Screenshot: Saving Private Ryan

On September 10, 2002, publishers Electronic Arts and a relatively unknown development called DICE released a multiplayer shooter called Battlefield 1942. In the 20 years since then everyone involved has had quite a ride.

The game, which not only featured infantry but also allowed players to control vehicles, stood out for its scale and variety. I avoid pretty much every other online shooter – I’m talking about infantry-only Call of Duty and Counter-Strike – like the plague, but I’ve always played Battlefield because I love the way he lets me spawn as a sniper, get killed and then guess what, you know what, I’ll then drive a tank, and maybe drive a fighter after that.

battlefield 1942 introduction

In the 20 years since, the series has changed a lot. The number of players has increased – 2042 has maps supporting 128 at a time, which is problematic but also amazing – while the setting has shifted to Vietnam, WWI, the far future and vice versa. poured. there were games where you play as a cop instead of a soldier, and spin-off games that were heavy on history. And that’s just the Battlefield series; DICE also released two Star Wars games around this time that are Battlefield in all but name.

And yet, that hasn’t really changed at all either. From Battlefield 1942 to Battlefield 2042, the basic premise of each game has remained largely the same. Two teams compete on a large map, trying to seize control points and kill players on the opposing side. You can use a variety of infantry weapons, or you can get behind the wheel of a vehicle, and some of those vehicles are slow and carry passengers, while others are fast and don’t.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Intro Video – HD

Each game had its issues, some technical and some design-related, and each game pissed off some veteran fans while attracting new players. As I pointed out in my 2042 reviewa Battlefield game suffering from a poor launch and then recovering through patches and updates is almost a meme at this point, something we’re experiencing in real time again as 2042 slowly recovers from its own disastrous exit.

On an occasion like this it’s natural to look back on the series and remember the good times—something DICE have marked this week with…free goodies for 2042 players—but 2042’s woes and the direction the series is headed in have also been cause for concern with players when it comes to Battlefield’s future.

Battlefield games were for the longest time seen as standalone video games, which you bought, played for a few years then moved on from when the next one came out. It’s clear now though, in this age of season passes andlive service games– that DICE (or maybe just their publisher overlords at EA) see a slightly different path for Battlefield, one where games are kept alive for years while fans are encouraged to constantly spend on things like expansions and cosmetic content. A push that, when viewed as part of similar industry moves in other games and genres, has become both exhausting and a bone of contention for many gamers.

It’s not like the show itself is under threat; indeed it was only last week that EA announced that a whole new studio is working on a whole new Battlefield “experience”, while tweeting that they were “completely convinced about the future of Battlefield!”. But it’s still a troubling trend, and one that has people rightly worried about what the next Battlefield game might look like.

BATTLEFIELD 1942 Full Game Walkthrough – No Commentary (Battlefield 1942 Full Game) 2020

I don’t know if anyone would have thought in 2002 that this series would continue in 2022. And I’m sure no one could have seen the twists it took in the decades that followed. So any attempt to predict the future of Battlefield would likely be equally futile.

Perhaps season passes and cosmetic microtransactions will lead the series into the dirt. Maybe DICE will learn from the things people hated about 2042 – not bugs or things that could be fixed, but fundamental economic decisions like introducing specialists – and make amends with the next game. . Who knows! We can only wait and see, just as we have for the past 20 years.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend some time today playing Battlefield 2042 from 2021 so I can enjoy a remake of a map (Caspian Border) from Battlefield 3 from 2011, which is pretty much a celebration of the Most fitting 20th anniversary I can think of.

Image: EA

Hi, yes, it’s me again, one of 14 people on Earth who enjoy playing Battlefield 2042. Like I entering my sixth month of playand as I approach the game’s level cap, I’ve recently found that my attention shifts to the finer details of the cards in the game and which ones I prefer to play.

Six months ago, I think I hated them all. Or at least hadn’t yet figured out how they work in this much-tweaked entry in the series. It’s the same way I think a lot of series veterans still struggle to come to terms with so many other things about Battlefield 2042. The maps all felt so big, so empty, so fit for chopper play and tank and nothing else.

I’ve put enough hours into the game now to know that’s only partially true. Some of the cards in the game are indeed barren wastelands in dire need of readjustment, but others have become some of my favorites in the entire series. Let’s find out which is which (and note that I’m only ranking original 2042 Conquest/Breakthrough maps here, not classic Portal maps like Caspian Border that have had their day!).

