Battlefield 5 Dev Talks About The Importance Of Single-Player

There has been chatter about the so-called death of single-player games, and while this is surely overstated, a shift toward multiplayer is absolutely happening in some franchises. The Battlefield franchise, which is developed by EA's DICE studio in Sweden, is bringing back the much-loved War Stories single-player campaign from Battlefield 1 for the new Battlefield V. I recently had the chance to sit down with War Stories director Eric Holmes, who spoke about DICE's belief in single-player as a means to allow players to have a more emotional connection to the game.

Holmes wouldn't be drawn into discussing Call of Duty's decision to forgo a traditional campaign, telling me that's a question better suited for Activision. But for Battlefield, Holmes said single-player is necessary to help players feel the emotion of battle.

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"I think there are lots of things that single-player does for Battlefield. It adds texture to the world in the way that you ... you can't really have a moving, informative experience in multiplayer," he said. "You can have adrenaline and you can have action and you can have friendship with your friends and you can make bad jokes and laugh and annoy people. There's energy in that. But there's not much emotion.

"People who have played War Stories; I've seen people cry. And I've never had that in any of my games before I started working on Battlefield," Holmes explained. "There is a 'feeling' quality to it, which really only lives there. I don't think it's because of a shortcoming of multiplayer; I think it's just a different thing."

Battlefield V's War Stories campaigns--which include Nordlys, Under No Flag, Tirailleur, and The Last Tiger, as well as a prologue--aim to tell untold or forgotten World War 2 stories. Don't expect to see D-Day or other well-known battles. And don't expect to play as a hero who single-handedly kills Hitler and wins the war. No, Battlefield V's War Stories aim to tell stories of human beings having personal problems during World War II.

The Last Tiger sees you playing as a Nazi tank crew fighting against Americans. Holmes said he expects this mission to be controversial for obvious reasons, but he stressed that DICE is handling the telling of this story in a measured way that might surprise you in the end.

"The obvious worry people have is, 'Are you telling something that is supporting the ideology of these people?' And the answer is absolutely not. We are telling a story about human beings caught in this fight," Holmes said. Working on this story was like handling Nitroglicerin, Holmes said. "If you touch it wrong it'll blow up," he said.

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Like any good piece of entertainment, The Last Tiger will have subtext. One character in the story is a young recruit who believes what he is told; other members who have served longer and been affected by the war in different ways have a different take. The interplay and dialogue between the crew members will be at the heart of the story. And everyone knows how it ends. While the Tiger tank is the biggest and deadliest in the war, the Americans eventually prevail.

The Nordlys War Story follows a daughter attempting to rescue her mother from a Nazi research facility in Norway. Under No Flag follows the British Special Boat Service, while Tirailleru tells the story of a West African army who fought for the French.

Battlefield V also of course has its standard multiplayer mode, while a 64-player battle royale mode called Firestorm is also included The game launches on November 20, but you can play it a little early with EA Access.