlefield 1942. What must’ve seemed like an awful risk when DICE first decided upon it, already seems to have paid off. But as Bach explains, there’s far more to the game than just an unusual historical setting…


Formats: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC

Publisher: EA

Developer: DICE

Release Date: 21st October 2016

GC: I think my first question must be what came first here? Did you want to do a World War I game and then you decided how that would change the Battlefield formula later? Or did you have specific ideas about how you wanted to evolve the gameplay and then later realised that World War I would be a good backdrop for that?

PB: It’s a bit of both actually. DICE believes that the game is not the setting. You could argue the setting is just the wrapper, when you do it wrong. When you do it right it, it influences the game and feeds into the fantasy of what is happening. I think we came about it from both directions, and we found a kind of perfect middle ground. Battlefield 4 is a great game, but the problem is it’s getting more and more complicated. So the more things you want to do, it adds on top of its complexity – because of the nature of modern weaponry and all the different complicated systems that you then need to implement because of the era.

So, we thought, ‘Let’s reinvent Battlefield from the ground-up, go back to the basics of it’. Make sure it’s an intuitive, visceral, epic experience – rock, paper, scissors and all the classic Battlefield elements. But then really look into what are the elements that are most fun, and focus on those. So of course destruction is important. We wanted to do more… some people refer to Bad Company 2 style destruction where you can just level houses. But also looking at how can you simplify your presence in the world in general. And then that together with the concept of World War I… because the general consensus of World War I is that it was slow and boring and only about trench warfare.



That is of course not true, and people that know the history know that it’s a very complicated conflict, with many parties involved. Also, the technical advancement during that era was probably the biggest in human history. You started out with people with swords on horseback and end up with tanks, planes, airships, and almost all types of weaponry that exists today. It’s the dawn of all-out war, as we call it.

GC: But from a purely mechanical point of view how do you deal with the primitiveness of the technology? The fact that the guns were slow and inaccurate, and that the tanks never worked most of the time.

PB: Like anything you can choose to look at something from different angles, right? You can look at World War I from the point of view of weapons weren’t as good as they are today, this and that didn’t exist, etc. But there is actually another angle that hasn’t been portrayed yet. What is cool about World War I? We sometimes refer to what happens quite a bit in the movie industry, where you take a movie like Gladiator.

That movie portrays that era in a way where it’s actually faster, cooler, better than it is today. And they’re not lying, per se, it’s just that they portray it from that angle. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t portray it from the opposite angle, and do a History Channel version of it where it’s just, ‘Here are the facts, it’s this and it’s that’.


GC: The History Channel mus be a lot better in Sweden.

Battlefield 1 – Old school is best school when it comes to fighter planes

PB: [laughs] I would also argue that modern war is actually really, really dull and boring and slow.

GC: That’s true, modern planes in particular. Biplanes were a lot more manoeuvrable and the action a lot closer range.

PB: Yes, exactly! The flight is actually inspired by Battlefront, but this is a bit more complex. But you can actually fight in a similar way.

GC: Modern jet fighters shoot missiles from five miles away, just looking at a blip on the radar. It only looks cool in Top Gun.

PB: Yeah, to make a great Battlefield game, you can’t do Mach 2 on jet planes. So even in Battlefield 4 we had to slow them down quite a bit to make it fun. Because it’s more important that it’s fun than it’s real. So what happened here is that we actually get to more natural speeds for everything, everything from guns to vehicles. They’re actually more natural in this game than it’s been in a lot of games before.

GC: But the other issue is of course the sensitivity of the setting. You look at the portrayal of World War I in any other media – movies, TV, novels, etc. – and they’re all anti-war. When I think of World War II I think of Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day, but also Kelly’s Heroes and Where Eagles Dare. When I think of World War I… the only thing close to actual entertainment is Blackadder Goes Forth. So how do you deal with that in terms of the game? I asked this of [design director] Lars Gustavsson and I have to say he did seem to be trying to avoid the issue.


PB: I don’t think we’re avoiding the issue. To us, and to me personally even, all war is waste. In reality there’s never a clear winning or losing condition. Everyone is losing, it’s just how much do you lose? [laughs] So going to war is the last thing you do when everything else has failed.

GC: ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means’?

PB: Exactly! Especially coming from a country like Sweden, where we haven’t been to war for a very long time, I think we see war as something that happens and will continue to happen in different ways. And I think the World War I conflict is not different than any other war. But to your point, the media at the time did not have the same clarity on what was going on, because the conflict was real. People fought, for them, for the same good reasons as any other war was fought.

