Video Game / Battlefield V

War will never be the same.

Battlefield V is a First-Person Shooter in DICE's Battlefield series.

It follows on from its predecessor, Battlefield 1, and is set during World War II once again after Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 1943, and Battlefield Heroes previously covered that era. The development team placed emphasis on the campaign focusing on the "untold stories" of World War II. A battle-royale mode called "Firestorm" was also introduced into the game, featuring unique vehicles, level destruction and a literal ring of fire that slowly engulfs the play area until one team is left standing.

The game was released in November 2018. Several support & content patches were released, including maps set in the Pacific. EA announced the game's support would end in June 2020 with a minor content patch.

---

Tropes that apply to Battlefield V:

• Action Mom: Astrid in the Nordlys mission fights alongside her daughter against swarms of Nazis.
• Affably Evil: The Wehrmacht Lieutenant in Nordlys is genuinely trying to avoid any unpleasantness, though he's also willfully ignorant of the ultimate purpose of the heavy water the facility is protecting.
  • The Commander and the Driver in The Last Tiger are tired of the war and the broken illusion that there was a possibility of victory, and both ultimately attempt to surrender.
• Anachronism Stew: As with Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 1, several weapons and vehicles appear years before their adoption into the various armed forces.
  • Averted with the arm prosthetic shown in the game's reveal trailer that was criticized for being futuristic and sci-fi looking. Sure, it'd be outrageous to be able to operate a rifle during combat with the "space arm" but that was a period accurate arm prosthetic.
  • British Churchills (not to mention the idea of British forces fighting in Holland in 1940), German Tigers and even the rare Sturmtiger appear in multiplayer maps depicting the fall of Europe, which all takes place in 1939-1940. Said tanks appeared much later in the war.
  • Due to the diverse array of available firearms for use in multiplayer, inevitable anachronisms such as the StG-44 assault rifle and Panzerfaust anti-tank launchers appearing long before their adoption (or even their prototype phases) happen in maps like Narvik, Norway and the African Theatre (1940).
    • Out of time weapons like StG-44 and Panzerfaust appear in the campaign mode as well, with the majority of the campaign taking place before the prior weapons were introduced, but featuring heavily as weapon pick ups. "Under No Flag", set during 1942, features the Gewehr 43, which wouldn't be introduced for another year.
  • The German V-1 flying bomb and the Allied equivalent, the JB-2 Rocket appears as a Squad Reinforcement in multiplayer. While prototypes were being tested as far as 1942, the first actual use was in 1944, against London. Furthermore, V1 rockets had never been used in a tactical sense as depicted in-game (i.e. being called in by infantry), only in strategic long-range bombings and retaliatory strikes. The development of the American JB-1 was a response to the usage of the V-1, and had never been fired during the war.
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, World War I-era weapons such as the Winchester 1907^note Which is not even an inter-war civilian/law enforcement version, but the same French service select-fire variant featured in the previous game, Ribeyrolles M1918 Automatic Carbine, Mauser Selbstlader M1916 and Remington Model 8 Semi-Automatic rifles make appearances in the game despite being long since obsolete.
  • The gas mask on the "Dead Man's Hand" outfit is identical to the modern Chinese MF-22 gas mask on the PLA Engineer◊ in Battlefield 4.
  • The cosmetics for the Tides of War update show US soldiers wearing modern gear and body armor developed decades after World War II ended.
  • You can attach reflex sights to several different guns from both sides of the war. The first reflex sight for a small arm (not one meant for in a plane) was the Nydar, patented and released in late September of 1945, after the war was already over. It was meant for hunting shotguns, was quite expensive, somewhat fragile, and was never all that popular.
• And the Adventure Continues: In Under No Flag, after managing to hold off all the German forces with the subsequent aid of British reinforcements, the story ends with Billy and Mason heading off to their next mission in Greece.
