During the recent reveal for Battlefield 1 EA and DICE showcased numerous moments of hand-to-hand combat, including the hilarious shovel-slap, but they never mentioned how the melee combat would be one of the key elements of gameplay.
This information comes from a recent interview Venturebeat did with Battlefield 1's Lead Designer Daniel Berlin where they discussed numerous aspects of gameplay, the team's decision making process, and most interestingly, the melee combat system and performance worries. Here's what Berlin had to say:
"GamesBeat: What can you talk about in regards melee combat, how that slots into all of this? That seems like it would be a focus with trench warfare.
Berlin: That was definitely a focus for us. It was a big part of the era, that mix between powder-based weapons and hand-to-hand combat. It was important for us to lift the importance of hand-to-hand combat, and also the depth and meaning of what weapon you choose or what types of gameplay you want to focus on. I can’t go into detail on how the new system works, but we did mention the bayonet charge. That’s a very powerful melee skill.
GamesBeat: Battlefield 4 had a very rocky launch. What are you doing to ensure that’s not going to happen again?
Berlin: It’s a focus for us. We know it was a difficult launch. We’ve been working on this for a long time. We released Battlefront, which did really well. We’re pushing an open beta to ensure stability. We’ve taken a lot of learnings from that experience, and we feel like we succeeded with Battlefront. We’ll take everything we learned there and apply it to Battlefield One as well."
That little comment at the end of the quote might seem insignificant now, but if you were around during the spectacular disaster that was the Battlefield 4's launch week you would understand how important it is for EA/DICE to state plain and clear that they are making performance an important focus for them. Battlefront ended up being quite alright, so hopefully BF1 manages to do so as well.
If you're interested in more information on Battlefield 1, or just find yourself curious about how the team operates, I would recommend you give the entire interview a read, there's some intriguing stuff in there.
