There will be playable women in the Battlefield 1 campaign but any gamers anticipating playable women in the multiplayer side of things will be disappointed to hear that there will be none.
We learned that the reason behind this decision on DICE's part is that they didn't think that the predominately male audience would deem the inclusion of female soldiers in the game "unbelievable" (despite the fact that there was indeed women fighting in the war, although not as many as their male counterparts). At least, that is what former Dice coder Amandine Coget is saying on Twitter (via PCGamesN).
In a series of tweets she explains how female avatars were, in fact, planned to be included initially but apparently that changed as time went on: "The original BF1 pitch given onstage was WW1, with one caveat: 'screw realism, we're adding female soldiers, because we're way overdue'."
But as previously stated, the plans changed and DICE decided that they wanted a more realistic game. "I'll sum up the key points... Turns out BF1 was going for realism after all! Female chars matter but 'it's just not the game we're making'."
"I did eventually get them to spit out the real reasons. All that is believable but female soldiers are not, to the core audience of boys."
"And hey I get it. But you're still downpriotizing it - again - due to assumptions about your audience - again - and what's 'credible'."
One might argue that full-on realism isn't really possible to achieve, which is apparent when you consider how the tanks and parachutes work in the game compared to their historic counterparts.