EA announced a new digital bundle called the Battlefield V Year 2 Edition, which is meant to get new players up to date with rewards from the DICE shooter's first year. As part of this, Battlefield V's latest free "Chapter" content drop, Chapter 5: War in the Pacific, released today. EA has been very busy as of late with a number of major announcements during its most recent quarterly investors call, and the company is likely hoping for big things from the Battlefield franchise.
Battlefield V's reception since launch has been one full of missing features, bugs and controversies, and DICE has had to either delay or outright cancel fixes to many of the game's problems. Battlefield V will never get the soldier-dragging feature it advertised, for instance, and DICE has cancelled the planned 5v5 mode. While the latter was scrapped due to a lack of fan interest, it's an example of what appears on the surface to be a development cycle full of miscalculations. With its plethora of new features, though, Chapter 5 could end up helping to turn things around.
EA announced the Battlefield V Year 2 Edition on the Battlefield V website. The bundle comes with the base game - including multiplayer and the single-player War Stories missions - all the base game's weapons, vehicles and outfits, plus the following additional items from Chapters 1 through 4: 17 primary weapons, four vehicles, two Epic soldier outfits, 10 weapon skins and four vehicle skins. On top of Chapter 5's 12 new weapons, nine new vehicles and three new maps, that's quite a lot of content for new players to pick up. EA recently offered three Battlefield V free weekends, so perhaps new players who enjoyed their cost-free time with the game will be looking for an all-encompassing way in like the Year 2 Edition. The Battlefield V Year 2 Edition sells digitally for $49.99, discounted to $44.99 for EA Access members.
With Chapter 5's content just out of the gate, it's not yet known DICE has been able to deliver compelling content for fans. One of the game's biggest previous additions to date, the Battlefield V Firestorm battle royale mode, didn't provide much to compete with other battle royales, and its two-person duos mode was later removed because no one was playing it.
While it's had a shaky history, Battlefield V seems to have been on the up-turn as of late. Sure, one of its most recent updates mostly just fixed previous ones, but at that time, DICE said it was shifting its communication strategies. Rather than make promises it can't keep, DICE said it wanted to avoid announcing any additional content drops unless it's absolutely sure they'll work. If the developer holds true to this strategy going forward, it's possible that year two could be the start of something better for Battlefield V.
Source: EA