• Anyone Can Die: Almost every single character you control in My Country Calling will die at the end of their respective segments. Müller and Kertz are the only exceptions, though until their confirmed appearance in The Last Tiger (which was added post-launch a month later), their fate at the end of their segment, where their tank is critically damaged followed by a Smash to Black, was unknown. The fate of the rest of their Panzer IV's crew, however, is still unknown.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Unlike in Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, where weapons in a class that used the same caliber all had the same damage numbers, with other factors such as rate-of-fire and handling statistics being used as balancing factors, same caliber weapons within the same class in this game can have wildly differing damage numbers.
  • The two SMGs chambered for the .45ACP round (M3 Grease Gun and M1928A1 Tommy Gun) have their damage numbers balanced around their differing rates of fire, meaning that the Grease Gun, even with its shorter barrel, does more damage than the Tommy Gun (Grease Gun does 33 - 12 damage, killing in 3 - 9 shots, while Tommy Gun does 25 - 10 damage, killing in 4 - 11 shots) simply because it fires slower.
  • Among all the sub-guns chambered for the 9x19 Parabellum round, there are two damage models for these weapons due to, once again, these weapons being balanced around their rates of fire despite all of the 9x19 sub-machine guns having similar barrel lengths. The two damage models are either a high-damage but short effective range (25 - 11, meaning 4 - 10 shots to kill), or a low-damage but longer effective range (20 - 13, killing in 5 - 8 shots). This also ignores the fact that the Beretta MAB 38 fires a hot-loaded version of the 9x19 round specifically made for the weapon,, which should allow it to do more damage, but it instead has the low-damage/long-range damage profile simply due to its slower rate of fire.
  • The Assault Class includes two semi-auto weapons (M1A1 Carbine and Volksturmgewhr) that are also featured alongside their select-fire counterparts (M2 Carbine and an experimental select-fire version of the aforementioned Volksturmgewhr). Once again, the semi-auto-only versions of each weapon do more damage, shot-for-shot, than their select-fire counterparts.
• Artistic License – History: During My Country Calling, one segment shows "Behind Enemy Lines at Kasserine Pass" in Algeria, 1942. In real life, the Battle of Kasserine Pass was in Tunisia in 1943. Fortunately, it was corrected in the patch, though they still got the year wrong.
  • Prior to that, we are briefly placed in control of a German Tiger I tank in North Africa in 1941. The Tiger I didn't enter production until August 1942.
  • With the exception of headgear and the Patriot greatcoat◊ (and its variants), none of the multiplayer British uniforms were British until the June 2020 added historically accurate uniforms for them; before, they are all American uniforms (some of which are not even from World War II, but from later conflicts like the Vietnam War)
  • The Stahlhelm worn by the Germans in the multiplayer◊ are not German at all, but the much smaller Hungarian M38 helmet.◊
• Ascended Meme: The "SANITAETER!" meme was referenced in a January 2019 Tides of War update.◊
• Battle Royale Game: "Firestorm" is your standard BR mode, featuring a literal ring of fire enclosing on the players. This game standouts from other examples of the genre with the ability to use vehicles and destroy most structures in the process.
• Bittersweet Ending: In Tiralleur, Deme and his unit manage to secure Chateau Vieux and is congratulated by the French Captain, having a photo with his the other French troops for future generations to see. However, Deme and his unit are erased from the photo and forgotten, despite his involvement in the operation. However it subverted to the fact that he is recounting his story in film to prove that his involvement is true, though he's still proud of it nevertheless.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Both Nordlys and The Last Tiger end with the fates of their respective main protagonists unknown. Solveig is last seen in German custody standing next to the U-boat when it explodes, leaving it unclear if she survived or not. Müller attempts to surrender to American forces when Schröder turns his gun on him. The screen turns to black and a gunshot is heard, leaving Müller's fate unknown.
• Book Ends: In a sense with its immediate predecessor. Battlefield 1 starts with a war story involving a British tank crew. The final campaign of Battlefield V flips perspectives and stars a German tank crew.