You could argue the Vietnam War has been portrayed many, many times in a very action-packed way. And I would have a stronger argument on the complexity of creating entertainment based on that era. So there’s no doubt that the war was complicated and sad, but that doesn’t take away the fact that it’s also very, very interesting. And to us it’s about creating a dramatised, fictionalised world that is set in this era.

Battlefield 1 – not slow and boring

GC: I assume you’re not talking about the story campaign now?

PB: No, not today.

GC: But can you say whether that will address any of these issues? It’s primarily a question of tone. It’s not going to be some gung-ho, Michael Bay-esque adventure is it? Because you could get that impression from the multiplayer trailer.

PB: No. [laughs] No! I think you’re touching on some stuff I would like to comment on, but we’ll go into the campaign later. What I can say is that instead of telling one story we’re going to tell many stories. Because we think that Battlefield is actually a game that, depending on who you talk to, when they talk about the multiplayer they all tell different stories.

So we actually wanted to have that theme in single-player as well. Battlefield is many stories so that’s tell many stories. So there will actually be a slightly different structure than you’re used to in Battlefield, which I think lends itself very well to exactly the topic you’ve brought up.

GC: That makes me think of Valiant Hearts, which is the only prominent World War I game of recent years and, again, it’s very anti-war. But can you have that same sort of tone in an action game? Or any action medium really?

PB: No, I don’t think so. I think you could make a movie, but I think you need to separate the issues out in a way that makes sense. You can’t have a juxtaposition with stories about anti-war and then you go out and kill a lot of people. That’s just weird, right? And since Battlefield is a first person shooter and an action movie needs to have action you need to find the right balance between why these different parts exist, so that it makes sense.

For us, it’s about separating us quite aggressively from the politics of war. We’ve always tried to do that, because this is actually playing war. This is not a war simulator in any way. If you take other games that are portraying war from a different angle, you could argue that any story can be told from different angles. You can have an action-packed version of Romeo and Juliet, you take the same story and just portray it in different ways. The story is the same but the expression is different. This is maybe going too much into philosophical discussion…

Battlefield 1 – the beginning of the modern era

GC: But that’s what I find interesting! Because you’re doing something quite unusual, quite brave here. But it’s also problematic in that you are making a fun game out of such a terrible conflict. Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t, just that you need to be sure of the tone and the message you’re sending.

PB: It’s true, I think you’re right. But there’s another interesting factor that you bring up. World War I was probably the last war where real people went to war. Because everyone signed up, because they thought that they fought for something important. And noblemen went to war with ordinary people.

GC: You were ostracised even, if you didn’t sign up immediately.

PB: Yes, it was all about honour. It had a different style and tone to it. You could argue after the fact that it was wrong, but I think that the emotions at the time were actually quite noble. People felt that this was a noble cause for them and it was important. And I think when World War II came, I think a lot of that away.

And World War II was probably the start of more what we see today, where just a very limited group of people actually go to war, any more. So I think from that perspective, from a political and cultural perspective World War I was the last great war. Because people honestly thought they were fighting for something noble and good. Which I think is very important.

Of course that’s hard to build into the multiplayer game, but I think it’s something we thought quite a bit about because when you think about World War I your spontaneous though is that it’s grey, and dull, and boring. And a lot of people died in vain and no one won. But if you try to put yourself into the situation of being there, at the start of the war, I think we will see the complete opposite, where people are really psyched up about being involved in the war.

GC: You have watched Blackadder Goes Forth, haven’t you?

PB: Oh yes! It’s an amazing programme.

GC: Well that alone calms some of my fears. [laughs] But there is another difficult question to ask in regards to the story mode, and I imagine you can guess what it is.

PB: [laughs]

Battlefield 1 – what will its story mode be like?

GC: Now, I’ve spoken to you personally before the release of a number of Battlefield games and each time you’ve implied that this is the moment where you get the single-player story campaign right, but… that’s not really how it’s ever turned out. How can you reassure me that this time will be different?

PB: I cannot reassure you. [laughs] I think you are onto… I agree. We are from okay to good, right? We actually have a lot of people that only play the single-player in Battlefield, which to me is… interesting. Because it’s primarily a multiplayer game. It’s always been and it will always be. Our aim is, of course, to make a better single-player every time we do it, and again I won’t sit here and tell you it will be great. Because I think that will just be a sad way of trying to pitch something to someone. [laughs]

I want to make sure that when we show it to people we will show people what it is, rather than what it should be. Because I understand if people get sceptical. I see a lot of cool stuff at E3, but I always wait and see how it turns out. Because it may be that it looks really good and then it turns out crap or it looks okay and it turns out great.

