Battlefield 1‘s new 5-on-5 competitive mode, Incursions, is starting its first closed alpha test on Thursday, September 21st. That’s today, assuming you’re reading this on the day we wrote it.

The alpha will take place on a scaled-down version of Giant’s Shadow, which in the main game is a massive map with a downed airship in the center. Our guess is that the Incursion-focused form of the map will center around either the small town on one side of the map or the railway on the opposite end.

The alpha will be for PC only, though the final game mode is releasing on all platforms. For the sake of console players, we hope an Incursions beta test will be available on Xbox One and PS4 as well as PC, though nothing has been announced yet. That being said, Battlefield 1‘s beta was playable on all consoles, so there’s definitely a chance Incursions will follow suit.

One of DICE’s stated goals is to make Incursions as fun to watch as it is to play, which makes it sound like the developer is trying to push Battlefield into an esports arena, or to at least get free advertising for Battlefield 1 on Twitch. Producer David Sirland stated in a recent blog post that DICE wants “the matches of our competitive experience to be full of dramatic Battlefield moments, high fidelity gameplay, big wins, and dramatic comebacks. The games should be a thrill both for those in the squad and those spectating.”

Incursions was first announced at Gamescom 2017, but since then we haven’t seen much about from developer DICE. We do know that, unlike Battlefield 1, Incursions will have very specific player kits that will be chosen by players before each match and cannot be changed once gameplay has begun. These kits will each have a small selection of different weapons, but they will be geared toward specific roles with tools that will fit those roles, such as the Proximity Recon, which will have the scout class’ spot flare and a close-quarter weapon.

According to the below video by JackFrags, the actual game mode will be a mix between Domination and Frontlines, in which players try to earn tickets by capturing three flags in a sequential order. Tickets can also be earned with kills and by performing feats such as taking out vehicles or achieving squad wipes.

Posted: Sep 22, 2017 10:11 am
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: http://www.egmnow.com/all/battlefield-1s-new-competitive-mode-is-starting-its-closed-alpha/