• Bottomless Magazines: A variation involving the FP-45 Liberator pistol. The reload animation has the player taking a cartridge out of a compartment in the grip. By default, the player spawns with only four spare rounds of ammo, but this trope comes into play when you pick up an ammo resupply, bringing up your supply to 50 bullets, which somehow manage to fit in the grip compartment.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Defied. After the negative fan reactions to Star Wars Battlefront II's loot boxes and the government investigations in Europe and Hawaii that attempted to classify them as gambling, the developers announced at E3 2018 that there will be no season passes or loot boxes in Battlefield V.
  • However, EA did allow early access to the game to those who have Origin subscriptions or preorders, giving them a 1-2 week headstart over those who would purchase the game normally.
• Character Customization: You can customize your character's appearance, sex, race (if the Allies) and outfit; which is individualized per class and faction. However, you cannot, for example, edit individual facial features: instead there are a number of preset characters you may choose from.
• Covers Always Lie: The main poster for this game shows a blonde woman soldier fighting, implying that she is one of the playable characters. Only, she is never seen in the actual game. However, she could be one of the playable first-person characters in the Prologue who ends up biting the dust very soon.
• Department of Redundancy Department: One of the weapons added during Tides of War is a Carcano M91 TS carbine with the M28 Trombocino grenade launcher affixed to the right side of the barrel. Its in-game name is M28 con Trombocino, meaning "M28 with Trombocino", implying that the grenade launcher is attached to itself.
• Don't Like? Don't Read!: EA's handling of the criticism on their actions with the game, which directly translated into the game failing to meet Q3 2018 sales expectations.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Müller from The Last Tiger makes an appearance in the North Africa portion of My Country Calling, where he and his tank are seen taking on a column of US tanks.
  • American soldiers, vehicles and even usable weaponry show up in The Last Tiger, foreshadowing their eventual inclusion in the multiplayer part of the game as part of the "Tides of War" rolling updates as the American faction.
• Easter Egg: The Wake Island remake contains a gramophone that plays the main Battlefield theme, though you'd have to search around the map for a vinyl record to go with the broken gramophone, aided by morse codes that turn out to be geographical coordinates of the real-life Wake Island. Everytime you successfully recover one vinyl, it will play the main theme from one of the previous Battlefield entries that featured the map. And what happens once you recover all of them? The crabs around the gramophone start dancing as an EDM rendition of the theme starts playing, referencing Noisestorm's popular "Crab Rave" track.
• The Enemy Weapons Are Better: Averted in the campaign in regards to the bolt-action rifles; the Allied Lee-Enfield has a much better rate of fire and double the clip size compared to the Axis Kar98k, while doing comparable damage. This is very much Truth in Television. Played straight with the STG 44 (the famous sturmgewehr assault rifle), which has better range and damage than submachine guns and better control than machine guns, which the Allies are mostly limited to (the closest Allied equivalent, the M1907, has a lower mag size and less control).
• Franken-vehicle: The eponymous tank of "The Last Tiger" is, notably, a mishmash of several different Tiger tank variants, namely having the turret of an early production Tiger and using the hull of a much newer late production example. Truth in Television, as the Germans actually created a number of these "new" frankenstein Tiger tanks to bolster their increasingly-depleted forces late in the war.
• Hate Sink: Schröder in The Last Tiger manages to be the most loathsome character in a Battlefield game. His blind devotion to Nazism endangers the entire tank crew and ultimately gets them all killed when they attempt to surrender.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Flamethrower soldiers in the single-player campaign resist headshots and can soak almost a full mag of MP40 submachine gun fire or half a mag of assault rifle fire before going down, though they can be taken out quickly by blowing up their fuel tanks or using higher-caliber automatic weapons; they're quite a bit rarer than they were in Battlefield 1, generally appearing in pairs and usually only showing up if you let the enemies trigger the alarm.
• Hopeless War: The Last Tiger. Set in the closing days of World War II, with Allied forces pushing into Germany. The German tank commander you play as and his crew react in different ways, from resigned acceptance to fanatical commitment to defend Germany until their dying breath.
• Improperly Placed Firearms: Just like Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 1, Battlefield V also has shades of this...