8. KALEIDOSCOPE

Image: EA

Yikes. This map is a complete disaster, from top to bottom. Which, funnily enough, are the only two levels Kaleidoscope takes place at. Its flat, central “bowl” shape has turned it into a meat grinder, a place where only snipers positioned in the towers looming over the periphery can have a good time, and I will audibly groan every time I see it loading up. And I’m a sniper, so that’s saying something.

7. HOURGLASS

Image: EA

There are some cool areas here on this enormous desert map, like the half-buried stadium, residential villages, and downtown area, and when battles focus on these flashpoints they can be great! But the wide open dunes in between them are a nightmare for both infantry (because of vehicles) and vehicles (because of choppers), and whenever you hear about a player complaining about long slogs for foot soldiers, this is probably the map they’re talking about.

6. DISCARDED

Image: EA

Discarded looks a lot more interesting than it actually is. The various, enormous rusting ship hulks should be the highlight here, but the wide open spaces around them, and the repetitive architecture, makes them a bit of a drag. Instead, it’s the smaller vantage points on the edge of the map, like a temporary settlement paired with a comms tower, that lead to the most enjoyable showdowns.

5. BREAKAWAY

Image: EA

If someone is complaining about a long walk on foot and it’s not Hourglass, it’ll be Breakaway. But DICE’s depiction of a climate-ravaged Antarctic base also has some exquisitely-linked capture points in its main cluster of buildings, and a terrific elevated “gateway” point where the towering ice shelf ramps down to the valley below. I’m also a big fan of the absurdity of its mountaintop station, which can only be reached by aircraft or a single zipline.

4. RENEWAL

Image: EA

The most visually appealing map in the game, Renewal’s defining feature—and my favourite thing about it—is a gigantic wall that runs right through the middle of it, separating a desert region from lush green farmland. Enormous battles are thus almost always centred around who is holding this wall’s central entry point, which looks cool as hell, but also in turn makes any flanking breach an exciting firefight.

3. MANIFEST

Image: EA

Here’s a big surprise! If you’d asked me a week after release which was my least favourite map, I’d have said Manifest, because the fact it’s 70% stacked shipping containers was repetitive as hell. But first impressions can be deceiving, and this map’s various levels of elevation, and the endless struggles to control the central hill looking down on the rest of the map, mean this is actually one of the most interesting—and varied—maps available, in terms of the kinds of experiences it offers to all classes and vehicle types.

2. ORBITAL

Image: EA

Orbital is a big map but never feels like a chore to get around, and has wide open spaces for vehicle duels but also plenty of cover and terrain variety for infantry. It has iconic focal points but also large tracts of interesting countryside in between, and even the game’s standout map-based trick, when a huge space rocket either takes off or explodes on the launchpad mid-game.

Of all the maps the game launched with, Orbital was easily the most “Battlefieldy” of them all.

1. EXPOSURE

Image: EA

Exposure, you arrived not a moment too soon. Addressing nearly every complaint fans had with the game’s launch stages—and also likely benefitting from more time in the oven than 2042’s initial roster—Exposure is an incredible map, and for me has instantly landed in the Pantheon of all-time greats for the series. Set amidst a landslide, it’s really three maps in one, and has everything every kind of player could want, from tense firefights in cramped tunnels to tank duels on grassy plains. A particular highlight is the struggle over a boardroom jutting out from a sheer cliff face, which somehow combines intense urban combat with aerial bombardments from outside, and the verticality of letting players parachute their way out of it. The giant tank elevator is also great.

No matter where you end up on this map, it’s just fun. It’s so good that, weeks after season 1 launchDICE still runs a mode where you can just play that card over and over and over all day.

A note before we go: I’ve tried to rank them on some sort of vague overall level of enjoyment, rather than tailoring them to certain playstyles. And that’s how things are in March 2022; I’ll be adding to this list whenever the game receives new maps, which hopefully will arrive soon!

UPDATE, June 27: Now that Exposure is out, I’ve added it to the list, right at #1.

Photo: Kevork Djansezian (Getty Images)

Vince Zampella, General Manager of Respawn Entertainment and responsible for some of Electronic Arts largest franchisesspoke out on Twitter in support of transgender rights ahead of the start of Pride Month on June 1. for its relative silence on these issues.

