Throughout yesterday’s Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal showcase, DICE producer Jeremy Chubb mentioned the studio needed to return to the “ambiance and grit that made Battlefield 3 and 4 iconic video games,” however “wanted to take that aesthetic to a wholly new stage.” Based mostly on the content material of the 23-minute presentation, it looks as if EA is measuring that new aesthetic top based mostly on a single metric: helicopter violence.
Whereas watching final week’s Battlefield 6 reveal trailer, I seen a tone shift that will proceed via the multiplayer occasion. I do not imply DICE’s historically extra sober army fetishization giving option to Name of Obligation-esque chest bumpery; that is a dialog for one more day. I am speaking about how Battlefield Studios has determined one of the best ways as an example the affect of digital warfare is to ensure the viewer is just ever seconds away from watching one other helicopter explode.
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Do not get me flawed, a downed helicopter is a robust picture. You get to observe one thing blow up, spin round all humorous, after which blow up once more. Across the third time I watched a Battlefield 6 dev calmly delivering their assigned advertising and marketing beats as a rotorcraft detonated in midair behind them, nonetheless, the helicopter loss of life toll began to really feel just a little absurd.
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So I went again and counted.
I tallied every helicopter shot down by shoulder-fired RPGs. At occasions, I superior frame-by-frame, ensuring I did not mess any second when helicopters had been felled by stationary anti-air emplacements, laser designator-guided missiles, and autocannon gunners driving aboard their chopper fellows.
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EA left no untaken alternative for helicopter destruction. As devs listed out class options and multiplayer modes, assault choppers had been despatched plummeting to earth within the backdrop behind them by tank shells and surface-to-air ordnance. Throughout the part detailing the brand new Portal choices, the cavalcade of rotorcraft carnage took a sharply surreal flip, as helicopters fell unbidden out of the air to tumble down levitating staircases and stretches of freeway.
At one level, a player-piloted jet flies in direction of a hoop of eight assault helicopters that each one explode in unison for no discernible purpose. I did not know I might really feel sympathy for a helicopter, however right here we’re.
In complete, through the roughly 22 minutes and 54 seconds period of the multiplayer showcase presentation, I counted 34 destroyed helicopters. That is roughly 1.476 helicopters exploded per minute.
(In case anybody decides to examine my work: I did depend the helicopter that we solely see struggling a doubtlessly survivable missile affect at 17:04 as destroyed. Nevertheless, I selected to solely depend one destruction when an assault helicopter is hit by a guided AA missile at 6:43 and the footage cuts to a shot of what is implied to be the identical helicopter falling right into a constructing and exploding, regardless of being fairly assured that these are separate areas of the map after watching the multiplayer livestream periods that adopted the showcase. So it evens out.)
Now, sure: it is army stuff exploding in a army sport. That is not stunning. However the frequency of helicopter casualties is wild. For comparability, I solely counted 19 tank kills—a 55% disparity. Simply two jets had been destroyed! Two! No one even is aware of the way to fly these!
It is such an overrepresentation of chopper-related violence that it is onerous to consider that somebody, someplace in EA’s advertising and marketing division, made the deliberate alternative that no rotorcraft be suffered to reside. For that particular person—whoever they’re, nonetheless personally wronged by helicopters they may be—I’ve only one query: When will it’s sufficient?
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