Battlefield V is a first-person shooter set during World War II. Its multiplayer features large-scale battles with infantry, vehicles, and aircraft across various theaters of the war, with modes including Grand Operations (multi-stage campaigns simulating wartime offensives) and Firestorm (a battle royale mode). The single-player component consists of episodic "War Stories" that follow different characters across lesser-known fronts of the conflict. The game emphasizes squad-based teamwork, player customization through a Company system, and resource scarcity. It is the successor to the World War I-themed Battlefield 1.

Battlefield V tells its stories through a series of standalone War Stories set across different fronts of World War II. In occupied Norway, a young woman named Solveig fights to rescue her mother Astrid, a resistance fighter captured while helping British commandos sabotage a German heavy water facility tied to nuclear research. In North Africa, a convicted bank robber named Billy Bridger is conscripted into the Special Boat Service alongside the stern George Mason, tasked with destroying German airfields behind enemy lines. In southern France, a young Senegalese soldier named Deme Cisse joins his older brother Idrissa as part of the colonial Tirailleurs sent to help liberate France, only to face discrimination from the very army they serve.

A fourth story follows Peter Muller, a veteran German Tiger tank commander defending the city of Cologne in the war's final days, as his crew fractures under impossible orders to fight to the death while American forces close in around them.