To be perfectly honest, I didn’t even want to think about the Battlefield series after the failure of Battlefield 2042, but the teasers and reveals of Battlefield 6 shook my belief that the series was dead for good. After the mind-blowing and incredibly productive multiplayer beta test ended, I finally decided to pick up Battlefield 6.
As I previously wrote, the multiplayer has returned to the foundations of the 3rd and 4th installments, which, in my opinion, were the most enjoyable in terms of gameplay and balance. However, the publisher decided that no, that’s not enough for players; they need to introduce a free Game Pass for Battlefield 2042, which will include cosmetics for Battlefield 6.
To deal with that, players created a bunch of custom servers in Portal mode, where you get experience for this Battle Pass by AFK farming… Players refused to “play” 2042 because it’s one of the worst Battlefield games to date. Empty, uninspired, too huge for its own good in scale, even though there were attempts to “fix” it, everyone simply refused to play. However, Battlefield 2042’s online player count never exceeded 100,000, remaining somewhere around the 70-80,000 player mark at launch.
At launch, Battlefield 6’s online smashed the 500,000-player ceiling, queues moved incredibly quickly, and multiplayer was relatively trouble-free, aside from the occasional cheater (of which I encountered very few in the dozens of hours I played multiplayer, and even they quickly “disappeared”). There’s a progression bar for unlockable equipment and weapons—want a mortar or an RPG? Go for it! Balance was tweaked for release, and the game was in excellent condition, but that’s limited to multiplayer.
Even the launch was marred by issues, and no, not on Steam. When I tried to launch the game in the EA app, it simply couldn’t find itself, returning the error “Game not found—reinstall.” After downloading, installing, and unpacking shaders, it returned the same error AGAIN. Infuriated, I bought the game on Steam, where it downloaded faster and installed just as quickly. Vince Zampella tweeted asking everyone to refund on EA App and buy the game on Steam, but the problem was, players couldn’t even get a refund. The refund tool was simply unavailable.
But what’s at the core of the story? Battlefield’s story isn’t set in a separate world, like the plots of parts 3-4 and 2042, for example, are sequential and continue each other. Although the 2042 campaign mocked the characters and events of BF 3-4, we had hoped that the “return to form” theme would apply to the campaign portion as well. The community demanded a return to the large-scale, epic, and emotionally charged “war stories” that once became the franchise’s hallmark, starting with Bad Company.
But, as good as Battlefield 6’s multiplayer is, the new shooter’s story campaign is just as bad. It could even be called atrocious, as it’s bad in EVERY way. Battlefield 6 is set in 2027–2028, when the private military company Pax Armata has effectively transformed global conflict—it has fractured from NATO and begun to terrorize the world by demonstrating its power and impunity. The storyline depicts this organization literally crossing borders, destroying NATO military bases around the world, creating chaos where order and stability once reigned.
The very Citadel of Democracy—a symbol of Western values—is under threat, outlining the scale of the threat that our heroes must confront. The stories of Pax Armata are shrouded in mystery: who is behind the PMC’s management, what goals do its leaders pursue, and who finances their activities, all of this remains a mystery.
This creates the feeling that players are dealing not only with a technologically-advanced tactical force, but also with the powerful shadow of global intrigues. In the game, the elite Dagger squad is dispatched to combat this threat—a team of the finest operatives who, as the story unfolds, travel the globe, completing a series of critical missions.
The campaign takes approximately five hours to complete on the hardest difficulty level, which isn’t particularly long for a modern shooter, but it’s enough to present the global threat and demonstrate the level of teamwork. The protagonist is an operative codenamed Dagger 1-3, a member of the elite US Marine Raiders.
The team consists of Carter, a stormtrooper and impulsive leader; Murphy, an engineer and techie with a sarcastic wit; Gecko, a scout and sniper with a drone companion; and Lopez, a support and logistics specialist. However, remembering their names isn’t necessary: the characters in the game are so stereotypical and clichéd that it feels as if they were created by neural networks or cloned from hundreds of similar heroes.
They differ in appearance, but their personalities are practically identical: all are equally “animated,” with the same level of emotion and reactions. Lacking any clear charisma or individuality, it seems as if they were brought together only by the script to fill an initially dull set of roles. A certain Hemlock stands out—a character seemingly with his own unique traits, but overall, he’s like a “discount Ghost,” if you recall the character from Call of Duty. The game clearly wanted to introduce its own Simon Riley counterpart, but the character turned out to be almost a caricature.
One of the missions is dedicated to an Egyptian in a tank, even though he’s not even a member of the Dagger squad. Apparently, the developers really wanted a level with a combat vehicle, but couldn’t figure out why the main characters would actually get into a tank—it feels rather forced and unnatural. The characters’ dialogue certainly undermines the atmosphere: it often feels like the actors are reading from different pages of a script; one speaks pompously, while the other responds with the most meaningless phrases.
Instead of building a logical chain of events or making the dialogue natural and emotional, the developers opted to overload it with bombastic and long-winded lines that seem almost robotic. As a result, the game becomes a collection of clichés and scenes without any genuine dramatic moments.
