Battlefield V came out with a brand new trailer today. It focused on Chapter 4 of the ever expanding World War II game that came out at the end of last year. It’s flashy. It’s splashy. You get five new maps and they meet the eye test. They look pretty good. They are also in several parts of the world, you get some desert eye candy and some Europe eye candy. It all looks like Battlefield is supposed to look.

Then, bam, you get the whammy in your face. Wallah! At the end is the surprise. “Operation Underground” comes in October, which looks very similar to Operation Metro. Hell. Who are we kidding. It is going to be Operation Metro – World War II style.

But is this going to save BFV? Can these maps bring back the popularity or should I say make it popular because it seems it was never quite popular to begin with? I’ve looked for statistical information regarding active players on BFV right now, but EA or Dice is not sharing that information. What I have found is post after post of people saying that the popularity of past BF titles doesn’t seem to be there. I can even go to my friend’s list on my Xbox and take a look. As a Battlefield fanboy, most of those who are on my list are associated with Battlefield. But, for months, most of those same friends who are Battlefield fan boys aren’t playing it themselves.

There’s been a lot of mistakes made over the last several months trying to get this shell of a game into something resembling a game.

They’ve already made two mistakes in my mind before these five new maps even launch. First, as I watched the names of the maps go by on screen, I noticed something. I had no clue what these places were. Once again, Dice is shoving their secret history of World War II down players throats. That’s fine. I’m okay with playing on some maps of battles I hadn’t heard about before. But throw a dog a bone once in awhile. I know some of the fan base hated BF1. One reason I loved it so much, frankly, was being able to play on maps of the battles I grew up reading. I got to experience the Seine, Argonne Forest and Verdun. So far in BFV? Not much in the historical aspect. Two of the maps being included, I’m already wondering the historical accuracy. This chapter, from what I can tell, is supposed to be in the 1940 to 1941 range. Provence I looked up and is a city in southern France. The only battle I found was Operation Dragoon when the allies invaded south France in 1944, years after what I thought was supposed to be the range of this chapter. Al Sundan appears to be just some generic fancy way of saying any battle that happened in the sub Sahara desert. Lafoten Islands is based upon what I have researched to be two different raids in Norway. Which raid, I don’t know, maybe they don’t know.

So the last failure in my opinion.

This is going to be unpopular. It is what it is.

Bringing back Metro.

That’s desperation. That’s not tactical, strategic or anything. Everyone will be talking about bringing back Metro, and it will drive people back to the game to play it. But no one has been pressing them to bring any old maps back. I don’t think that’s the number one request for Battlefield fans. It’s cool. It’s trendy. But, they should have been and should be making better maps that people want to play and that will become legends in their own time. They shouldn’t be bringing back a Metro knockoff. They should be creating something new and exciting that will become legendary in its own time. A map that BF players years from now will say “Bring that back.”

But, they’ve yet to done that with any of this game so far. They just keep playing musical chairs hoping one of their slick ideas will find a spot. It really hasn’t.

I’ll play over the next few months. But, I am skeptical. EA and Dice have a hill to climb to get me back as an active player like I once was just a year ago.

And it’s a damn shame.