Battlefield 1 – five things we learned from a week playing the WWI shooter

Burning airships, rocket guns, fighting on horseback - what did playing the closed alpha version of EA's eagerly anticipated epic tell us about the future of a battered genre?

"Preparing all-out war," says the starting screen as Battlefield 1 loads up. It's not kidding. When Electronic Arts launched the trailer for its first world war shooter, fans were delighted to see the series, not only returning to its historical roots, but heading even further back than the original start point: 1942. This heavily viewed slab of cacophonous action promised an epic war story of destruction and gritty combat; and judging by the closed alpha test - an early version of the St Quentin's Scar map available only to a select few players - the game will deliver.

After several days on the mostly stable 64-player servers, here's what we've learned about the Battlefield 1 experience so far.