The game’s plot repeatedly attempts to evoke emotional attachment to the protagonists’ fates, but these attempts feel rather unconvincing and artificial. Despite the developers’ efforts, the characters and their experiences remain uninteresting—it seems as if their stories evoke no genuine response. Nevertheless, the writers’ courage must be acknowledged, leaving a fairly clear hint at the continuation of the Dagger squad’s story in the finale.
The campaign emphasizes mission diversity, covering a wide range of operations to sabotage the Pax Armata organization: from subtle intelligence gathering to large-scale assaults in a variety of settings. The script highlights the internal conflicts within the squad—betrayals, moral dilemmas, and personal dramas—which was intended to add depth to the narrative.
The locations are truly impressive in their geographical breadth—the beaches of Gibraltar, a devastated New York City, the mountainous regions of Tajikistan, and tense shootouts on trains traveling through European tunnels.
Nevertheless, the plot structure itself is built on a simple principle—a chain of escalating missions that expose the corrupt mechanisms of the PMC and their grandiose plans to remake the world order. The game does try to strike several emotional chords: team losses, pressure of circumstances, patriotic pathos, revenge, and heroism—all of these elements, however, seem extremely predictable, reminiscent of classic American action films of the early 2000s.
It’s precisely this set of familiar clichés that becomes the story’s main problem. Instead of original plot twists or deep character development, the developers present characters as if from a template database accessible to any aspiring screenwriter. As a result, the plot lacks any real twists or surprises—it’s so formulaic that the only truly engaging aspect is the level design, not the narrative itself.
Battlefield 6’s story campaign is a classic example of a corridor shooter, almost completely devoid of freedom of choice and variation. The game follows a strict formula: a typical playthrough is a series of monotonous, linear missions that boil down to the scenario of “talk – shoot – cutscene – shoot again – dialogue – wave of enemies – mission finale in the form of a short cutscene.”
Only one location in Tajikistan offers some freedom of movement: you can run, drive in a small area, or move across a wide area, which adds some variety to the gameplay. In all other cases, you’re faced with a meticulously designed corridor that runs from beginning to end without any deviations.
There are a couple of exceptions: several times you’ll be given the opportunity to drive a tank or, once, an armored vehicle with amphibious tracks—but even these missions aren’t particularly difficult. Even on the “Hardcore” setting, they resemble a children’s shooting gallery—they offer neither particular difficulty nor any noticeable challenges. These sequences serve more as simple entertainment than as a test of skill.
As for destruction, it was the “star of the show” promised in the preview, but in the final version, almost everything is missing. The game is strictly scripted: crumbling walls, exploding objects—everything looks mechanical and without random effects. In most missions, the environment remains static, with the exception of the crumbling buildings in New York, where, incidentally, the cardboard walls of the houses crumble even with the slightest touch—perhaps the only notable exception. In all other scenes, there are practically no explosive cylinders or destructible objects. Even the gas cylinders next to the burning car don’t explode, suggesting a complete lack of dynamism and a sense of rampant chaos.
The combat system is quite boring, albeit logical for the genre. Enemies approach you directly, sometimes using cover, but often leaving only one vulnerable part of the body—the head. Firefights are rather routine, as enemies aren’t particularly creative or strategic. Sometimes, just being in a machine gun’s sights is enough to kill you, but generally, death only occurs in rare instances.
Health regeneration occurs after 3-4 seconds of idle time, making the game even more easy and relaxed. One slightly pleasant aspect is the reward system for completing special missions, which offer the opportunity to earn unique skins or bonuses in multiplayer. However, these bonuses are more of a nice addition than a significant motivator for replayability, as the story and campaign mechanics clearly leave much to be desired. Overall, Battlefield 6, in terms of gameplay solutions, is a dull and predictable product that fails to engage even the most hardcore fans of the genre.
Technical execution isn’t without its drawbacks and problems, though they’re not particularly serious. The gunfire and environmental sounds are truly impressive, but you’ll encounter scenes where the audio is out of sync with the image several times throughout the story. There are also some graphical glitches, like enemies stuck in awkward positions or, say, a radio stuck to the back of your hand.
Some moments deserve special mention: rappelling down a dam—WITHOUT gloves, carabiners, or belts… The developers should have been sent on such a rappel themselves, they’d be left without their hands, but with a new, painful, yet memorable experience.
A half-meter-long stack of C4s appears out of nowhere… and not even just one stack. Nope. I could understand if the heroes went into the armory and took it from there, carrying it “somewhere,” but no, the Cluster-C4 is simply taken from the pocket. And the explosions from 2-3 of these clusters can cover a multi-story building, collapsing it. Yeah, yeah… that’s what happens, right? (Spoiler: No. It doesn’t…)
I understand the developers’ desire to create a visually appealing explosion for a movie-like plot. But you could at least tone down the pathos sometimes and add some logic. Visually, oddly enough, it all looks really cool, sleek, and beautiful.
Optimization is top-notch; even on 2060-level maps, the game looks colorful and beautiful, without lag. The only problem is when the game runs at 100+ FPS and the in-game cutscenes are at 30… was it really that hard to make cutscenes using the gameplay engine? Frostbite allows for it, doesn’t it? Did they just… not bother? Judging the storyline alone, it’s barely a 4 out of 10.
But fortunately, Battlefield is more about multiplayer, which is very, very good.