“Trans rights are human rights,” Zampella tweeted on Tuesday. “It’s as simple as that. Respawn has grown on the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion and strives to uphold these values. Let’s be better humans.

Zampella was previously the co-founder of Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward and is currently the head of EA studios at the crossroads of Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Battlefield. The publisher has bet big on his vision and leadership, which now includes speaking out on pressing social issues where his employer has remained silent. Many developers, including some at EA, thanked Zampella in the comments to the tweet for expressing their support. Zampella did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The gaming industry veteran’s statement came after a meeting earlier today on LGTBQ+ issues led by EA’s DEI General Manager, Asha George, and EA Studios COO, Kate Kellogg, according to two sources familiar with the event. There, they again faced questions from employees about why EA wouldn’t take a public stance on topics like transgender rights and abortion rights.

G/O Media may receive a commission

30-Day Free Trial

Homer Learn & Grow Program

Stimulate your kids’ minds
Your little ones are glued to the screen, and that’s a reality we have to accept. But what if they could learn and grow while watching videos and playing games? Create a foundation for learning with this free trial.

Sources said some staff were once again dismayed with the lack of clear answers from management, whose response again appeared to lean on the idea of abortion and trans rights lacking company-wide support. Kellogg and George effectively echoed chief people officer Mala Singh’s remarks from an internal company town hall a week ago.

“These are incredibly complex personal issues and an inclusive business means including all of these perspectives,” she said at the time, without specifying what other “perspectives” might be on issues such as transgender rights. Sources said Kellogg and George followed his lead in trying to focus the conversation on what EA can do to meet the individual health needs of its employees amid right-wing culture wars and attacks on human rights. ‘man.

The Battlefield publisher had once sponsored a Dallas Morning News ad alongside dozens of other companies condemning a grossly transphobic government order in Texas. “We are proud to join the Human Rights Campaign, along with other members of the business community, to oppose discriminatory laws and policies introduced in Texas, Florida and other states across the country,” he said. said in a statement. time.

However, neither that sentiment nor Zampella’s has ever been shared on EA’s website or social media. It’s in stark contrast to studios like Bungie and certain affinity, who haven’t been shy about taking a stand on polarizing issues that other game companies have apparently deemed too controversial to take a stand on. It’s not yet clear how EA in particular will reconcile its current silence with its Pride Month 2022 activities.

“Pride is not about ignoring this harsh reality to celebrate, pride is and always has been about celebrating in the face of hate,” the publisher said. written in a blog post at the start of Pride month last year. “We know we can do more for our LGBTQIA+ employees and players.”

Update 05/31/2022 7:41 PM ET: An EA spokesperson commented, “EA’s support of the LGBTQIA+ and trans communities is longstanding and enduring, and has been shared widely and publicly,” and provided a link to the link mentioned above. Pride 2021 EA blog post.

So, Battlefield 2042, huh. People sure have opinions about Battlefield 2042. In fact you could drive a main battle tank through the divide between a lot of the critical and popular reaction to DICE’s latest, the first modern (or in this case near-modern) Battlefield since 2013’s Battlefield 4.

A lot of professional reviews say it’s fine. Good, even. That it has some issues, sure, but that at its heart it’s big and fun like all good Battlefield games should be. A lot of upset fans, however, hate it. Can’t stand it. They say it’s broken, that it’s half a game, that it’s the worst Battlefield game ever made.

This discrepancy has kept me fascinated for the last few weeks as I’ve played my own way through the game, like an exhausted soldier wading through the game’s rising sea levels. For most of that time the in-game chat has been almost exclusively about how **** the game is (a bot automatically censors naughty words), how unbalanced it is, how nobody wants to be playing it, yet nearly every time I fired it up I was…enjoying myself?

Something was up, so after I decided I was going to review this game, I decided I was also going to wait a few weeks and see how 2042’s launch madness settled down, let me play it after a couple of updates had been downloaded, and see how everyone was doing after Battlefield fans had a chance to see the game for what it was, not what they wanted it to be.