  • The Tiralleur you're controlling in the relevant section of My Country Calling, plus all the Tiralleur NPCs in the titular War Story are all wielding inappropriate weapons for their faction. You're using a scoped Kar98k in My Country Calling, and all the NPCs are seen with either the 98 or the Ross Rifle, despite neither of these two weapons ever being in service with the French. The more appropriate and contemporary MAS-36 is not in the game, and though the RSC-1917 is, they're not seen using it.
  • The American troops that you'll encounter in The Last Tiger wield M1928 Tommy Guns, even though they never fielded that particular model of it in combat, instead adopting the M1 and later the M1A1 models of it. Their use of the 1928 model in-game is simply because the proper modeled weapons weren't in the game when the story was being developed^note While more American weapon were added in Chapter 5 with the Pacific update, an M1A1 Thompson only made it as far as data that was mined, and not in a playable state, by the time of the final content update 6 months after. Additionally due to this, American Anti-Tanks carry Panzerfausts and Snipers carry Lee Enfield's for that exact same reason.
    • Vehicle-wise, they are also using T17E1 Staghound armored cars, which while American-designed were never actually used by the U.S. military, which instead adopted the M8 Greyhound.
• Joke Weapon: The FP-45 Liberator pistol in multiplayer; a crude, stamped metal single-shot .45 pistol intended in real life to be used by civilians as a disposable gun to kill a German and steal their gun. It's not quite as weak as the Kolibri from Battlefield 1, but is still noticeably weaker than the standard Colt .45, such that it requires multiple headshots to kill an enemy. Worst of all, it only holds 1 bullet and takes several seconds to reload.
• La Résistance: One of the war stories sees you playing as a Norwegian resistance fighter, trying to destroy a Nazi nuclear research facility in 1943.
• Level Editor: While prior Battlefield games have placed focus on environments that can be destroyed, Battlefield V now includes the option to create defensive obstacles and move normally static defenses (like anti-aircraft guns) by towing them across the battlefield. Depending on the game mode, this trope can be fully enforced.
• Mythology Gag: The campaign prologue begins at the end of the prologue for Battlefield 1: with the Harlem Hellfighter and the German Landser staring each other down, before revealing that moment was turned into a statue.
• Mildly Military: Was an extremely big deal during pre-release trailers and alpha footage, where soldiers would look more like insurgents or partisans instead of actual divisions of an army. Of course, this was due to randomized customization turned on during the alpha and eventually, the final build of the game had realistic looking soldiers.
• Missing Backblast: Averted with the M1 Bazooka. The backblast from it can and will incinerate anyone unlucky to be standing behind the person using it. Played straight with the Panzerfaust, though.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Tragically played straight in the case of the young and fanatically loyal Schroeder, who dismissed retreat as folly and led him to shoot Kertz and (possibly) Müller when both attempt to surrender.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Not that the Germans are heroic, but Schröder's blind fanaticism for the Nazi regime as a young, drafted and brainwashed soldier means that when the Americans try to force a surrender to the Tiger crew, he immediately starts firing rather than bother speaking. This results in them being surrounded, alone, in the midst of an occupied city surrounded by hostile American forces on every side. And the inevitable fall of the crew.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Averted; the many playable characters in the prologue include a Germany tank commander and a Luftwaffe pilot, and the final single-player campaign takes place on the German side and has you playing as the aforementioned tank commander and his Tiger tank towards the end of the fall of Germany. To top it off, your opponents in this chapter aren't even the usual Soviet soldiers, but straight-out American troops.
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: The single player campaign seems to make a large effort to avert this. Several of the levels are the standard "on-rails" levels ala Call of Duty or previous Battlefield campaigns, but each War Stories (other than "The Last Tiger") has 1 chapter based on the large desert level from "Nothing is Written" in Battlefield 1, taking place in a large open world map with multiple objectives in multiple enemy bases that can be tackled in any order.
• No Swastikas: Nazi and S.S. emblems are noticeably absent from all the German soldiers you fight, and the one soldier that screams "Heil Hitler!" at you during the first firefight in the game is the only person who ever mentions the German chancellor by name (he is sparingly referred to as "the Leader of Germany" elsewhere in the game). Most notably, the many Nazi flags flying over Cologne in "The Last Tiger" have an iron cross instead of a swastika, while the flag used to represent the German faction in the multiplayer mode uses the Balkenkreuz.
