Watch the leaked gameplay vid for Battlefield V’s Firestorm battle royale mode

Originally one of the biggest drawcards when it was announced last year, Firestorm is Battlefield V’s own entry into the battle royale space. Of all the franchises that made the jump to battle royale, Battlefield already had the best built-in mechanics for the genre, so naturally people were excited for it. However, DICE’s plan to stagger the content releases of BFV has frustrated players as long-awaited maps and modes – including Firestorm – got pushed back.

It also hasn’t helped that with the exception of a few very brief teases, we haven’t really even seen Firestorm in action. This week past though, some members of the EA Gamechangers programme (the prominent and popular community members) got flown to DICE’s Stockholm base to get their hands on Firestorm. And, of course, what with this being the internet, footage of what they were shown has been leaked.

The footage seen below consists of the tutorial video for the mode, explaining just how Firestorm works and plays out.

My first reaction to this video is that it looks great, and exactly what we wanted. Wanted, as in past tense though, because what we want right now in a battle royale game has changed.

When Respawn’s Apex Legends appeared out of nowhere about a month ago, it simply changed the gaming landscape. The F2P battle royal title has posted some incredible achievements in its short life thus far, not just with its insane user base growth but also revolutionizing certain gameplay aspects of the genre with genius decisions that will definitely become the standard moving forward. Simply put, when it comes to the timeline of battle royale games, things will be measured as Before Apex Legends and After Apex Legends. Firestorm looks very much like BAL. That’s Before Apex Legends, not whatever dirty thoughts the Afrikans folks in the audience are thinking now.

DICE’s delaying tactics, holding off Firestorm to be released as this big shiny new addition instead of having had it ready at launch, has seriously backfired here. The local BFV servers are already a ghost town due to Apex Legends (luckily, DICE recently implemented some serious netcode voodoo fixes that makes the game incredibly viable to play on the still-full European servers) and I don’t see that changing apart from some die-hard fans trying out the mode when it launches.

I’ll more than likely be one of them. But just like the rest, the moment I have to manually figure out a cumbersome ammo or weapon attachment system, or I need to get on mic to tell somebody about the weapon I just saw a while back, or get killed because I couldn’t communicate effectively to my random teammate where the enemies were coming from, I’m probably loading up Apex Legends again.

Last Updated: March 11, 2019