Battlefield 5 will include a 4-player co-op mode

During today's livestream, and also a pre-brief we viewed yesterday, EA revealed that Battlefield 5 (opens in new tab) will include a 4-player co-op mode.

The last time we saw co-op in Battlefield was in Battlefield 3's 2-player campaign. Battlefield 5's co-op won't be quite the same. Called 'Combined Arms,' it will drop up to four players into bot matches with "a wide variety of missions" to accomplish.

"You go in behind enemy lines, preferably undetected—but I guess, the gameplay, it's Battlefield, it's up to you," said creative director Lars Gustavsson. "...Will you have what it takes to go for that final objective you came for? Or do you have to see yourself out of options and you have to extract? The choice is yours, but think fast, or you might all get wiped and you lose it all."

It sounds a little Left 4 Dead-ish, in that success means keeping your squad alive and successfully extracting. There's also a procedural-generation element. Combined Arms won't include just one set of static missions. The 'Mission Generator' will create "dynamic objectives and narratives," says Gustavsson.

Aside from just being another way to play with friends, Combined Arms is also meant as a "safe haven" for newcomers, he said—a place to "learn the ropes."

Rather than a conventional singleplayer campaign, Battlefield 5 will also include War Stories, like Battlefield 1. These standalone singleplayer missions will send you around the world, embodying different characters each time. The first War Story revealed stars a Norwegian resistance fighter.

For more on Battlefield 5, we've collected everything we know so far here (opens in new tab).

Tyler Wilde
Executive Editor

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the rise of personal computers, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on the early PCs his parents brought home. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, Bushido Blade (yeah, he had Bleem!), and all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now. In 2006, Tyler wrote his first professional review of a videogame: Super Dragon Ball Z for the PS2. He thought it was OK. In 2011, he joined PC Gamer, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.