If there were female soldiers in ww1 there would not of been many and mostly would of.been spies at most. They should keep it original. Most females worked inside intellegence bunkers, getting that vital data passed to the rite places, most women worked in bomb making factorys as well as bullet making factorys, you would also see them training horses a lot.

If women had of been soldiers I would not of had a problem with them being in the game but women were put to use in other ways.

...people will have a whinge about anything nowadays

You're right, it would be unrealistic in a big way. Would it completely ruin the game or something ? No.

That decision, however, is completely up to the devs. If they want to do that creatively - if they themselves feel it's better that way, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Their creative decision will ALWAYS, ALWAYS come first. If they think it would be weird for the setting, then they should ABSOLUTELY be able to make that decision. Screw stupid political correctness and including female characters because "It's about time, it's 2016" or shit like that. Female soldiers are not some leap they have to make for every game. If they want they can include them, if not, they don't have to.

Who cares???

The reason given was actually due to historic reasons.

But the feminist is trying to turn it into something else.

Smfh.

If they added women I DEMAND they add aliens as playable characters as well
#aliensEquality /s

Even if there were females in battlefield 1, feminists would have attacked battlefield 1 because it's "too violent against women"

So, it's basically a lose/lose situation for dice/ea....

Outrageous?...

B-but...

Naw... I'm going back to bed. This one isn't even worth the paragraph.

Hmmm, I find it odd that people can complain (and even rage) that it would be stupid to include female soldiers because there weren't any or only a few in WW1, yet are okay with the game having certain weapons and tanks available even though they weren't common either.

Baffles the mind.

Edit:
Indeed Lamboomington, let's think about it logically. It's okay to make weapons that weren't common available to every player in this game which impacts gameplay but when they wanted to add a simple skin people start shouting "that's not realistic!". Very illogical indeed!

Again, I'm a woman, didn't expect any female characters in this game and I don't really need them to be in every single game, but it's always nice to have a choice, but the reason given why they decided against it seems odd to me. You apparently disagree, that's fine, I just don't get why people get angry and/or are so freakishly upset about this!

Edit 2 (I can't reply anymore!):
Thing is, I don't really care all that much, but I just think it's a tad weird to me that one thing is ok, the other thing is not while both are not realistic. And yes, I do get there are differences, I just wouldn't see it as such a huge deal if they had added it and the whole angry posts baffle me, nothing more, nothing less...

----------------------------- -----
People below me have made comments that clearly suggest they haven't read the article at all.

It's not about people wanting female soldiers or complaining that there aren't any, it's about that DICE wanted to add them but didn't because some men thought it was unrealistic.

The reason why I even replied in this topic is because that's totally a stupid reason since the game already isn't realistic and find it weird that one thing is okay but something else isn't. Even weirder is the fact that it seems to be a topic that angers some people.

I'm NOT replying because I demand female characters in games, I couldn't care less. Though have to admit I do like it when the choice is available but when it's not I'm not going to whine about it.

Ubisoft said "hard to animate" am i close?

In a medium that lets you do ANYTHING, this is unacceptable.

Clickbait feminist/white knight article

Female characters won't be in multiplayer of a WW1 game. Oh the horror! I bet your average female gamer won't even give a crap. So tired of feminists and SJWs always being outraged and sucking the fun out of everything. Just go away and be angry by yourself.

These sort of posts deserve to get shat on. Who honestly gives a shit if female soliders aren't in the game?

But who actually cares??? I dont even think there were female soldiers in that time.... feminism bullsht

And this is where video games start going downhill. That's good, keeping it real but in all honesty why not?! It's a frickin Video GAME and a multiplayer one! It's not story based so who gives a sh*t if you see some different polygons infront of you, this is a videogame not a documentary or movie. If it's immersion you say, we haven't lived ww1 so obviously we wouldn't care about having females especially since this is mp heavy. Pure realism is killing video games! And that ladies and gents is one of the reasons why BF will never top COD. Escaping realism is a trait of videogames and BF1 embraces this realistic dullness. I don't understand why people like this realistic warfare approach unless you're practicing in the military ffs. With realistic games like GT, you practice real racing which you'll use to drive but here it's nothing. If you bring up COD to the argument, atleast COD mixes things a bit though it has gotten out of hand in the last few games. Realistic WW1 is overused already people. People are just hypocrites. What's new is old and what's old is new...sad cycle indeed.

Well if the devs wanted to be realistic, the only female combatants were those in women-only battalions created by the Russian Provincial Government in 1917 in an attempt to boost morale and by all accounts, the women who fought performed well in combat but their involvement was limited.

