It’s one of the year’s most eagerly anticipated games, but Battlefield V has caused quite a bit of controversy already.
Actually, it seems many viewers couldn’t help but notice that the game’s announcement trailer featured one female character prominently, and that said female character also had a prosthetic arm.
This led to a backlash against the game led by irate users on forum websites like Reddit, where some have complained against the game’s supposed historical inaccuracy.
The fact, though, is that there were plenty of female fighters in World War 2 (the game’s setting) even if truthfully they were only a minority amongst the scores of men who fought in the conflict, but still played their role in the war nonetheless.
“Battlefield V is a lot about the unseen, the untold, the unplayed”, said EA’s chief creative officer Patrick Soderlund in an interview with Gamasutra (via PC Gamer). “Today gaming is gender-diverse, like it hasn’t been before. There are a lot of female people who want to play, and male players who want to play as a badass [woman]”, added the EA exec.
And it’s clear that there were quite a few badass women in World War 2. An example of such a woman is Russian sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, with more than 300 confirmed kills to her credit, she was as deadly a sniper as they come…
This has not prevented people from raving against the way the game supposedly sacrifices historical accuracy in the name of political correctness though. Actually, things have gotten so out of control that moderators on Reddit have ended up banning posts about the game’s historical accuracy, with one of them saying “it’s a game, not a history book”.
Meanwhile, Patrick Soderlund was also blunt in the Gamasutra interview regarding this hotly-debated issue, stating that fans could refrain from purchasing the game if they were so upset by this whole matter. “I think those people who don’t understand it, well, you have two choices: either accept it or don’t buy the game”, Soderlund said.
What matters in the end, though, is that Battlefield V ends up being a great game to play, and even if it’s not one hundred percent true to history, can still be enjoyed by the legions of Battlefield fans out there. Here’s hoping then, that this next entry in the long-running military shooter series lives up to the hype, something we’ll find out when Battlefield V releases this fall.
Note: Battlefield V will be released on October 11, 2018. Available on PS4, Xbox One and PC.