The Battlefield fanbase experiences the rollercoaster highs and lows of game releases like almost no other. Over the past 15 years, each game’s launch is greeted with a degree of dismay, the team having to go back and pour even more effort in to rectify issues and pull it into shape, and then, just as it’s become a beloved entry in the series, you crest the big drop and go hurtling back down to the depths of gaming despair as a new game arrives to start the journey all over again. But there’s hope for Battlefield 6. Dreams that this beloved open war shooter really is back to the rose tinted glory days of Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4. Are we back? I think we might be back.
Battlefield 6 brings us a contemporary war setting, taking place in an utterly implausible 2027, from a current geopolitical viewpoint, where the steadfast bastion of Western military cooperation that is NATO is suddenly under threat from…um… a really rich private military corporation? No China, no Russia, it’s the mercenaries of Pax Armata that are the baddies, managing to chip away at the allies, the war that breaks out stretching from the Middle East, from Egypt, through Gibraltar and even coming to US shores with a battle in Brooklyn. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter who the goodies and the baddies are for the multiplayer, but it does feel a bit toetippy and safe after the games of the early 2010s.
What really matters is what the combat and action is like, and here it’s classic Battlefield. There’s four classes – Assault, Engineer, Support and Recon – and you’re in squads of up to four, trying to use your different roles and skills to complement one another and with a squad leader marking objectives to try and coordinate your efforts. Assault is about crashing into situations, able to boost themselves with a shot of adrenaline and coming with two main weapons, Engineer has the rockets and blow torch, Support bundles together the old Medic healing, ammo resupply and barricades, and Recon is all about scoping out the enemy with drones, placing spawn points, and the like. There’s the usual remixing of familiar abilities into these four buckets, and outside of the smushed together duties for the Support class, it’s a lot like the good old days… specifically the good days of Bad Company 2’s classes. Assault does have a personal health stim, but needs Engineer or Recon’s C4 to take out tanks and Support for healing and ammo.
Alongside the gadgets of your class, there’s also a new score-based perk system in Field Specs that rewards you with passive and active boosts. These start small, like starting your own health regen when you revive an ally as a Support, hampering enemy vehicle repairs when damaging them as an Engineer, or building up to a top tier ability that you manually trigger, like Assault’s Combat Stimulant which highlights nearby sounds and reveals enemies. These feel like they’ll be gameplay style enhancements instead of wholesale class mods, but we’ll have to wait and see.
But there’s still some controversy. You see, where weapons used to be locked to particular classes in Battlefield V and before, that’s no longer the case. Each class still has a “signature” weapon type, and there’s boosters for embracing that synergy, so engineers have better hip-fire control with the SMGs, and Assault can draw and switch weapons quicker with an assault rifle, but you’ll also have the freedom to pick from the full selection of weapons. It’s something that a vocal part of the community has railed against for months, but really it makes sense. Having weapon freedom makes it a smidgeon more likely that someone will sacrifice being an Assault when your squad is faced by a tank.
Bouncing back and forth between roles and weapons, it’s a bit like putting on an old pair of slippers, but there’s plenty of fine details to adjust to as well. The one I particularly appreciate was how marking enemies works. Instead of spamming a ping button, you instead mark enemies by shooting at them, in turn giving away your position. I wish you could still just point out a tank, but this is a great change in general. I also really like the new revive system, where you can drag a fallen buddy out from the open and into cover, making you both at least be slow moving targets.
And if we’re really getting into the weeds, I love that the end of match screen that highlights squads and achievements has a line chart representation of how tickets were depleted through a match of Conquest.
But really there’s just all the bombast of Battlefield’s trademarked all-out warfare. Infantry plays a big role, but so too do vehicles, tanks, helicopters and fighter jets. I can absolutely see myself spending time manning the LMG for a buddy driving a tank, holding down a key position in Conquest and hopping out to fix them up when we take hits. But I also just enjoyed marauding, hopping onto an AA emplacement to take out a pesky helicopter.
The map I played a couple matches on was on the rocky mountainside of Liberation Peak, with a set of six control points littered with military defences and buildings. There was some of the destruction available here, but it will really be for the urban battles where this factor will be felt the most, where entire facades of buildings can collapse in spectacular fashion.
Battlefield 6 will arrive with 9 maps, and almost as many game modes. Conquest, Rush and Breakthrough return as the series staples, but there’s the small ball of TDM, Squad DM, Domination, KOTH and something new called Escalation. And of course there will be seasons of content with new maps, modes and events.
So, is Battlefield back? At first blush, it certainly feels like it might be. Thankfully it won’t be long before we can spend more time with it, with two beta weekends kicking off in August, and there’s sure to be plenty more to be said about this once we’ve played more. But also, there’s stuff still to really be revealed and explored that will only emerge for the full release. How are weapon unlocks going to play out? How with Field Specs modify each class? What balance changes can DICE really make from the beta to the full game in time for October?