GC: Well I hope it works this time, because with the setting there’s real potential for this to do something new and interesting.

PB: Trust me, we’ve been thinking a lot about not only how do you make it good but what’s the Battlefield recipe for single-player? Because we’ve been trying different things to find where the sweet spot is. Because in one way you want to entertain a different part of the audience with the single-player, you don’t want it to be multiplayer. You want it to be different.

But you also don’t want to be like another game, where people say, ‘Oh, it’s like that game’. You need to find your own personality, and I think we’ve done that with multiplayer and solidified that over the years. But I don’t think we’ve reached as far with single-player.

GC: You mentioned E3 there, is there anything that’s caught your eye?

PB: I think in general, I’m actually right now most excited about the hardware announcements.

GC: They must’ve talked to you about that before though?

PB: Yes, but very late. So, I was actually surprised myself. [laughs]

GC: Really? That surprises me.

PB: Yeah. [laughs] So I got really happy. I can’t wait to get my hands on that!

GC: I bet you know what a teraflop is too.

PB: [laughs] You can google it. [laughs] Seven is better than five.

Battlefield 1 – will it run better on Scorpio?

GC: So as soon as you heard about Project Scorpio, did you immediately start drawing up new plans of how to take advantage of it?

PB: Since we are on PC this is not a problem for us, we just scale. We just crank it up. When we build the games we build them here [indicates one end of a line with his hands], and then the PC that you can buy today is here [indicates slightly further down the line] and the question is just where are the consoles on this scale? So if they give us a better console we just crank it up and it’ll be more awesome.

GC: I remember when the N64 came out and it was more powerful than a PC, before the days of 3D graphics cards, but that never happens any more. Will there ever be a time again, where a console is more powerful than a gaming PC?

PB: I hope so. I though those days were awesome, when they actually out PC-ed the PCs. But I think the PC industry has learnt now that they can’t rest. They have to always move on, and that’s what’s happened for the last 10 years. Every time there’s a new console and it beats the PC, then the PC that comes out before the console comes out is actually better.

GC: So, our next controversy…

PB: [laughs]

GC: Battlefield 1 vs. Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare, what on earth is going on there? To me both games look great, and yet the responses to them have been polar opposites.

PB: [laughs] Yeah!

GC: Why do you think that is?

PB: I don’t know. [laughs] It’s the Internet. I agree, I think it’s too polarised. It could be the… if you see a tangent of things, like how things have been, and you kind of know what the next thing will be, because you’ve followed the tangent, I think that that makes people p***** off. Because they want to be entertained, they want to be surprised. And if they have a chance to be upset they will be.

GC: There is nothing people love more than getting angry.

PB: They love it! [laughs]

GC: Oh, I’m angry! Thank god!

PB: [laughs] Yes! And I can now write on the Internet semi-anonymously. But the interesting thing, I think, is that we came out with something that was unique. Something that hasn’t been done before. And you couldn’t compare it to anything. You could only compare it to your expectations, and that wasn’t it. And I think you asked the question earlier, of how do you make World War I interesting when you know the history of it. But you could have the same argument with any era or any story.

The dry facts are just something to pull from as you create entertainment. And I think that the coolest thing here is that when we showed the first trailer and people saw the imagery they thought that it was made up. That this was not World War I, this was made up stuff. No, everything you see existed. We are probably more detailed, in terms of making sure everything is based on real gadgets, weapons, vehicles, than we’ve ever been before. But we’ve also done a lot of research, making sure that we find these things that did actually exist. Because that’s also the problem with World War I.

Media wasn’t as developed at the time, so the only footage people have seen, more or less, is the trenches in France. Because you could not send journalists beyond that, they took their photos, faked some footage, and went back home. So we did a lot of research on what actually went on, what weapons were actually used, what do they look like. And if you now go onto the Internet you can see that people are starting to do this, after the trailer…

GC: Preparing for this interview I saw a video that went through the trailer [see below] and discussed what was and wasn’t realistic. And you seem to have got most of it right.

PB: I think that’s really important, because even if you make up scenarios, you still use reality as a baseline to trade some sort of authenticity that actually gives gravitas. Because you could argue that you just make stuff up, do a fantasy setting or a future setting…

GC: That was the rumour just before the reveal. Was that ever a thought?

