Unless you've been completely off the internet in the past few days, you've likely come across the latest news from the FPS universe. On one side, we have Battlefield 1, the new installment from DICE and Electronic Arts inspired by the First World War. On the other, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare has completely embraced its futuristic style, even featuring space battles. In a matter of hours, Battlefield 1 was elevated to the level of "savior", while Infinite Warfare now holds one of the most hated trailers on YouTube. What's going on?
A Look Back at the Origins
Let's take a trip down memory lane: The first Battlefield, known as Battlefield 1942, was released in September 2002. To put that in perspective, Windows XP hadn't even been on the market for a year when players started making a beautiful mess with tanks and planes on virtual battlefields. A little over a year later, Call of Duty debuted, which many at the time saw as the "spiritual successor" to Medal of Honor, and which delivered (in my opinion) one of the best single-player campaigns ever seen in an FPS. Over a decade has passed since those original gems saw the light of day, and as expected, both Activision and Electronic Arts have gone to absurd lengths to squeeze every last dollar from both franchises. This year will be no exception, since in less than six months we'll see two new titles: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1. Let's start with "Infinite"...
Why the Internet Hates Infinite Warfare
If we imagine for a moment someone who has never touched the CoD saga and watches this trailer, they might find several points in its favor... but in just ten days it became the fourth most hated video on all of YouTube. Basically, it "surpassed" things like Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball" and PSY's "Gangnam Style", with the enormous difference that it only has 18 million views. The comment section on YouTube became, without too much effort, a storm of hatred, with accusations of wanting to imitate Star Wars, Halo, and Destiny, not to mention the super drama "Activision-Titanfall-Electronic Arts" with lawsuits for hundreds of millions of dollars that never happened thanks to various out-of-court agreements. Infinite Warfare will remain YouTube's favorite punching bag for several weeks, and one could throw dozens of reasons on the table to try to justify such concentrated contempt in such a short time, but I'm going to stick with one: Activision demands that players pay $80 for the Legacy Edition of Infinite Warfare, which includes the remastered version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which many players see as the franchise's crowning achievement. That said, let's move on to Battlefield 1:
Battlefield 1: Pressing the Right Buttons
The numbers say it all: There is much less content in the Battlefield 1 trailer. Its duration doesn't even reach half of the Infinite Warfare trailer, and even so, everything seems to indicate that it pressed the right buttons. Killing an enemy at the edge of a trench with a shovel? Horseback combat? Chemical weapons? Suddenly, that wild and primal profile seems much more attractive than fighting drones and robots (again). However, we are talking about Electronic Arts here. The Battlefield 1 trailer already suggests "playing it first" on Xbox One with an EA Access subscription, and in the case of the Windows version, I'm convinced it will be an exclusive title under Origin, not to mention DLCs, Deluxe editions, Season Passes, and all those horrible things EA must be planning.
In short, Call of Duty and Battlefield are at this point like Batman v Superman, or Michael Bay movies: deep down we know they're bad, but they always need a couple of "Caterpillars" to move the money they collect.