Image: Battlefield 2042

What I’ve found is a game where both sides can be right. There is a very fun and explosive video game here, one that doesn’t just continue Battlefield’s unique multiplayer legacy but expands on it in ways we could only have dreamed of a decade ago. Yet this is also half a video game, with a laundry list of things that feel either broken, missing or empty, as though EA had run a beta then charged everyone full price for…another beta.

The first thing that strikes you about Battlefield 2042 is that, if you’ve played any game in the series over the last decade, you’ll immediately notice the things you think are missing, not the things that are there. It’s very easy to look at the last few Battlefield games and see what they offered and what’s not in Battlefield 2042—as this exhaustive, widely-shared compendium has—and assume those things have all been simply withheld.

Like when you’re first dumped onto the game’s sparse main menu screen and it’s clear there’s no specific singleplayer, which is a huge bummer considering the work that went into crafting this near-future, not-quite-dystopian world. Indeed it’s clear there’s not much going on at all, with less game modes to choose from and a clear emphasis on just a couple of those that are present.

Get into a game and that sense of loss continues. Maps are bigger but also empty in large parts, resulting in long slogs for infantry specialists. There are less weapons to use. The class system (as it exists in relation to players fulfilling specific roles like medic and engineer) is gone. Factions are all but gone. There are no leaderboards, no scoreboards, no way to track your K:D ratio or see at the end of a game who got the most headshots.

Like most other players jumping in for the first time, and whose last experience with a Battlefield game had been with one that had been polished, updated and expanded for years, all I could see were the holes. The gaps where features and choices used to be. And it sucked.

Image: Battlefield 2042

That’s how I spent my first week playing, anyway, as it felt like most experienced players did (judging by the in-game chat and general discourse, at least). We were all “playing” the game, but really what we were doing was taking notes and comparing, as though we were all playing the latest edition of FIFA or NBA 2K, annual releases where so much time is spent cataloguing what was new and what was old, what was better and what was worse than the last one you played.

As I did this, I found myself agreeing with a lot of what the masses of upset fans were saying. The whole thing did feel shallow, and meaningless. Some of the stuff that was missing removed a lot of people’s motivation to play the game, deprived them of a sense of purpose compelling them to log on every day. Basically, Battlefield 2042 was barely a coherent video game at all. It was more a collection of maps and animations and ideas stuck together with tape, with “BATTLEFIELD” slapped over the front of it all in an attempt to pass it off as something more.

At the same time, though, I kept finding myself coming back. Past the oversights, past the errors, I just kept logging on and enjoying the game in spite of it all. There was a ton of debris scattered all over this smoking crater of a launch, and I don’t begrudge anyone from surveying the scene and assuming the entire game had been completely destroyed, but picking amongst the wreckage I’d found some things I really loved as well.

What I found was that not everything was missing. There’s a difference between something that is withheld and something the game’s developers have removed with a clear design intent in mind. Turns out I love the leaderboards being gone, for example, because I never play Battlefield for K:D ratios, I play it to be part of a big battle where I’m fighting alongside and helping my teammates however I can, and the new end-of-round displays—which shout out a few key achievements, rather than meticulously listing everyone’s stats—reflect that.

Image: Battlefield 2042

I’ve come around to the idea of the game’s Specialists as well, or at least the idea of them, though even here there’s a conundrum that sums up this game’s design conflicts. They’re a difficult implementation to unpack because including them in the game meant removing the old class system; I miss the simplicity and visual identifiers traditional soldier types provided, and I hate their chirpy and repetitive one-liners, but I also really like the ability to pick a soldier and tailor them so specifically to the way I like to play the game.

Most of all, though, what keeps me coming back in spite of all these problems is the game’s scale. Battlefield 2042 may be lacking in singleplayer, and its smaller game modes are little more than a diversion (the build-your-own Portal mode has promise, but is often devoid of players, even on classic maps like Battlefield 3’s Caspian Border), but this is a Battlefield game that knows more than any other that the main draw here are the big battles, and has built itself around them accordingly.

By doubling the playercount in its tentpole Conquest and Breakthrough modes, from 64 players to 128 (on PC and next-gen at least, PS4 and Xbox One are capped at 64), this is Battlefield at its loudest, largest and most chaotic. And I don’t know about you, but those are exactly the things that get me playing these games in the first place.

If you’re playing Conquest, that most traditional of Battlefield experiences where two teams fight over a bunch of flags, you’ll notice that you’re now actually fighting over clusters of flags, on maps so big that you can spend most of them engrossed in just one part of them, your actions just one part of a story playing out across multiple objectives.

