The next Battlefield game, Battlefield V, will be revealed on May 23, according to a teaser website set up by EA. The site’s URL contains the phrase “Never Be the Same,” and a portal to the upcoming live-stream event is available as well.
While not on the teaser site, the preview for the site (seen when posting a link to social media or in a messaging app) contained a watercolor of a white horse. While not a very informative clue, it is a lovely picture.
The story of how the site was found is pretty fascinating (via Polygon). For more than a year, Battlefield 1 players wondered how to get through a locked door in the basement of Fort Vaux, a multiplayer map from the They Shall Not Pass DLC. This month, some savvy players finally opened the door by breaking signs and flipping switches in an order that spelled out “isolement,” the French word for “isolation.” Inside, they were greeted by the horse picture.
Determined to find more in a room that seemingly held no tangible clues, they listened in on a dripping pipe overhead. As it turned out, the drips were Morse code. The message read, “ea.com/neverbethesame” — the teaser site.
We’ll have to wait until May 23 to know for sure the premise behind the next Battlefield, but a March report from Gamesbeat citing anonymous sources correctly claimed it would be called Battlefield V, and said it would be set in World War II.
A teaser video posted by Electronic Arts appears to confirm the World War II setting. A British flag is visible at the top of the screen for one team, while the Wehrmacht flag appears to be on the other side. The video contains a soldier with a large, old-fashioned pair of goggles on his head, all but guaranteeing the game will take place at some point in the past.
Shhh… not long now.
Tune in for the #Battlefield V reveal on May 23: https://t.co/kpTnOyxuxr pic.twitter.com/zzIwGi0Y1w— V (@Battlefield) May 21, 2018
Battlefield 1 took players to the First World War and achieved great critical and commercial success. It would make sense for EA Dice to head back to World War II with the series for the first time in nearly a decade, seeing as Call of Duty: WWII demonstrated that gamers are still interested in revisiting the well-trodden time period.
Many fans would probably like the next Battlefield to be a Bad Company title, the comedic subseries that has been dormant since 2010. Although rumors have cropped up over the years about a Bad Company revival, the Gamesbeat report stated that the rumors don’t hold any water.
The tagline “Never Be the Same” suggests that anything is possible, though. And perhaps EA will reveal something totally unexpected on May 23.
Updated on May 21, 2018 with new teaser video.
