DICE details new Battlefield 1 Specialization system, testing begins soon

Specialisations, or perks, have been a staple of the Battlefield series from 2142 right up to Hardline. However, they never made it into Battlefield —until now.

In a Reddit post, developer DICE has outlined all the specialisations that are coming "sometime soon" to the PC Community Test Environment (CTE) before going into the game proper. They're pretty varied: there's your bog standard increased sprint speed and reduced explosive damage, but there's also one that will make all nearby downed allies drop a smoke grenade, making it easier for you to revive them. Pretty neat.

Each player will get to choose three from a list of seven generic specialisations and two that are class-specific (so, 15 total).

Everyone will start off with the same three generic specialisations (decreased damage from explosives, reduced suppression and quicker heal regeneration), and will unlock more by completing Service Assignments. On the CTE, all of the perks will be unlocked from the start to play around with.

Read the post in full for all the details of the perks for your favourite class, and you can sign up to the CTE here if you haven't already.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.