--- title: Time Plays: Battlefield 1 | TIME description: Matt Peckham plays Battlefield 1 canonical: https://time.com/video/1vl08LNU/ og:title: Time Plays: Battlefield 1 og:description: Matt Peckham plays Battlefield 1 og:url: https://time.com/video/1vl08LNU/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1vl08LNU/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Time Plays: Battlefield 1 twitter:description: Matt Peckham plays Battlefield 1 twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1vl08LNU/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Time Plays: Battlefield 1 > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Time Plays: Battlefield 1 [Watch (HLS stream): Time Plays: Battlefield 1](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1vl08LNU.m3u8) (5:50)  _Published 2016-10-17. Matt Peckham plays Battlefield 1_ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:59 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Battlefield 1 Official Gamescom Gameplay Trailer](/video/prs7lbdM/) ### Battlefield 1 Official Gamescom Gameplay Trailer [Battlefield 1 Official Reveal Trailer](/video/7yABlsFb/) ### Battlefield 1 Official Reveal Trailer [E3 Interview: Battlefield Hardline](/video/3IbQTdLr/) ### E3 Interview: Battlefield Hardline --- ## Transcript Welcome to another episode of Time Plays. I'm Matt Peckham, Time Magazines's games critic and today I'm going to be walking through a bit of a game called, Battlefield One. That's one as in the number one as in the actual integer which is a little strange to put a number one after your game title but It makes sense because Battlefield 1 is a game that is set entirely during World War I, and then also dovetails with the idea that this is developer EA DICE rebooting the series, a series that started years and years ago with a game called Battlefield 1942 set during World War II but that has since gotten progressively more and more modern. It is still nonetheless, a battlefield game in that it's about land, sea and air forces all coming together in these massive, beautiful, dynamic environments. Slugging it out for control of map objectives. What's different is that the game is a little slower than prior installments. Not enough Negative way actually and a positive way. With the modern installments the pace at which combat occurred, the speed at which events played out could sometimes be so fast and so chaotic, that it could be alienating for all but the hardest core battlefield players. By taking all of the guns, and gadgets, and vehicles, and back shifting all the way to the early part of the 20th century, they've laid the technological foundation for combat scenarios where people are able to pay better attention to what's going on around them. Take vehicles like this British Sopwith plane that you're looking at here. This is a plane that's made largely out of plywood and fabric. And so it's gonna move very slow, and open up the kind of tactical latitude that you need to actually dogfight. Or, take this British Mark V tank. What you're seeing right now is its top speed. It can't go any faster. It's very slow. It's also therefore very vulnerable. So you're having to think about things like cover and elevation. You have to hide and be careful. You need to protect your sides and your rear. Which is a classic tank thing and then things that in other games where the environments weren't really fully destructible that you could take for granted are really and truly not safe zones here. If you are behind what looks like a fortified concrete wall, all it takes is a well placed artillery shot, or a mortar shot, that will take that down and then you are vulnerable. Another thing that's interesting about Battlefield I is that unlike prior Battlefields that had a continuous story, Battlefield I breaks up its offline campaign mode into what it calls war stories, which are like an anthology of war- related vignettes. Each of these stories offers a unique problem to solve or a narrative perspective. So, say for instance a bickering tank crew that's lost behind enemy lines during the Battle of Cambrai, which is what I'm showing you a little of here. The writing during these sequences is definitely some of the best that we've seen in the Battlefield series and that is to the game's credit. Just be aware that we're still talking at a cinematic level anyway about a Justin Lin or Michael Bay level of narrative seriousness. And I only mention that because games have this reputation for telling such bad stories generally speaking that when somebody comes along and tries to up their game a little bit, I think sometimes we can overreact or react disproportionately and give the game more of a pass than it deserves. And it's important to note that a farewell to arms, Battlefield One is not [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Like any other battlefield, multi player is where players will eventually entrench, and this is where they will obsess over soldierly performance statistics and unlockables once they've cleared the campaign and rounded up its collectibles. Most of the online militant Battlefield One we've seen before from conquests, 64 players jockeying to hold objectives across prodigious battlefields To dominations close quarters infantry skirmishes. Of all the new modes the easy keeper is operations. It's a smart rethink of conquests all out land, sea, air battles and it gathers multiple maps into these sprawling round based tug of wars that are framed by historical scenarios. Here, Battlefield 1's less precise weaponry and its slower moving vehicles really work to the game's advantage. Modulating the havoc of platoon scale battles by increasing the reaction times that you have as a player and slowing things down in general. I don't mean that there's any kind of equalizing thing going on here. I mean, if you're not practicing like some of the adepts, you're not gonna do well in these matches. But it does scale back the sense that you're playing a game in which the outcomes tend to feel more pathologically precision driven. The last thing that I should add is that it's become vogue to criticize shooters as merely glamorizing violence. Well I'm sympathetic to that concern just based on the kinds of things that I see and do in a game like Battlefield One, I think we need to be very careful about tarring these games with words like unethical absent real tangible evidence of negative behavioral impact. Now, Battlefield One definitely is not interested in adding Ruminative ballast to any of the points that it's making, or rather not making about war. But given what it's so deftly up to or, if you will, not up to, I don't think there's anything shameful about In that. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Halfway there, the enemy has the upper hand. 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