• Parachute in a Tree: A French paratrooper is seen stuck in a tree above a German encampment in "Tiralleur". It's implied the man drifted into the branches and was immediately shot.
• Politically Correct History: Aside from the mandatory No Swastikas, the multiplayer customization has shades of this. Characters of all races appear fighting side-by-side (at least in the Allies— the German side only has white characters) in a time where people were segregated into colored regiments and different units. Women (let alone women of color) are also seen fighting in the front lines in equal capacity and in uniform when historically the only notable female combatants in World War II were mobilized women in the Soviet Red Army, in the British Special Operations Executive and the various partisan forces in Europe.
  • Averted in the War Story "Tiralleur", where you play as one of two Senegalese brothers, fighting for France. They're confronted by the racism of the French people they're fighting and dying for, segregated from the white French troops, and fighting for an Empire that will continue to deny them their freedom until 1962.
  • Nordlys tries to portray the fight against the heavy water facility and what it produces as a fight against monsters so much that it seems to forget that there was a nation in the war that actually completed and used nuclear weapons against which all the criticisms made could also be used. Beyond that, it's retroactively applying a modern perspective - at the time, nuclear weapons were largely regarded as simply bigger bombs. Cities were being leveled every month by both sides.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: At the climax of Under No Flag, Mason and Bridger triumphantly play and sing along to John McCormack's recording of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"^note This recording also gets bonus points for being old enough to be in public domain too as the Nazi horde bears down on them.
• Regenerating Health: Played straight in singleplayer, but Averted in multi-player, where you regenerate a small amount of health passively, but need to apply bandages (which come in limited quantities) to completely heal your injuries.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Hartmann in The Last Tiger is already getting the shakes and barely able to even do his duty thanks to his extensive shell shock, but once Schröder all but forces Müller to send out Hartmann to scout for them, Hartmann probably takes this opportunity to ditch - the game is ambiguous on whether he actually deserted or just had to move and was unable to reach the tank in time. Too bad other German forces found him, killed him and hung him out for display. Müller is disturbed to say the least, Schröder brushes it off as being an idiot and a traitor to the cause.
• Seen It All: Müller and Kertz in The Last Tiger are clearly already tired, weathered by the war, and only doing their jobs because someone has to. Which leads to their attempts to surrender out of exhaustion and knowing it was a hopeless battle, only for Schröder, a young and impressionable drafted German soldier in their crew who has not seen the war at length, to promptly try to off them both for it.
• Scenery Gorn: The Devastation map is set in Rotterdam after the extensive Luftwaffe bombings of the city, leaving it in ruins. It could almost be a Battlefield 1 map.
• Shoot the Medic First: Enemy medics in the single-player campaign can revive downed enemies (even those that have been shot in the head with an anti-tank rifle), though this takes several seconds during which they're completely vulnerable.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: One of the campaigns. In The Last Tiger, the counterattack fails, the casualties the tank crew inflicts amount to nothing against the vastly superior number of enemies, they're left behind when the bridge is destroyed as the driver suggested in the first place and most tankers die by their own side's hands for actual or imagined desertion. The only real success consists of Müller destroying the secret documents in their overrun base, but as the war will be over within a few months, even that will mean nothing.
• Shown Their Work: The titular tank in "The Last Tiger" is an accurate representation of what some late-war Tiger I Heavy tanks looked like, in this case with late model hulls used alongside early production turrets, distinguishable by their steel road wheels and the drum-style commander's cupola.
• Sniper Scope Glint: Scoped rifles used by the recon class will produce a glint that makes them visible to enemies from a distance. In addition, sniper decoys also produce a similar effect, in order to bait enemies into attacking it and thinking it's the real deal.
• Taking You with Me: The game ends with a quote from Adolf Hitler, referred to only as "the Leader", vowing that if Germany is to burn it will take the entire world with it, to really emphasize the senselessness and insanity of the war.