Unless the game is focussing on any of these particular battles, it would be unrealistic to shoehorn women soldiers into a game just to appease modern sensibilities when the battles depicted are from an era that would not have had female combatants.

I hope this is satire

Lol, if you expect females on the WW1 front lines go back to elementary class. And why is it such a big deal to play as a guy, gender shouldn't matter right

Once again, the gaming community continues to disappointment me. It is not unreasonable for women to just want to play as women. They just want to feel included and it makes the game more fun to have the point of connection. That doesn't make dice sexist or make it morally questionable to not include them, but it's perfectly fine to want them included. What's not fine is going on some explosive rant at "feminists" or women in general for just wanting that aspect included. You know what else they didn't have in WW1? Respawning. What about walking over ammo and picking it up automatically? Devs include things in games all the time just for fun, it's fine to simply ask for it. These are coming from the same men that (possibly literally) cry rivers of tears when a main character for a game (or even a movie) turns out to be non white or non a man, regardless of context. Get over yourselves, grow up, and stop overlooking a growing segment of the gaming population. You're not entitled to the gaming culture yourself.

guys go check their profile, its just clickbait bullshit, they dont even have legitimate news of any sort, blocking would be nice

Women? What about the trannys? The sex change enthusiasts? We need equality for them too...while your at it i demand a male version of barbie...no not kent! I want a male barby god daym it!!

"Battlefield 1 Won’t Have Female soldiers"

And...No one really cares.

This is a non issue and if I was the developer I would never put a female character in this game to spite all the crybabies.
It won't affect sales of the game one bit, you know why? because the people upset with this non issue had no intention in buying the game in the first place.

I think people are making way too much of a big deal out of this honestly. When it comes down to it, it's a game about killing each other in exceedingly unrealistic ways, so in the end, does it matter so much whether the avatar you gun down has tits or not? I know it's a principal, but in the end everybody's essentially just a bag of meat. I know there's a principle, but I seriously don't think it's worth making a fuss over.

Now having a female protagonist, or main character, that might be interesting, but would have made more sense in one of their previous games. The fact that they have a black protagonist is cool too, but if they're going to preach against realism, they're probably gonna have to bring up the whole racism thing, as it was at the time. I mean it was pretty damn terrible back then, and I know that in war nothing like that matters, but it's worth making a point of.

It's a video game......

Thats it!! I want to have the ability to play as a guy in tomb raider!!!! Square Enix isnt fair to my gender! ;-)These freakin people need shut up and let developers make the game! If you don't like it go play something else! When did gaming NEED to start catering to everyone??!

Oh boo hoo, not outrageous at all, if you do not like it, do not buy it!

They were worried their target market wouldn't know what WWI was? Don't they still teach that era in school? I imagine so.

Well, if it's all about realism then you should have perma death. You die once and can't play anymore.

Or have to buy another copy of the game.

We'll overlook the players taking millions of bullets and respawning and all sorts of other ridiculous bullshit that didn't happen, but no ladies (even though their were actually female soldiers in WW1), BECAUSE REALITY!!!!!!

This is the second clickbait article I've seen today. So is that how it's done on N4G?

Um, wiki...

That is stupid,.. but since they were so rare,.. don't see a problem,..
The problem is they dont have French army in it,.. Which is crazy,.. Since it only deals with western front omission of Russia is kinda understandable,.. but France ,.. For fuck's sake,.. this is beyond retarded,..

Don't even waste your time clicking guys.

I hope this story gets huge. Then Dice,EA and the rest of the industry will see that not pandering to this kind of horse shit will have virtually zero effect on sales and the precious snowflakes that whine about it can all go to Reddit and cry about the games that they wouldn't buy anyway.

Femisis going to cry and try to rule over creative and expressive freedom once again.
Feelings trumps freedom, facts and rights any day right?

Ok... another company looking for free publicity for his game.

All I'm gonna say is, don't act so ignorant when you wonder why there aren't more female gamers.

I can't understand why people are so upset by this article. What would be the issue with including women in the game? The realism argument is obviously complete nonsense. Also since when is feminism a bad thing? I was under the impression that we're all for equality.

I thought genitals didn't define gender?

The author is a cuck if I've ever seen one.

It's a bit old-fashion for article-writers to be too afraid to list who the author of the crap-articles are so we know who to avoid by their real name, like people who deliberately avoid biased article-writers on Polygon and other major sites.

The whole thing is funny, because most female gamers don't care really, lmao!

