STACK #169 Nov 2018

GAMES

FEATURE

All the accents are native according to their geographical position – if a level is set in Norway and features local characters, they will speak Norwegian. These are, of course, subtitled. For the Special Boat Service War Story, the dev team sought inspiration from Guy Ritchie’s Snatch and George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road . Alongside Das Boot , Black Hawk Down was used as reference for the German The Last Tiger War Story. Further Facts on War Stories

“Then you go to somewhere like Omaha Beach and that gets a no straight away, because we’ve all been there. Back in the day, the Second World War was almost an annual thing in gaming, so we tried to do one of two things: either come up with an entire new image that [gamers] hadn’t seen – like we have for the Norway setting – or take something that already exists and try to subvert it. An example of this is: Have we seen urban combat in WW2 before? Yes, we have. Have we played as the Germans in that setting – is there something to do there? Suddenly it’s like – now I’m interested, because that is fresh.” You’ve undoubtedly heard already that you can play one of the War Stories, entitled The Last Tiger , as a German tank commander in the final throes of the

eyes to a little bit of what it would be like to be there. “ Das Boot [1981] was our big touchstone here, and we pointed to that film a lot during the development of how it needed to be framed. Although the crew of the U-Boat didn’t all get on or agree why they were there, they had to work with each other in order to survive. “But we’re definitely not painting the cream-gloved 'good German' here either. This is certainly a bit more of a confrontation of their beliefs and what they’ve done, and what they now reap as a result of that.” During the initial presentation, Holmes highlighted a pillar of the game he was keen to emphasise: play your way. This was indeed evident through the stages available at the event, where all the objectives could be approached in a multitude of different ways. Come across an enemy patrol on the way to a mission brief? Simple: just move out to the flank and keep on going until you circumvent the threat. Up for a gunfight? You can light up the combat zone too, but the resulting reinforcements called to your area will make it tough going. War Stories is an interesting approach to single-player. It worked well in BF1 and

• Battlefield V is out Nov 20

war, fighting to stay alive in the Rhineland. Although this was a locked level through our playthrough, it’s an intriguing juxtaposition and an audacious move that obviously has the potential to offend. Holmes is quick to assert that this level in no way glorifies the German role in the conflict. “I think when people hear we’re doing a German-themed War

This isn't about killing Hitler. It's

appears to be on track to score runs in BFV . The individual stories of struggle and triumph are told with profound conviction. DICE still perceives a value to single-player by delivering, even despite the early code here, an emotionally moving experience with tone and style aplomb. “We don’t look at it as, 'We need a single- player mode.' We look at it as, 'Are players' needs met by what we give them,'" Holmes says at the conclusion of our interview. “I think that when players saw BF1 it was fresh; it felt like I hadn’t been there before and that’s what made it interesting. That was kind of the challenge for us this time: we had to go to World War II, which has been very much explored in the past, but get that same result – that same feeling of 'We haven’t been there before and we haven’t done that before.'”

about individuals and their own struggles in this epic conflict

Story they’ll be quick to leap to assume what it is, and they’ll assume they won’t like it,” suggests Holmes. “But once they play it, I think their worries will be removed when they realise that it’s not pro-German. It’s not glorifying them. It’s not re-writing history or glamourising them in any way, but it’s something that I think will make players feel something pretty intensely, and open their

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