Looked like shit after the amazing BF1
1 was fucking DIRE, hon. My by-far least played title (~80-100 hours max in a 800+ hour for me) in the series.
4 was the last time EA had a tolerable (non-Titanfall before Toku and Benji eat me alive) game. And that's only because they allowed DICE-LA to fucking fix DICE-SE's fuck-up for around 2-years. And that's being generous as I love Bad Company/BC2, and 2/1942 to death over 3-4.
Alt universe ww2 could have actually been cool.
Ea has got to be the most consistently bad big publisher. Thr only EA game I’ve bought all gen is Titanfall 2 I think.
I only bought 1 due to a friend (who quickly stopped played because they finally saw how fucking bad 1 was since they skipped the beta), otherwise it's like Mirror's Edge 2, Titanfall 1 (for $5), 2 (for $30-50 sale one-week after launch, and that's to get to max rank before the game died).
Which is hilarious as I put a shit-ton of hours into Battlefield 2/Modern Combat (360), Bad Company 1 (PS3), 2 (on PC and PS3), BF1943 (PS3), BF3 (PS3 and PC), BF4 (PC) last generation and thought Frostbite was revolutionary/next-gen with it's level destruction (micro, building, and terrain deforming in BC1).
(Yes, yes, I know of Red Faction. I've played Red Faction, but RF1's multiplayer doesn't have the same fun as BC1/2, BF1943 did.
It's crazy to me how DICE-SE's engine team can be top-notch, but their actual development tools for being a "middleware" EA-in-house engine has been complete shit because it completely killed EA's actual other non-DICE (and that's being generous to DICE since they've lost a shit ton of the original BC1/2 team post like BF3-4) for something that was revolutionary last gen is being complete shit this gen.
I really hope DICE presents more about what that was looking like design wise. They've not been afraid to discuss that type of stuff in the past. One rumor had steampunk aspects, another had it being Hitler "winning" Barbarossa to extend the war and alter D-Day, possibly landing on Britain, etc. I hope it was more like the latter than the former and that they can someday get to it or at least talk about it.
TBH, WW2 was a "no-go" for me, since I'm not big on WW2 shooters, so they already lost my sale (and WW1 was stretching it), so their design thing should be "we really should've just made a sci-fi future or modern shooter after some folks were tired of WW1"
But also if they actually leaned into the alt-history bullshit the reveal wouldn't have been as bad. As soon as they came out with the Social Justice bullshit and then double-downed on "don't like it, don't buy it. We don't give a shit what you think" that's when they basically dug their grave, gave the players the gun, and then dropped down into it to get shot in the head. You can not be arrogant to the fucking people that pay you to play your shit. 4A games is learning this with the Metro fiasco (they basically gave a 1-day later appology, I'm fucking shocked that developer wasn't fired for telling their PC players: 'lol, don't buy it, you won't get future ones, assholes.').
DICE/Patrick Soderlund and EA have to be the 2018 text-book description of "marketing failure" in the history books/bible/whatever you want to call it of Public Relations. Just absolutely DIRE PR handling for this release.