Battlefield Is Going Back To A 'Narrative Campaign'

For the first time in almost a decade, the series is going big on story

Battlefield 3
Image: Battlefield 3

The last time the main Battlefield series dabbled with a proper campaign was all the way back in 2013, when Battlefield 4's single-player dropped and underwhelmed pretty much anyone who laid hands on it.

I know Battlefields 1 & 5 also had some single-player stuff, but they were more of a tutorial, and I don’t ever want to talk about Battlefield Hardline ever again. So news that EA wants to return to the idea of some kind of Battlefield campaign is—bear with me here—nevertheless a welcome one for fans, because as undercooked as many of Battlefield’s stories have been, they’ve also been weirdly memorable? Like, I think about this Battlefield 3 mission a lot:

Battlefield 3 : F18 Hornet Jet Mission | RTX 3080 12GB ( 4K Ultra Graphics )

This one too. Neither of them are particularly memorable from a gameplay perspective, but they were still wonderful technical showcases to blast through a couple of times:

US Tank Charge - Battlefield 3

There’s also fondness for the Bad Company spin-off games. Anyway, earlier today the Battlefield team tweeted that there’s a new studio at work on “a narrative campaign” experience for the series, before having to quickly clarify that this is an all-new thing, and not a part of Battlefield 2042:

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Ridgeline Games, this new studio, is being led by Marcus Lehto, one of the co-creators of Halo, and an accompanying blog post says:

Marcus will bring his long legacy of creating fascinating worlds and gripping narratives to Battlefield. Backed by a world-class team, he’ll be leading the charge to develop a narrative campaign set in the Battlefield universe that will engage fans in new and exciting ways while remaining true to the classic elements of the series.

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It’s funny that, for all the shit the game has eaten, Battlefield 2042 was perhaps the most fertile ground for a single-player experience in series history. Its vision of a climate-ravaged world, and armies made up of refugees fleeing the devastation, set it apart from the usual “US military vs [bad guys]” premise of most other modern shooters. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with instead, then, especially since they’re being so weird about calling it a “campaign experience” and not just “a new video game.