Switch to Breakthrough, though, the mode that just throws two teams against one another across a map-wide frontline, and you’ll come the closest this series has ever come to feeling like you’re fighting a war. While the mode itself is not new to this game, the experience of fighting alongside 63 other humans across a line in the map, explosions and tracers and vehicle fire erupting all around you, is bigger and grander here than ever. Cresting a hill to see dozens of colleagues rushing a control point, choppers crashing and tanks firing off rounds all around you, is simply incredible.

Image: Battlefield 2042

It’s here, in these moments of cinematic bombast, that I’m most comfortable calling this a very good video game. When it becomes clear that many of the changes made to this game aren’t omissions, but rather changes made to accommodate this new and bigger focus. Of course it’s boring for infantry to walk around, the maps needed to be big enough for 128 players, that’s why you can almost always summon a car to get around in. Leaderboards are nice but how useful can they be when 128 players are involved, and many of them have dropped in or out of the game during its 45-minute duration? Taking a step back and seeing what Battlefield 2042’s focus is, instead of holding it up against different and older games, makes determining some of what it is (and isn’t) a little clearer, a little easier to take.

Then a round ends, and everyone gets dumped back into an anonymous lobby system, all new sides are picked and we’re sent right back into it all over again, and I start to understand once more why so many longtime fans, those who spend hours a day playing their way up the ranks, aren’t as big a fan of this as I am.

The word “unfinished” gets thrown around a lot these days, often simply to refer to a game that is lacking in a bit of polish, or is missing a feature or two that fans wanted. But Battlefield 2042 truly feels unfinished, as though every menu screen and transition to a new map is a placeholder for something more final yet to come.

The process from picking a game mode to actually beginning gameplay is full of unexplained cutscenes and bizarrely half-completed animation sequences, and when fans say the game is lacking factions, what they mean is the game doesn’t really have them at all, with every vehicle across both the US and Russia’s arsenal the same (in some cases identical in functionality if not appearance, in most cases simply identical) and both sides populated with the same roster of Specialists.

The entire game’s framework is scaffolding around an unfinished building, and even a month after release, you can still see builders and electricians and tilers scrambling all over the site. Since launch a number of changes have been made to the game, and more still are coming. A lot of vital in-game information like damage counters and crew numbers have been added, wonky bullet spray has been fixed, frustrating checkpoints removed and overall the whole game now, even just a few weeks after release, is playing better and telling the player more stuff they need to know than it did at launch, when everyone was so upset with it.

They haven’t magically fixed everything everyone was complaining about, but it’s progress. We could and should have seen all this coming, of course. Every Battlefield game launches like this, and then gets years of patches and updates to refine the experience. Every time someone complains about how they spent 1000 hours on Battlefield 4 and won’t be coming back to Battlefield 2042, based only off their first week’s play, I think of stuff like this, and how time is a flat circle:

Image: Engadget | Eurogamer

But then this time also feels different. The problems aren’t just bugs or netcode or servers. Not everything wrong with this game can be plastered over with updates and patches. There’s an inescapable sensation here that whether cuts were made to it, its direction changed halfway through development or if it was simply too hard to make a Battlefield game in the middle of a pandemic (or all three!), many of the problems plaguing Battlefield 2042 are fundamental, and we’re stuck with them, whether you like them or not.

I’m used to reviewing games that are finished, that have some semblance of a clarity of purpose, because that’s the state you want to be critically assessing a game in. So looking at Battlefield 2042, even though it’s “out” and has been for a few weeks, has been tough.

Like I’ve said already, this is barely a game at all, at least in the sense we’d hope to approach such a title. It’s a collection of maps, ideas, guns, tanks and menus, all thrown into a box and a lid hastily pushed down on top of them, the only thing unifying them all being the fact they’re all in the same directory on my SSD called “Battlefield2042″.

For all its loose threads and empty holes and bad ideas, though, I can’t help but still enjoy my time with this game. Like an amalgamation of the wider reception to this polarising effort, I’ve ended up frustrated at everything wrong with Battlefield 2042 while still appreciating that the one thing it had to get right—making the player feel like they’re part of a Very Big Battle—is the one thing it absolutely nailed.