DICE, the company that said how they'll keep looking at World War II through their lens stated that they've had great fun while creating the singleplayer, exploring fictional stories in realistic settings that could've easily happened.
In a recent interview, design director of Battlefield V War Stories Eric Holmes explained how DICE went about the task, claiming that it had a lot to do with the company's takeaways from Battlefield 1. "We could tell very different things", he said and added that it gave them different brushes and fantasies to play with.
The shorter format of stories also meant that Battlefield V's creative team can go all out, since there's no concern over bringing back fan favourites. "You can kill those characters. They can have worthy deaths", Holmes pointed out.
Apparently, DICE had a lengthy list of more than 70 ideas for Battlefield V's War Stories at one point, reducing the selection to the final four along the way. "Literally, at one point, we had two French stories in there. How did we get here? So one of them killed the other one and became the strong French story", Holmes said.
Asked how historical would Nordlys then be, which is Battlefield V's story about a female Norwegian freedom fighter, Holmes stressed that all of the stories "have a bedrock of truth underneath them". The fact that they didn't happen doesn't concern Holmes a lot because as he said, "they could've happened".
Ironically enough, Holmes said that creating World War II stories turned him into a history buff that's regularly indulging in Wikipedia binges and buying collections of books. We're not exactly sure what historical opportunity endowed the youthful protagonist of Nordlys with the superhuman strength to into tables with ease, but we'd love to find out.
EA
Holmes once again reiterated that female protagonists in Battlefield V are here to stay, citing an example of a female DICE employee complimenting him for the mother-daughter story. Interestingly, EA's former chief design officer Patrick Soderlund also mentioned at the time that his daughter's enquiries only strengthened his resolve in this respect.
As endearing as this may be, it is becoming a very concerning pattern, because you shouldn't take your work home and vice versa. You especially shouldn't use it as an argument for butchering history and bullying your players, giving them either-or ultimatums, but hey - I guess we don't matter anymore. Thankfully, Battlefield V's showed just how much we don't matter.
