DICE’s big Battlefield 5 announcement isn’t until 9pm this evening UK time, so there’s still plenty of time to try and get ahead of the curve and predict what’s coming.
There was last night’s very brief video tease, of course – but that didn’t really give anything away. What’s more intriguing is this tweet from ex-Battlefield exec Ben Cousins.
In the run up to DICE’s BF5 announcement today – why not do some random reading? https://t.co/KTI3l1qZak
— Ben Cousins (@BenjaminCousins) May 6, 2016
The tweet links to PC World War 1-era shooter Codename Eagle. That game was, interestingly enough, developed by Refraction Games, who later merged with DICE and developed Battlefield 1942.
Codename Eagle (you can watch a trailer here) was set in an alternate timeline, centered around events in Petrograd, Russia in 1917.
Could DICE be taking inspiration from the idea of an alternate timeline to create a World War 1 game with an unexpected twist? This tweet from Battlefield INTEL certainly backs it up.
World War 1 with a twist
— Battlefront II INTEL (@bravoINTEL) May 5, 2016
Alone, I’ll admit that neither post would have much validity – but together? Things just got a lot more intriguing. Then there’s the fact that DICE are confident “nobody will expect tonight’s” announcement.
This could be read in a number of ways, but if we consider that Battlefield has never visited WWI before, and that it would be the exact opposite of what their rivals at Call of Duty are doing right now, and that the mysterious notion of a “twist” could easily be something left field, then I’d say WWI looks more likely still.
If we go back a few months, Gamerant disovered a listing from German retailer World of Games which described Battlefield 5 as as a “Mehrspieler Taktik Shooter im 1. Weltkrieg” which translates to World War 1 tactical shooter.
The release date was also posted on the listing as October 24, 2016, which fits in with the rough release window EA announced for the game back in March (between September and December 2016).
Then we have this intriguing little nugget of evidence, which I assume refers to zeppelins – surely this all but confirms things?
The majority of what I’ve been able to rustle up certainly points to a WWI setting, but as was recently proved with the debunking of the Eastern Front rumour, we should take everything with a grain of salt until 9pm tonight.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.