So long Battlefield 2042, it was ..real? Maybe not the best word for EA's ripped from the future take on its beloved military shooter. DICE has tried just about everything in its bid to be something besides the "other shooter" in its in war with Call of Duty.
This may be the year they succeed, and it's because the mission is actually to be more like Battlefield, specifically Battlefields 3 and 4. We didn't know what we had in those games until they were gone, and it looks like EA feels the same way now.
DICE has worked on this with Criterion, Motive, and Ripple Effect, with Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampanella in charge of the project. In many ways, what we've seen so far does play like Battlefield's Greatest Hits.
We're going back to 64-player lobbies after BF 2042 experimented unsuccessfully with 128 player battles. Yes, the larger player count more closely resembles an actual military conflict, but sometimes you need to let the video game be a video game.
Battlefield 6 will replace specialists with the classes we know and love: Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. But in a significant change, weapons are not class specific. I'm honestly not going to know how I feel about that until I've played for a few hours.
Speaking of which, there are two open betas coming. The first is Aug. 9-10 starting at 1 a.m. PT. The second is Aug. 14-16, again starting at 1 a.m. PT.