Players of the recent Battlefield 5 alpha have been witness to quite a treat. Building on DICE's excellent work in BF1 and Battlefront 2, we're looking at an exceptionally handsome game that, small bugs aside, almost feels like the finished article. It's visually outstanding in fact, the only disappointment - if you can call it that - being that the signs are pointing towards an evolution of the Battlefield formula and its Frostbite engine, as opposed to a full-on next-gen revolution.
Some might say that expectations of a wide-ranging revamp of the tech might seem somewhat optimistic, but there is a strong precedent. In 2011 - a full two years before the arrival of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - DICE unleashed Battlefield 3, the game that laid the foundation for the series entries to follow, certainly from a technological perspective. Based on 64-bit processor support along with a requirement for DirectX 11 class graphics hardware, this was a developer essentially laying the foundation work for the console generation to come, with a cutting-edge PC version taking point.
At the same point in the current console generation, Battlefield 5's closed alpha - released only on PC - shows key embellishments, along with some crowd-pleasing enhancements to the destruction model. However, the overall aesthetic and some of its most impressive tricks will be familiar to those who've played Battlefield 1. The alpha reminds us of how good Frostbite is in dealing with massive, open levels. Select your capture point, click, and the overview of the map swoops down seamlessly into the in-game view - a cool trick from BF1 that still impresses in its successor.