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 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.

Tyler Wilde
Executive Editor

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, 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.