Battlefield

If you’re eager to devour any piece of Battlefield 6 news you can get your hands on, you’re likely feeling down now that Summer Game Fest season has come and gone without a single mention of the highly-anticipated shooter.

Following the conclusion of a fairly controversial Battlefield Labs playtest that look place at the end of May, players had theorised that we’re close to getting some sort of major news, initially suspecting 17th June as a significant date.

We’re a week past that, now, and developer DICE showed nothing to whet our appetites. All we’ve had are leaks.

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Players invited to previous Battlefield Labs playtests were recently surprised to see more tests scheduled, when most players keeping up with the in-development title believed tests would be suspended until a major update had been released.

These June playtests introduced an updated version of the Domination game mode, which had some very Call of Duty-like ideas, such as the ability to respawn immediately without having to wait for a revive. This is unusual for a Battlefield game.

Beyond that, there are some pretty big changes to the Battlefield norm afoot in the Labs playtests, to date. Here are some of the most interesting changes and ideas we’ve seen in Battlefield 6 so far, based on what we know from the in-development tests.

Weapons

One of the most celebrated aspects of these fresh leaks relates to the number of weapons dug up in the playtest’s files. Respected dataminer, temporyal, recently posted a collection of all weapons referenced in the game’s files – a total of 52, split across eight categories.

Only a handful of those weapons were included in past Labs playtests, so there’s a chance we may not end up seeing everything on that list in the launch build of Battlefield 6, but considering Battlefield 2042’s anemic arsenal at launch, things are looking much better for the next game so far.

Just how different is Battlefield 6 going to be compared to 2042? We shouldn’t have too much longer to wait to find out. | Image credit: EA

Battle Royale

Battle royale findings have been persistent across all recent builds – and reports suggesting there’ll be a BR mode in the game have certainly helped – even if hard information is rare at this time. We do know that some of the studios behind Battlefield 6 are each working on separate modes, one of which is strongly believed to be a modern iteration of Firestorm: Battlefield’s forgotten battle royale mode.

Firestorm debuted with Battlefield 5, but a big reason it never caught onis because it was locked behind a purchase of the full game, and not free-to-play like Call of Duty: Warzone or, indeed, most battle royale games. Rectifying this is something EA is supposedly keen to correct with Battlefield 6’s take on the mode, and recent leaks appear to suggest the mode will operate separately from the core game, and that it won’t require a copy of the full release to access. Meaning, one can assume, it will be free-to-play.

A Battlefield Labs June patch included some new art and various bits of text that reference Firestorm, which supposedly takes place following an explosion in a place called Fort Lyndon (likely the map’s name, in the same way Warzone has become synonymous with Verdansk). The size of the recent patch might also indicate that DICE is keen on testing the BR mode soon, so we’ll have to see if that ends up happening with the next few Labs playtests.

How different will BF6’s implementation of the battle royale Firestorm mode be? | Image credit: EA

Campaign

One of the next game’s much less-discussed aspects is its narrative campaign, which we know practically nothing about. The recent patch, however, included a video from one of the game’s campaign missions, which supposedly shows the end of a narrative segment in which a squad of soldiers destroy a dam in Tajikistan.

The video has multiple unfinished assets, and is very much work-in-progress. But it’s something, at least, offering hope to the players that want a return to classic Battlefield campaigns.

Many are hoping for a different approach to the campaign, this time around.

The official title of Battlefield 6

Most of the discoveries we covered so far are part of the fairly large updates BF Labs has recently received. One of the most interesting, however, points to the official title of the game – and that does appear to be, simply, Battlefield 6.

It’s worth noting that EA Play and all official/player-facing areas of the Battlefield Labs tests do not show Battlefield 6 as the title, but the June updates have added strings of code across several areas of the game that all use that moniker when referring to the game, strongly indicating that DICE and EA have finally settled on an official name for the first-person shooter.

Those updates also coincided with tweaks to some of the Labs language to indicate that the game had moved from pre-alpha into alpha, which players believe paves the road for a more public test soon – though that’s not a new theory.

At least it’s not going to be called just ‘Battlefield’ (…in theory). | Image credit: EA

It’s clear we’re inching closer to the game’s proper reveal. EA confirmed in May that the next Battlefield will be unveiled in the summer. Seeing as June is almost over, a July reveal is the next best bet, (unless the game’s reveal party is instead planned for gamescom in August).

Until then, more Battlefield playtests will only result in more datamining and more leaks, so we’ll have to use those for sustenance while we wait for official channels to start waking up.

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