Vagina warriors really want a pat on the head from women that will never touch them. Maybe in ww2 u can play as women in the Russian army. Simps

as a female - ldgaf, gimmie battlefield. They're all meatbags begging to be filled with bullets with all their forms abscured in armour

honestly what they should do is 'yeah they're are females in there - they're wearing helmets and have fitted gear to appear like men to deter rape' or some shit like that and call it a day.

I am actually going to go the opposite way with this and say I question the reason why on all the gameplay videos I have seen, why we have a FEMALE voiceover telling us that we have Lost/Captured Apple.
Surely if we are avoiding female soldiers because in WW1 there were rarely any, then surely a commanding officer in WW1 giving orders to the troops was even rarer?
If anything, I felt hearing her soft, almost Cortana-like voice giving information as you play, to be disjointed with the theme and the historical nature of the game.

Yeah, I don't give a flying f***.

So the trend is
1: Game reveal
2. Check for females
3. No females?
4. THE GAME IS FLAWED AND SHOWS HOW FEMALES ARE PERSECUTED IN THE GAMING INDUSTRY AND HOW...

Yeah. It's WW1. Factually, they weren't on the battlefield. If they were then yes, it would be wrong that they aren't being represented. But again, it's WW1.

You shouldn't be allowed to write articles if this is the nonsense you're spewing.

Click-baitiest title.

Ah, another clickbait title to attract some kind of feminazi trash debate. Keep it classy N4G /s

All I have to say to this article is.. stfu. You whiney pc idiots need jobs or real hobbies..

The perpetually offended strikes again! What a bunch of morons.

Edit.. after reading more comments, I feel I should add.. I am in no way against women being in the game.. wouldn't have even thought twice about it.. but those that feel the need to complain about such things? Lower life forms if you ask me, a stain on society

Honestly... who cares man. If this was a story driven walking simulator, being male or female could make a difference. But this is a first person shooter... You can't even see your own character.

Please, if you simply must have female soldiers in a Battlefield game petition for them in Battlefield 4 and Battlefront and no-one will mind it. Battlefield 1 would probably be the worst possible entry to introduce female soldiers if they want to hold on any sort of historical accuracy (which is not exactly the same as realism).

Also, the original Battlefront 2 had a female soldier as sniper, so again, I wouldnt care if they threw in a few to the next Battlefront entry.

Being a dude myself and seeing as this game isn't "ultra-realism", or historically accurate in terms of weapon use, tanks, etc. there's no reason not to add female characters for fun/diversity for everyone. No one is, "not going to play because females", and honestly its just more customization options for me/everyone that allow for more diverse characters. I certainly wouldn't complain, I like to play the female characters time to time, it usually changes the look, voice's, animations, armor, clothes etc.. The more content/diversity the better, regardless of whatever politically correct etc. etc. reasons. Though the reasons to not put them in were honestly lame, I'm glad they were honest about it; many companies avoid it or blatantly just give an answer. However, I'd like them to reconsider it, at least so we have more customization options than in the past, and to make everyone happy - it is a game after all, and it's meant to do just that. Cheers

It's true though, I don't want some chick screaming every 5 seconds ruining the realism. We all know how vocal the characters are. Also I'm not going to sugar coat it for people who might get offended, even if it was based off a war were women participated. I wouldn't want women in it.

What Dice said is true the vast majority of guys don't want to play a female character in a MP game where it's a more personalized experience. I wouldn't mind them at all in SP just as long as it made sense.

This need to shoehorn women into everything is getting silly, what's worse is these male feminist's who find the need to defend women equality everywhere even though it's not warranted, bunch of sheep...

I'm sure a lot of gamer girls wouldn't mind this at all.

Angry SJW and modern feminist are a joke. Woman were not part of infantry battalions during WW1. In-fact even today there are barely any female front-line soldiers. Woman for various physical reasons aren't as well suited to infantry roles as men.

You know what dice should do, Put a female character in Battlefield but, make a scantily clad over-sexualized Anime character. with real time body jiggle like the characters from Dead or Alive! That would be hilarious! I would love to see the outrage and angst from all those SJW's and special interest groups.

This is not a real news story, the source is just a few tweets from one employee and nothing else. The employee could very well be some radical feminist making up the story just for attention.

why is it so important to have a female character? If the story wasn't written for it, oh well. Go enjoy mirrors edge or tomb raider if it's THAT important. Not every game needs a kick-ass female heroine.

I'm all for gender equality, but enough already. I'm sick of Hollywood and video games forcing women into rules just to appeal to women ie Ghostbusters remake.

A strong lead woman is fine, but only when it calls for it. Stop forcing it. Or just give the option to the player... But let it merely be a graphical nuance on their side of things only...

In other news, Victoria Secrets only let's the men model male underwear....