PB: No, no. This is interesting, I will take you back to the early days of when we started to explore this. When people found out all these things, and presented them to the team you had that reaction, of ‘No, that can’t be true! What do you mean, water-cooled machineguns?! Did they exist?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes! And here’s a video of someone using it today’.

So we thought that if we could get people to feel that with everything we show, like, ‘That can’t be true!’ then we’re onto something. Because then you have, first of all, the excitement of it actually being really cool. And then the gravitas of it actually being real. And then you get something that is bigger than just ‘cool’. And I think you can see that on the Internet now, our happy friends on the Internet, where they educate each other in a very aggressive way.

GC: [laughs]

PB: When people have a complaint about something they see in the game, someone will say, ‘No! Here’s a link to the actual facts about this thing, it is true’. And that was actually our dream scenario, where we would have our fans not only educate themselves but also educate each other. So we wouldn’t have to defend ourselves in anyway. We present the game that we want to build and people then pick up on it and then start to educate themselves on what that is. And I think that’s something we haven’t really seen before, because you could argue that if you had a World War II setting people more or less already know about it.

So we have a very, very unique position now where we are, you could argue, first to market with creating an exciting World War I entertainment product. If you look at, for instance, World War II movies were primarily created, in the beginning, as propaganda. It was kind of writing history, making sure that it was good vs. evil, making sure that heroes were created, etc., etc. Which wasn’t done for World War I.

And it wasn’t until really Saving Private Ryan when it got a modern take on something that happened 50 years ago. Which I think was something that I fond very, very interesting. Because they showed with that movie that you could take something that you thought you knew and give a new angle on it and make it very, very modern. Give it a modern lens, the camera language was super modern, the editing and storytelling – everything was super modern. And once they did that they established what World War II is from now on… to everyone.

GC: Well, that was the heart of my earlier questions. That however you portray World War I in your game is going to be, for the majority of players, how they think of it now. But I do like that phrase, ‘aggressively educated’. That’s video games, and gamers, in a nutshell…

Both: [laughs]

PB: But also then, to that topic, the video game industry has never been first. Video games have always been following, looking at what has already been established. So when we saw this it was almost a holy grail kind of moment.

Battlefield 1 – will Hollywood take notice?

GC: It’s going to be fascinating to see if movies then start being influenced by you.

PB: That is actually our goal. [laughs] Not per se, but I want us to be able to set the tone for World War I stories from here on. Because no one has really done it. And it kind of annoys me when you have all these facts on what is was. Because it was in many ways a more fascinating and more interesting war from almost any aspect.

World War II was ‘good’ from the point of view that it was very clear. It was, like, two sides, this versus that, and it was clear who won. Everyone knows the iconography from the war even if post-war it has been tweaked to make it even more clear. I don’t think it was as clear at the time. So to me, I see it as a huge opportunity to make, hopefully for the first time in gaming history, to set a target for all other media.

(At this point we’ve already been going for half an hour and both of us are surprised we haven’t been asked to stop. But luckily the PR woman is busy studying her mobile.)

GC: So I’ve been speaking to a lot of different journos about the experience of playing the game. What do you imagine they’ve been saying?

PB: Oh. I think from a feature perspective; I think people find it very colourful.

GC: Yes.

PB: Because they think World War I was black and white. [laughs] When actually it’s as colourful as any game. But also, it’s faster than people expect. So I think one other thing is the destruction. I think people that quite a bit.

I think they get excited with the fact that the tanks, even though they are old, they feel more powerful. They feel cooler, not only because they look really cool, but they feel more powerful because they can just barge through anything. You just plough through buildings. And I think people feel more powerful as individuals.

GC: A lot of people said that. And also the rain effects, one guy was telling me about how he was getting picked on by snipers and then it started raining and that gave him some relief from them.

PB: Yes, we have dynamic weather. Meaning that the weather can actually change quite drastically during a match. We often talk about these different dimensions in Battlefield, where you have the rock, paper, scissors and then you marry that with the destruction and you create unpredictability from different angles. And with the layer of weather we actually change the way you play in a very drastic way.

So, if you have the tactics of being a sniper and it starts to rain then you probably have to change tactics. And the same with fighter planes, once the fog rolls in it’s like, ‘Okay, this is not as effective anymore, so I probably need to go back on the ground’. And also long range weapons, close range weapons, there’s actually a lot of things that change with the weather. So it’s not only a pretty effect, it actually changes the way you play the game.

Battlefield 1 – squint and that could almost be a Battlefield 2142 Titan

GC: Was weather something you were building up to or is that something you added because it was World War I?

