This is a point worth making. Battlefield 1 feels like a move away from military shooter doctrine in plenty of ways. But the biggest departure is in how little shooting there can be, at least compared to the game’s contemporaries. The first real chapter, "Mud and Blood," is often as much an exercise in stealth and avoidance as it is a combat shooter, if not more so — assuming you choose to play it that way.
Battlefield 1 clearly wants you to play it that way, with a presentation that emphasizes how overwhelmingly outnumbered you are as a tank driver guiding his crew through a pea-soup fog in a shell-blasted swamp. The second story places you in the cockpit as a fighter pilot, but after you’re shot down, you’ll have to make your way to, and then through, No Man’s Land, the machine gun-swept and mortar-blasted space between the German and British lines.
Sneaking in Battlefield 1 doesn’t feel like a bolted-on idea or concept. Instead, it’s a clearly developed set of mechanics that feels lifted directly from 2015’s Battlefield Hardline. This is good, because there’s a lot of moving around bigger spaces where shooting isn’t always a good idea.
This departure isn’t strictly limited to sneaking, either. Battlefield 1’s campaign features the kind of variety many other shooters only pay lip service to, introducing new concepts and staples in every mission. From tank pilot to fighter ace, from Italian shock trooper to Bedouin horseback resistance fighter, I was never bored, because I was never doing the same thing for long. Despite some fairly common Battlefield issues — namely, brain-dead enemy AI, and allies who, among other things, crashed their vehicles into me — Battlefield 1 feels ... smart.