When I see a man in a lace thong and matching bra in Victoria Secrets, I'll be ok with forcing women into normally male driven roles...

I it's a game and all... But thank you for not altering history. Good job DICE

*sigh* this is why I hate people...

I'm confused it's a click bait title but it gives the reason in the summary so I don't need to actually visit the website... Someone screwed up.

I am so, so tired of this vocal minority. This is seriously becoming a joke. Trash articles like this and the one saying that mass effect should start with a female protagonist by default. Why? This is insane. The percentage of women that actually play full AAA console games, not cell phone trash like candy crush or the simplistic wii party games, is small. So now these women that happen to play shooters and other games want every single game to cater specifically to them when they make up an extremely small portion of the player base? Thats just bad business, and its stupid. The percentage of women in combat in WW1 is so small that its not even worth including in the game, and people really have a problem with this? So should I have been upset at all the games where I was forced to play as a woman because the male gender wasn't "equally represented"? UGH. There were not women fighters in ANY of the major battles that are going to be in the game. The fact that some of these privileged "girl gamers" in america even have time to complain about trash like this when women in Nigeria are being kidnapped and raped, or women in africa are more likely to get raped than get educated is an insult and a joke. Complain and petition about something that matters.

Sorry libtards, frontline soldiers were all men in WWI. And for you LGBTQF'ers, trannys didn't openly serve in the military until the Korean War, according to a documentary I watched about a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital :0

I want to know how the writer of this article still has a job.

SJW's assemble!

If the author want females in DICE's new installment, then there should be a level at a factory where women are on a line manufacturing munitions and/or the various other necessities the soliders needed during the war.
This is what happened. This is how they supported their men and sons off at war.

Not even going to bother reading this SJW trash. Pretty obvious someone knows jack$hit when it comes to history.

Heeeeeeeeeeeere we go! I predict there will be female patched into this game soon enough once this thing gets lit.

* Whiny liberals who can't have their way turn a 1/10 issue into a 10/10 because they aren't actually good at their job.

What a trash article.

* I feel bad for the 10-15 real honest journalists out there still doing their job properly and being lumped in with these idiots.

Women didn't fight at the front in WWI. Period. Makes no sense for them to show up in this game. None of this matters any way. This game is going to sell MILLIONS even without the shoehorning of female soldiers(that again, didn't exist at the front in WWI)

To be perfectly honest, we've already screwed over historical accuracy with this game. Just brand it as Alt History, give a backstory to how and why it's different, then toss in all the ethnicities and sexes your heart desires.

Then again I question the entire point of going back to historical conflicts if we're just gonna ignore history so this game's got me a bit bugged regardless.

Now historical events are "outrageous". Looney Left strike again.

It would be kinda pointless if there were in the game tbh

It's a game for boys. Let the boys have their little boys club alone.

Telling your readers how to feel about a story in your headline (or in the article) is a hallmark of abysmal "journalism".

Wait I thought we all played as unidentified, gender fluid reptile soldiers hiding in the bodies of human being, sitting at screens playing a WW1 game featuring unidentified, gender fluid reptile soldiers hiding in the bodies of human being, sitting at screens playing a WW1 game featuring... rinse, repeat.

WHO GIVES A FUCK

Um, please don't change history because you feel strongly about feminism...

If you're going to do a game based on history then make it as accurate as possible. Otherwise make something else.

"Behind the times"?! In a WW1 game? No fucking shit... What are "these times"? Every game must have a male and female protagonist like dishonored 2? You people are a joke.

WORLD WAR I WAS SEXIST! WOODROW WILSON WAS A MISOGYNIST!

Ww1 women belong on the home front shaming men who did not go to war

So...they're citing realism a reason to exclude them?

They can do whatever they like, but if they're going for historical accuracy, I wonder if they'll include segregated military and "shell shock" as it was known as at the time.

Naturally, the line gets drawn somewhere, but the picking and choosing can be perceived negatively. As long as they're prepared for that criticism, it's nothing they don't expect.

"Outrageous"... fuck your political correctness

There should be no female characters because they didn't fight during WW1 but at the same time, DICE needs to be more historically accurate with BF1. All the SMGs, the prototype weapons, the fast tanks and vehicles. The game is just a WW2 shooter.

I guess I won't be supporting bf1 cancel per order. Sign of disrespect. You telling a fake story. Not only that you some fake guns that never made it to army.smh I guess I wait for bf5. No big

Suck it SJW's!!!

I'm still thankful back in 2003 we had female characters in SOCOM 2 on PS2. :P

It's not realistic because they weren't there in REAL fucking life.