• Tank Goodness: One of the bombs dropped about the single player war stories? That you'll be playing the commander of a German Tank crew during the final days of the Nazi Reich, fighting alongside drafted children. But you won't just be commanding any tank- you'll be driving a Tiger Tank.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Averted for the first time in a mainstream Battlefield single-player campaign (meaning not counting Hardline or Bad Company). Instead of being used to punctuate a particularly epic set piece, a distorted version of the Battlefield theme plays during the Tiger tank section in the prologue, and a very sad version of the theme plays at the very end of the game, at the end of "The Last Tiger".
• Throw-Away Guns:
  • The Panzerfaust, a recoilless anti-tank weapon where you just dispose the weapon away after firing. Justified that it is a low-cost, inexpensive weapon.
  • The Einstossflammenwerfer 46 compact flamethrower is a literal example of this trope, as Einstossflammenwerfer literally means "Throw-away flamethrower".
• Trading Bars for Stripes: Billy Bridger in "Under No Flag" was recruited by Special Boat Service, or SBS, who found his demolition experience as a reason to "volunteer" him on raids in North Africa.
• Translation Convention: Averted; all characters speak in their native language, with subtitles provided for the non-English speaking campaigns.
• Unique Enemy:
  • Less than a dozen flamethrower soldiers show up in the single-player campaign; even less if you get through without triggering alarms.
  • German soldiers wearing autumn camo uniforms only show up in "Tiralleur", and make up a small minority of the German troops there. Dialogue from Deme possibly suggests they're supposed to be Fallschirmjager troops, though in-game they don't seem noticeably different from the regular German assault soldiers in terms of skill or equipment.
• Universal Ammo: Unlike Battlefield 1, where enemies only dropped ammo for the specific weapon they were carrying, enemies in Battlefield 5 drop Universal Ammo and ammo supply caches can be found throughout the levels, meaning you can use any combination of guns you want throughout the level instead of having to frequently switch weapons because you run out of ammo.
• Unperson: At the end of "Tiralleur", Deme and his Tiralleur units are covered up from the picture.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: As like in Battlefield 1, many of the campaign and multiplayer levels are best regarded as historical fiction, which includes:
  • Nordlys stars a mother and daughter team sabotaging a Norwegian heavy water plant, in the end managing to destroy it by destroying the last submarine carrying a shipment of heavy water. The actual mission the war story was inspired by was carried out by an all-male team of Norwegian commandos from the Special Operations Executive. There was also no heavy water submarine destruction as shown in the game, it is believed to be based on an unrelated boat sinking that was done in a different area, and only connected to the mission because it was sunk for having heavy water.
    
    The ending to the campaign mentions the real-life historical mission and also mentions that many civilians died resisting the occupation with their deeds left unrecorded, implying the events of the campaign were something that could have happened and not been recorded in history.
  • The "Narvik" map shows the battle taking place in the village of Narvik while in reality it actually took place nearby. While the British were involved in the landings at Narvik, the majority of the troops involved were French or Norwegian.
    • Similarly "Panzerstorm" and "Rotterdam" (As well as "Devastation"), former two featuring British instead of French or Dutch troops respectively (with the corresponding Airborne Panzerstorm mission in Grand Operations taking place during the night when in reality it took place during the day), and the final third map is almost entirely fictitious, as only a few minor skirmishes occurred after the bombing.
• Villain Protagonist: You get to play on the German side (traditionally shown as enemies in most WWII titles) as a tank commander facing off against US forces pushing into the German Reich, in The Last Tiger. He's a decent man himself, but his own narration points out that decency doesn't count for much when you're still working for the bad guys.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Most detachable magazine-fed semi-auto rifles reload, by default, with a combination of stripper clips and loose ammo. Being able to reload by swapping the magazine requires selecting the relevant specialization on the weapon's spec tree. The Karabiner K31 bolt-action rifle also has a detachable mag that is fed by default either with a stripper clip or individual rounds, and requires a specialization to reload by swapping the magazine. Along the same lines is the Winchester 1897 Trench Gun, where it cannot be slam-fired by default (unlike in the previous game), if the relevant specialization isn't selected.

---