A former DICE employee has apparently revealed that the next game that EA DICE puts out will be a World War 2 Battlefield game, hot on the heels of Battlefield 1, which took us to the trenches of the First World War. While we don’t know if it’s true, it’s an intriguing prospect.
The source of these rumors comes from the portfolio of a Swedish graphic artist by the name of Peter Hermanruda, who is currently employed at Bungie but up until May of last year was part of the DICE team. While he was there he worked on the Battlefield games, and worked on weapon models. One of his weapon models was a World War 2-era Russian gun, the PPSh-41.
While it’s nice that this was done while he was at DICE, that doesn’t mean that we’re getting a World War 2 Battlefield game. It could be something that he did in his spare time, or it could have been something that he did for a project that’s been abandoned by DICE. All the same, players can hope.
Battlefield 1 was probably one of DICE’s most successful games in a while, and came as a direct counterpart to Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which took the franchise farther into the future than it ever had before as players went to other planets in the solar system.
Battlefield 1’s numerous differences from a normal Battlefield game, including the addition of horses, swords, Leviathan superweapons, and more, made the game extremely popular, helped along by the steady stream of DLC releases that DICE put out for it to take us to other parts of the war, such as the Eastern Front, the Middle East, the oceans, and more.
It’s also been a very long time since DICE made a full World War 2 Battlefield game. The last one that they made that took place in that time period came out on PC and Mac OS back in 2002 as Battlefield 1942, and got two expansions before they moved on. But returning Battlefield to the Second World War might be the logical progression that the series makes in order to avoid looking like Call of Duty.
Back in 2009 DICE released Battlefield 1943, but that was solely an online shooter that only had three (later four) maps, and very little content otherwise. They also released the free-to-play shooter Battlefield Heroes, but like 1943 that was an online game, rather than being a full Battlefield title.
Sledgehammer Games making Call of Duty return to World War 2 allowed the game to sell huge numbers, despite how buggy it was on launch, so DICE might be imitating them in order to both go back to their roots and to get another smash hit on their hands. Of course, this is all rumor for now. We’ll have to wait for DICE to actually confirm we’re getting a World War 2 game before we can celebrate anything.
