![]() ![]() After each failed advance, we suddenly had to defend our gains as the other team went back on the attack. By our second or third offensive attempt, the opposing team knew every angle we were going to come from, and went about dismantling our attacks in a coolly workmanlike way. We were attacking into just such a network. It takes a while and you’ll rarely see them in a more dynamic match, but some of the fortification networks you can build are truly impressive in how they transform the battlefield. Suddenly our team’s bomb-blasted stable and riverside cottage were stoutly-defended fortresses. But while most of the team was off doing that, there was always a squad or two hanging back and rebuilding sandbag walls, firing-steps, barbed wire, and trench lines. Which meant that the groups of three, four, or a half-dozen troops trying to sneak across this river would inevitably get spotted, and then they’d all get machine-gunned in that swamp. You don’t have to stick with your squad, but you do need a squad, and that means that Battlefield V is a game where people succeed or fail as groups. ![]() Meanwhile, the assault class has more explosives and easy-to-use anti-tank weapons than anyone else, meaning that they’re essential for storming any defended enemy position, but they need all-of-the-above from their teammates. ![]() You never really know what’s going on with their help. The recon class lifts the fog of war and provides the kind of invaluable spotting information that you could take for granted in most previous Battlefield games. Death comes so quickly and so frequently that all but perhaps the most talented and elusive recon snipers will need to call for the medic. Nobody carries enough extra ammo to operate for long without the support class’s extra ammunition. In terms of both the weapons available to each class and the ways their class abilities interact, players are more dependent than ever before on having a decent mix of teammates nearby. The game won’t really allow people to wander off as lone-wolves anymore. That’s not quite how Battlefield V works, however. Whichever team is the first to snap out of this ennui will usually carry the day. What normally happens in this kind of stalemate is that more and more players start fanning out across the map with scoped rifles and machine guns, trying to break the stalemate via opportunistic sniping while inevitably causing it to get worse. Not that anyone was faring any better with other crossing points. In this case, our team was basically living the combat engineer’s nightmare as groups of players tried to put up a new bridge, while getting slaughtered in droves. ![]() This sort of changeable terrain, and the fact that you can build fortifications and obstacles around most key points on each map, is a new addition with Battlefield V. But infantry needed to hold it because the central span could be destroyed, and in order for our rickety little tank to cross, we needed people to walk up, get out their tools, and replace the broken part of the bridge with an improvised structure. The bridge itself was swept by machine gun fire. The minute we started pushing across the river, we were trapped in a series of shooting galleries. The last enemy strongpoint was just on the other side, one of those fortress-like French farms with an interior courtyard surrounded by stone buildings and walls. Until we came to that fucking Roman bridge. Everyone’s K/D ratios soared as the enemy reeled. My team of British troops just ripped through one layer of defenses after another. And for the first 15 minutes of the match, that seemed gratuitous. The time limit for this map was something absurd, like 75 minutes. It probably generates the most set-piece battles in the game thanks to the way it moves across a set progression of objectives, as opposed the more free-form Domination and Conquest modes, which are simply about holding more control points than the enemy. This was a Frontlines match, a game mode that’s all about sustaining offensive momentum or breaking it. It’s an open-field battle fought in and around a series of farms around a wide, marshy river that is crossed in the north by an elevated steel suspension bridge, and an old Roman-style stone bridge in the south. Around two in the morning, a day or so before the game’s official launch, I was playing my “last match of the night” on a map called Twisted Steel, one of the real gems of this new game. ![]()
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