PB: No, it was more about how do you create dynamism in the game? I think we know what Battlefield is at its core and we often say that we want to make a better Battlefield game, but what does that mean? And then we often go back to core discussions on what is the game about. What is it that I’m trying to achieve?

And one discussion that we always end up in is you can make a game as complicated as you want as long as it’s intuitive. Because intuitive means that we have learnt how the world works and if a game works in that way that complexity is not a problem, meaning that something like weather… if it was only a random gameplay feature it wouldn’t make sense. But since it is weather, and we are used to what weather does, it makes a lot of sense.

So that’s kind of what we’re thinking… the same with movement. We’ve actually improved movement quite a bit, so you actually feel more agile. You can now high vault over big walls, you can barge through doors – you don’t have to go up to a door and press a button, if you sprint towards it you will automatically barge through it. So small things like that will also make you feel more powerful and more agile in general.

GC: I’ve noticed accessibility has been quite a preoccupation for you lately, you mentioned it a lot when talking to me about Battlefront. And there has been a new wave of online shooters lately, games like Splatoon and Overwatch, which also emphasise that. Obviously they have a very different tone to Battlefield, but are you all addressing basically the same problem? Of trying to stop the genre from becoming too niche and unwelcoming?

PB: I think you’re right. I think that’s spot on. The more hardcore you go the more limiting that will be. But you also get people that absolutely love your game, so what we’re trying to do is understand the audience and all the different types of players that we do have. And make sure that there’s value and depth for each and every one of them.

But also, the biggest value, with Battlefield, is that every type of player can play the game. It’s not a game about one player style, it’s not a game about one player type, it’s a game where the fighter pilot can play together with the run ‘n’ gun soldier. And I think that’s the most important factor for us.

And niche to me is when it’s about one thing, or two things, but with Battlefield it’s about many, many things. Which I think is what makes Battlefield unique. Every person I talk to about Battlefield talks about it in a slightly different way. They bring up different details on what they love the most, but they also talk about the core as a common theme. And that’s exactly how we’re trying to build the game.

The core needs to be a great, accessible shooter that everyone can get into, and then you go on your journey through the game and do the things you love to do. But you’re actually playing together with everyone else, and that’s actually quite unique in the gaming space. Where you have such a diverse audience playing the game.

Battlefield 1 – looking to attract new fans and old

(The PR woman still seems preoccupied, so we both agree to carry on regardless)

GC: So I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons you removed the commander system?

PB: We actually removed it, first of all because it didn’t make much sense in a historical context, because it didn’t really work that way – they didn’t really have that kind of overview. But also we wanted to, and this goes back to chicken and egg – what came first – the game or the setting? We actually said that we want to take a lot of those strategic things and push them down onto the battlefield. And making sure that you have more tactical choice as a soldier, where you can do more things with your squad. Rather than relying on someone who has a different view on things. So that was kind of a tactical choice for us.

(We discuss the surprising lack of interruptions just a little too loudly, and the PR woman hears us.)

PR woman: Just one more question.

PB: You can’t say that now, because…

GC: You just made that up!

PB: Yeah!

All: [laughs]

GC: Well, just to finish that point, how much are the controls the limiting factor for you? Because what interested me about Splatoon is how it got rid of the necessity to use the right stick, which I think is the real barrier for many casual and non-gamers.

PB: I think that’s something we’re trying really hard to address. I think you’re onto something that we have also talked a lot about. That is, the level of input you need should scale towards the complexity of the game. So, if you learn the control of these two sticks, and this button, you will be able to have fun in our game. And then the more buttons you learn, the deeper you will go into the game.

Because I think that is also the hardcore discussion, where people say, ‘I want the game to be complicated to be fun’. But no, that’s not actually what you mean. You want it to have depth. Because complication does not equal fun. It can be interesting but it does not equal happiness. [laughs]

(We’re now starting to get the evil eye from the PR woman)

GC: Just very quickly, is the Star Wars VR game here to play, today? [The PlayStation 4 one, not the HTC Vive one.]

PB: No, it’s not unfortunately.

GC: It shows DICE have been experimenting with VR, but I wonder whether you’ve done so in terms of Battlefield? Is that going to work with its style of fast movement?

PB: It makes it harder. I think that we will learn and see, as we explore more VR experiences. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s impossible or it fits perfect. We need to experiment and find the right balance.

GC: Okay, well I better go. But thanks very much, it’s always a pleasure.

PB: You too, that was very interesting.

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