This latest entry in the long-running first person shooter series returns to its defining features of large-scale multiplayer battles, with destructible environments, vehicles, and squad-focused gameplay. After Battlefield 2042 left a single-player campaign out of the mix to focus on multiplayer, it’s nice to see one included this time around.
It is set in the far future of — uh, 2027 — when NATO has fractured and a private military company, Pax Armata, has expanded its power in the vacuum that followed. You play as members of elite squad "Dagger 1-3", who hope to destabilise Pax operations in missions around the globe. Most of the story takes place in flashback, with in-between segments where Dagger 1-3 interrogate their handler for information about the missions you undertook.
The squad gameplay translates over to the campaign, where you can order your squad to attack or use special abilities with a short cooldown — admittedly it’s a little weird that you pointing at a guy is what it takes for your AI buddies to actually learn to aim. The Recon ability is king here, marking every enemy in range, and you should be using it every chance you get. You also get two downs where you can call your squad to come pick you up so you can continue the fight. I had some issues with this feature in which the squad members seemed to get stuck and fail to get me up, including one moment where every squad member went down before they could pick me up because they were apparently just on strike.
Despite a potentially gripping story of a weakened NATO versus a massive PMC, with you having to figure out in-between shootouts if your squad are right, wrong or potentially even evil with regards to interrogating their handler, the set-up squanders any potential it has. The story and characters are weak and I found myself rolling my eyes are some of the more cliched tropes. There’s an attempt to garner some of your sympathy for one member of your squad by letting you play as them in a mission in which their original team was wiped out, but as with much of the story I just shrugged because I wasn’t given much time to bond with or care about them. The main squad characters all really have the same personality — "stoic military personnel" — and I honestly couldn’t tell you what separates one from the other. And the ending and reveals felt so "whatever"; a non-committal shrug which left a lot open, (hopefully for a much better story expansion). It really feels like the campaign was cut down or rushed, as there are parts of the story which try to insist that the squad is having to pull together through almost falling apart, but there didn’t seem to be much indication of that.
I think one of the most important parts of a campaign is the antagonist, and the one we get here, Kincaid, is not a good one. He doesn’t get enough buildup or screentime; his backstory is relegated to a few lines from the squad leader and his motivation and drive isn’t shown in any interesting way.
There’s also a distinct lack of variety in the campaign. It’s mainly "shoot enemies, go to another place to get a lengthy cutscene or shoot more enemies, repeat ad infinitum" until the credits roll. The few departures from this formula are also poorly executed, including the most limited stealth section I’ve ever played and a tank section where it really felt like I had got into the tank made out of papier-mache. The best mission was one where you have to destroy a few machines in a wide-open map and are given some vehicles to move around in, a sniper and a drone to spot enemies, and can complete the objectives in any order. This is what I expected more of from a Battlefield campaign. Alas, after that section, it went back to linear corridors and not caring about the cast at all.
There’s also a missed opportunity in the number of times you see cool things that would have been awesome to play (like jumping out of a plane into enemy territory), but are instead presented to you in a cutscene. In fact, there’s a lot of cutscenes everywhere, some lasting several long minutes. This ruins the good flow of the gunplay — which is highlighted to a ludicrous extent in a later mission where you enter a building, watch a cutscene, leave the building to defend it from four enemies, then go back inside to get yet another cutscene. It’s mad!
All-in-all, because of the failings of the story and characters, it’s a mercy that the single-player campaign is rather short. I generally like short but great campaigns — Titanfall 2’s comes to mind — but this was just short and disappointing.
There are four main classes, each with different specialisations and weapon preferences. Assault is your all-round combatant, generally armed with an assault rifle. Engineer is your anti-armour class with an SMG, repairing vehicles and blowing them up in equal measure. Support is your medic and resupplier, armed with an LMG, and my personal favourite class. Recon are your scouts and snipers. (You will see a lot of these.) All the classes have their own weapon types, gadgets and play styles so you can customise to your heart’s content.
The squad gameplay is brought to the forefront in multiplayer. Each squad has four players, who co-ordinate and can voice chat between themselves. You can give orders to your squad, respawn on squad members and revive them without a defibrillator, while also getting extra score for actions done as a squad. Seeing your squad at the top of the leaderboard and in the "Best Squad" menu gives a pretty good morale boost.
There are a decent amount of game modes and maps to chew on. Conquest is the Battlefield staple; two teams of 32 players capturing 5 or more areas to reduce the other team’s points to zero. It’s a good push-and-pull type mode, where over-extending to try to get more points often leads to more getting flanked and retaken. There’s also other modes like the chaotic Domination and King of the Hill, close quarters combat with no respawn times and the new Escalation, which is similar to Conquest, but after your team holds more objectives, they become yours permanently, shrinking the map as time goes on. There are many more besides, including the "Portal" feature, a map editor which allows you to edit the maps and game modes, like having knifes and sledgehammers only or making a parkour style map. I won’t touch that personally, but someone on the internet has already made a Star Destroyer in it, so it seems fairly robust.
(An anecdotal warning to finish: if playing on PC be careful with Secure Boot, a requirement to enable so you can actually play the game on PC. It led to a friend of mine bricking his motherboard BIOS and us having to spend a few hours to fix it before he could actually play.)
All up, Battlefield 6 is a great multiplayer experience, dragged down by a very lacklustre campaign. I never thought I’d be enjoying the multiplayer quite so much as a single-player main. The campaign doesn’t have many redeeming aspects, so if you aren’t going to touch the multiplayer, then stay away. However, if you are new to the Battlefield series or are a seasoned veteran who wants a multiplayer experience, you can’t do much better than this.
