15 minutes of Battlefield 1 alpha gameplay
Bolt action rifles. Biplanes. Zeppelins? Thanks to a century-old war, Battlefield 1 feels fresh.
We recently had a chance to jump into Battlefield 1's rendition of World War I and capture a few matches of the returning Conquest mode. Above is a compilation of raw gameplay from our matches trying out a variety of Battlefield 1's weapons, from bolt action rifles to machine guns.
From our brief time with the game, it felt like combat will often take place at closer distances than in the recent modern Battlefield—or, at least, if you plan to land a rifle shot from a sniper perch, you're really going to have to learn to lead your target. The early automatic weapons featured in the game aren't quite as immediately deadly as Battlefield 4's arsenal. Vehicles, like early tanks and armored cars, are also a blast and a quirky departure from the newer games.
Watch the gameplay above and you may notice what we did—despite taking place in World War I, Battlefield doesn't look or feel far removed from a World War II shooter on the ground. Get into the air with biplanes and zeppelins, though, and that changes.
We'll have more video and impressions from Battlefield 1 in the near future.
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Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.
When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).