Battlefield 1

Battlefield 1 is a 2016 first-person shooter developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts (EA). Released in October 2016 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, it represented a massive, incredibly risky pivot for the franchise. At a time when the entire industry (including its direct rival, Call of Duty) was pushing further into futuristic, sci-fi warfare, DICE took the series back in time to the mud and blood of World War I. Propelled by arguably the greatest reveal trailer in video game history (set to a remix of “Seven Nation Army”), the game was a monumental critical and commercial success, selling over 25 million copies and frequently being cited as the most atmospheric shooter ever made.

Core Story

Realizing that the global scale of “The Great War” could not be captured through the eyes of a single soldier, DICE abandoned the traditional linear campaign. Instead, they introduced War Stories, an anthology of shorter, highly emotional vignettes focusing on different fronts and diverse protagonists:

• Storm of Steel (Prologue): One of the most harrowing openings in gaming. You play as the Harlem Hellfighters attempting to hold a line. Whenever you die, the game doesn’t reload a checkpoint; instead, the camera pans up, displaying the name and birth/death year of the soldier you just lost, before seamlessly snapping you into the perspective of another doomed soldier on the battlefield.
• Through Mud and Blood: Follows a British Mark V tank crew pushing through the French countryside.
• Friends in High Places: Puts you in the cockpit with a rogue American pilot flying for the British Royal Flying Corps.
• Avanti Savoia!: Follows an Italian Arditi shock trooper fighting in the heavily armored, vertical peaks of the Alps.
• The Runner: An ANZAC message runner desperately trying to save a younger soldier during the tragic Gallipoli campaign.
• Nothing is Written: You play as a Bedouin rebel fighting alongside the legendary T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) to cripple the Ottoman Empire’s armored trains.

Gameplay and Features

Battlefield 1 utilized the Frostbite engine to create a terrifyingly immersive, visceral, and gritty multiplayer sandbox that leaned heavily into the brutal realities of early 20th-century warfare:

• Operations Mode: Arguably the greatest addition to the franchise in a decade. These were massive, multi-map, narrative-driven 64-player battles. An attacking team had to push across historical sectors, complete with whistle-blows when a trench was taken and desperate, echoing screams as defenders retreated to the next line.
• Behemoths: To prevent matches from becoming complete blowouts, the game granted the losing team a massive, player-controlled super-weapon halfway through the match. These included a massive Airship L30 (Zeppelin) raining death from above, a heavily armored Dreadnought battleship, or a devastating Armored Train. Watching a flaming Zeppelin slowly collapse out of the sky and crush an entire village on the map below remains one of gaming’s greatest visual spectacles.
• Elite Classes: Instead of picking up standard weapon drops, players could find wooden crates on the map that transformed them into heavily armored juggernauts—like the dual-SMG-wielding Sentry, the Flame Trooper, or the Tank Hunter equipped with an anti-materiel rifle.
• Visceral Combat: The gameplay was remarkably physical. Players could affix bayonets to their rifles for terrifying, screaming melee charges. Furthermore, mustard gas grenades were highly prominent; if you threw a gas mask on to survive, your vision was severely restricted and you could no longer aim down the sights of your weapon, forcing frantic hip-fire combat.

Expansions and Premium

The game continued the traditional Premium Pass model, delivering four massive, incredibly rich historical expansions:

• They Shall Not Pass: Brought the French Army into the fight, focusing on the claustrophobic inferno of Fort de Vaux and the massive tank assaults of Soissons. Introduced the terrifying Char 2C super-heavy tank Behemoth.
• In the Name of the Tsar: Focused on the Russian Empire’s frozen fronts, introducing the massive Ilya-Muromets heavy bomber, the legendary Women’s Battalion of Death, and snow-swept cavalry charges.
• Turning Tides: Focused heavily on amphibious warfare, allowing players to storm the beaches of Gallipoli or engage in the massive naval clashes of the Zeebrugge Raid, introducing the C-Class Airship.
• Apocalypse: The darkest expansion, focusing on the most infamous, meat-grinder battles of the war. Maps like Passchendaele and Somme were apocalyptic wastelands of poisonous green gas, ruined forests, and endless mud.

The Current Landscape

As of 2026, Battlefield 1 remains incredibly beloved. While the massive player populations have naturally shrunk over the last decade, it still maintains a fiercely dedicated, highly active community on PC, PS4/PS5, and Xbox. Because subsequent entries in the franchise (Battlefield V and Battlefield 2042) had highly controversial launches and took different artistic directions, many purists actively returned to BF1, viewing it as the absolute peak of DICE’s audio-visual design.

Quick Note

Battlefield 1 is a masterpiece of historical atmosphere. It successfully took a war often considered too static and depressing to make a fun video game about, and turned it into an explosive, terrifying, and deeply respectful cinematic experience.

In short: From the deafening whistle of incoming artillery to the claustrophobic panic of putting on a gas mask in a trench, Battlefield 1 is an absolute triumph of immersive game design that arguably has not been topped since its release.