After three years of winning back fans’ trust, Battlefield 2042 Season 7 marks the game’s last major content update. EA is looking toward the future of the Battlefield franchise, and isn’t hesitating to accumulate all the firepower it needs to take on its major rival, Call of Duty. In a recent earnings call, CEO Andrew Wilson throws down the gauntlet for the series’ evolution and says that it has assembled the “largest Battlefield team” ever.
Speaking about progress on the forthcoming FPS game, Wilson believes that Battlefield 2042’s road to redemption will yield key lessons for EA’s new shooter. “With each immersive, action-packed season of Battlefield 2042, players have made it clear that they wanted an even deeper experience,” Wilson says. Those calls have persisted all the way up to BF 2042’s most recent seasons, as DICE’s 2021 multiplayer game was lacking on the features front upon launch. Basic Battlefield mechanics like its traditional class system or a functional in-game leaderboard were missing, and took months to reappear.
Now, having learned “valuable lessons”, Wilson expresses that the new PS5 game and new Xbox game is helmed by “the largest Battlefield team in franchise history.” The game is currently in development under the triple-A combination of Motive, DICE, Criterion, and Ripple Effect. While DICE has led many entries in the franchise, other developers like the now-defunct Visceral Games have stepped in, bringing underrated games like Battlefield Hardline to fruition. Wilson adds that the current quartet of studios is “armed with cutting-edge Frostbite technology and compelling storytelling”, and that he “couldn’t be more excited about what they showed and what we were able to play” recently.
Criterion has provided additional support on several Battlefield games, with notable inclusions such as Battlefield V’s battle royale game spin-off mode Firestorm. Released in March 2019, it would be eclipsed by Call of Duty Warzone a year later, but I think there’s some merit to be given toward the divisive mode. Boasting the biggest map in Battlefield history, the mode’s depiction of a fiery circle swallowing the surrounding environment was pretty damn cool. Combined with Battlefield’s unforgiving combat, the bones of a promising experience were there, it just didn’t get the continued support it needed to thrive.
That could change with the next game, though, as previous rumors claim that it’ll feature a refreshed spin on the mode. But really, a sequel to Hardline would get me seriously excited. Hardline was the closest thing to bringing Michael Mann’s Heat into a game, outside of games like Payday 3, of course, and I spent hours speeding around downtown L.A. in a cop cruiser. I’ll keep dreaming about a sequel, for now.
Bringing all these studios together could be the push EA needs to truly match Call of Duty’s success in recent years. Activision’s combined effort between Sledgehammer Games, Raven Software, and Treyarch on games like Modern Warfare 3 have given players the biggest content offering yet across all areas of the game. With four teams working on Battlefield, the results may deliver the franchise’s best game since Battlefield 1 and something that can match the levels of content currently seen in COD.
In other gaming news, rival shooter Destiny 2 is bringing three brand-new PvP maps to the galaxy, and your first teases for The Finals Season 3 are set to emerge in this Reddit AMA session.