Battlefield 1‘s upcoming DLC In The Name Of The Tsar will open up the Eastern Front with the addition of the Russian Army. In doing so, it will bring an underrepresented group to the battlefield: Women. Who will kick your arse.
In a tweet yesterday, the official Battlefield Twitter account confirmed that the Russian Army’s scout class would be represented by members of the 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. The Women’s Battalion was initially formed as a propaganda initiative to raise morale. They were commanded by Maria Leontievna Bochkareva and fought most prominently during the Kerensky Offensive, Russia’s final offensive campaign of the Great War.
The Women’s Battalion of Death is represented by the Russian Scout class. Details at EA Play, more info: https://t.co/vADTEbP6re https://t.co/VrRuBGVMeK
— Battlefield (@Battlefield) May 22, 2017
With an estimated 6000 Russian female combatants in World War One, their addition to the multiplayer campaign makes sense in spite of commenters who object to their historical immersion being broken.
“[You’re] kidding me,” one Twitter poster said. Having never read a history book, they added: “Barely any women fought.”
Adding female soldiers fits with Battlefield 1‘s tone, which included a single player campaign featuring African American soldiers from the Harlem Hellfighters infantry regiment, a female Bedouin protagonist, and soldiers from various fronts across the world. The first DLC, The Shall Not Pass, added the French Army.
World War One was, as the name suggests, a global war that touched everyone’s lives regardless of race and gender. If representing that more accurately means a few curmudgeons getting sniped by powerful women when the DLC releases, I’m definitely in favour. The addition of women into the multiplayer comes also comes as Call of Duty: WWII announced female soldiers in their multiplayer. In all, it’s a banner year for women on the digital battlefield in major historical franchises.
EA promised to share more detail about the expansion at the upcoming EA Play event, running from June 10-12 in Hollywood. I’ll be attendance at this event and will tell just how awesome it feels to storm the trenches as a tough gal then.
Comments
30 responses to “Battlefield 1 DLC Adds Female Soldiers”
They’re adding them in from a historical perspective so that’s fine. I mean if we want to be accurate here, nearly all the weaponry didn’t exist in the numbers it’s portrayed in either, so BF1 isn’t ‘plausible’ either PLUS the turning circles of the planes would’ve ripped their wings off, just saying…
The weapons thing has kind of been covered. In the end the game still has to be a game, if you take the fun and entertainment out of it no one would buy it. I mean I don’t want to play a game where I spend 6 months sitting in a muddy trench doing nothing but getting dysentery only to finally get a mission then die as soon as I raise my head out of the trench.
WW1 more people died from disease than from enemy action.
This was what I was getting at. HOWEVER its also much better that theyre adding women in appropriately rather than in a tokenistic fashion. Going to the extent in which women did serve is a much better way than the alternative.
Considering the original Russian women’s batallion started off as a token propaganda gesture to please the women’s union and raise morale, I would say the whole thing came full circle…
But it existed is the point here
I just find it mildly amusing that, the argument started 100 years ago and we are still arguing over the same thing in a slightly different format…
History any which way be damned, I want to pwn noobs as a chick.
And I want to shoot these chicks, and set them on fire, and blow them up,. and run them over in tanks.
(for equality)
This person gets it!
They’d better make sexy moaning noises when you shoot them. I don’t want to play a game where that doesn’t happen.
Maybe give them some military hotpants like the hot girl from the Walking Dead?
How about chest armour with enormous breast moulds that only serve to direct a bayonet straight to the heart?
Also child soldiers, everyone loves those.
BEST DLC EVER!
Child soldiers appeared during WW2 through either desperation or lying about their age, so here’s hoping for the next BF game.
If they went for realism at this stage it wouldn’t fit the tone already set by the base game.
Personally I could care less if all the soldiers in BF1 were women, however if accuracy is what you’re after Heather, then there should be none in BF1.
There were 68,208,171 soldiers involved in WW1, those Russian women represent 0.000087966% of that.
BF1, needs to have 11,368 male soldiers to choose from to make that single female one an accurate representation.
As Weresmurf points out, there are a lot of liberties taken for BF1 to be accurate so this should be no different; but don’t make claims that this was an agrecious oversight when it wasn’t.
Again, I personally don’t care how many there are in game, but I do care when people are making false claims as they look to be offended.
This! I don’t have any objections to the DLC, but this article reads like this is righting some sort of great injustice, as if the omission of women missed some huge part of the conflict. Stuff like this proves the author is just out to complain:
The Russian women’s battalion was an insignificant part of WW1 – the vast majority (almost the entirety) of combatants were male. No big part of history or great injustice was missed by their omission in the base game – arguably their inclusion is a token gesture. The Twitter author is factually correct when they stated barely any women fought.
BF1 might take a lot of liberties with history, but the broad strokes conform to the period – where men did almost all of the fighting and the dying on the battlefield. Again, I don’t have any issues with the DLC being in the game, but Heather Alexandra’s article is a ridiculous attempt at historical revisionism with an almost vitriolic undertone.
Was arguing with some toss on reddit about how female Russian soldiers would ruin his immersion. Apparently he was ok with the plentiful prototyped weapons, every soldier knowing how to fly a plane effectively and a single soldier driving a tank, but Russian scouts having a chance to be female is too much.
I don’t even understand.
As long as the women can’t drive the vehicles I’m fine with it.
Ha! This guy right here.
Maybe there’ll be a new class where you have to walk 100ft in front waving a flag to warn other road users?
It’s as stupid an argument as the BF1 is sexist.
Both flawed.
It is, but its the tribalist era we live in and its not going anywhere.
i know how to effectively crash and burn a plane not long after i get in it, does that count?
So do most players, seems legit.
yeah.
I mean.
whatever.
I just think, like, If there ever was a battlefield game that they could make an argument against having female player options in, it was the World War 1 game. Why didn’t they add Gender options in BF 3 or 4 or something?
Less DLC, more fixing the hacker plague on PC plz. It’s fucking atrocious.
So when do we get our under 18 child soldiers? I mean it is historcially accurate that there were children as young as 12 who signed up (though rare, as most were 16-17 years old)
That’s coming in the next “Realism” patch where machine guns get a significant buff, almost everyone has bolt action rifles, and gameplay consists entirely of charging towards fortified trenches.
IGN gave it a 10/10.
Already has under age soldiers in the Gallipoli campaign. Kid is 16.
you dont play as the kid though
I’m all for accurate representation, but I did want to bring up something about the diversity in BF1, or more so the series.
I cant help but feel they’ve gone all in for BF1, which is awesome, but also seems they are compensating for dragging their feet for so long.
But the thing that gets me, is I find it hard to celebrate Incremental Diversity in DLC form when the series has had plenty of opportunity.
I’m not being dishonest, I would love to see the Maori and broader New Zealand contribution shown in the historical warfare genre, but don’t sell it to me and ask to be praised.
Just give me a customisable avatar for MP
If were talking realism, i wonder why no one is complaining about equal weapon and vehicle distribution. I hope in future world war games allies would only have access to allied weaponry and vehicles and vice versa so there was an actual point/style to the side you choose to play for. A good example of this was bf1942. Still the best.