Last night, we were treated to the latest marketing material for EA’s Battlefield 2042. If you weren’t already excited and didn’t already have the release (22 October) date circled on your calendar, this might be what you need.
DICE has made it clear, from the initial announcement and every subsequent viewing, that players won’t be getting a single-player campaign this year. The company has instead chosen to focus on the multiplayer aspect and wants to give players a healthy selection for that. This will include the usual game modes we’ve seen in previous titles, to the all-new Battlefield Portal game mode that will let players customise their own experience.
The return of a familiar Battlefield face
However, that doesn’t seem to have stopped DICE from providing fans with some canonical backstory and we’re totally on board with it. In the seemingly big-budget short film Exodus, franchise fans see the return of Kimble “Irish” Graves, played once again by Michael K. Williams. If you need a little help remembering who that is, allow us to jog your memory.
At the end of DICE’s last modern entry in the franchise, Battlefield 4, the player-controlled Sgt. Daniel Recker leads his special-operations squad Tombstone to stop an evil guy from doing bad things. The final mission is set up to give the player a choice as to who should make the ultimate sacrifice to save people and accomplish the mission. That choice is between Irish and Chinese Secret Service agent Huang ‘Hannah’ Shuyi. Whomever you choose, the game does a fairly good job of making you feel the weight of your decision.
However, during the credits, you can hear Irish talking to Hannah, discussing their pasts and having no regrets moving forward. Some have speculated this could mean whoever went down actually survived.
Fast forward 22 years and it looks like Kimble “Irish” Graves is still with us. We also get to see another familiar face, Sgt. Clayton ‘Pac’ Pakowski, also a member of the Tombstone squad from BF4.
As we know from previous trailers, players will choose from 10 specialists to play as in Battlefield 2042, with Irish being the fifth so far. Specialists will all have their own unique gadgets and trait, while weapons, grenades and secondary gadgets will be available to all.
With 10 weeks still to go before the release, we look forward to seeing more world-building content from the narrative team of a multiplayer game, a medium where narrative usually takes a back seat. If you want to learn more about the world of Battlefield 2042 they have a nifty interactive webpage for you to explore.
If the popularity of the short film is anything to go by — 1.6 million views since it was posted 22 hours ago — then this looks like it’s going to be a rather popular game.
