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One of my favourite bugs in Battlefield 4 - heck who knows, maybe it was a feature - was its stubborn insistence that I never see too far beyond the first mission of its campaign. Each and every time I logged off of a session, the save would be wiped no matter what precautions I took. Even as DICE moved to clean up the rest of the mess that surrounded the game's launch, that problem remained. Months after I'd bought the game, and after hours of enjoying its increasingly brilliant multiplayer, the single-player was still effectively unplayable. It's quite possible it was deliberate. Perhaps DICE was simply ashamed of another mediocre Battlefield campaign. Battlefield 1, though, feels different. There's been an emphasis on the multiplayer in pre-release run-up - as there should be, given that's where Battlefield's heart will always be - but that shouldn't obscure a campaign that's genuinely interesting: an anthology of different tales from across the Great War that can be digested in any order you see fit. It's five 90-minute campaigns, effectively, each with a very different focus: playing alongside Lawrence of Arabia, going up against the Ottoman Empire in the deserts of the Middle East; storming the beaches of Gallipoli as an Anzac runner; taking to the skies over the western front as a plucky British pilot.
Before they unlock, there's a short prologue that's a stirring statement of intent - to tell you what makes it work so well would be to rob it of so much of its power - and it shows that DICE is keen to tackle the Great War with a little thought and care. Tonally, it's reassuring, managing to be respectful and a refreshing alternative to the amped-up heroics that typify other first-person shooter campaigns. It's a more muted brand of heroism that Battlefield 1 strives for, and judging from the first of those war stories - Through Mud and Blood, a snapshot of the final days of the war, following a tank crew as they push on to the French town of Cambrai - it manages to do so.
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