Battlefield campaigns have struggled with their identity throughout the series' history. While Call of Duty, Battlefield's main competitor in the first-person shooter space, has two storylines running through the parallel Modern Warfare and Black Ops subseries with recurring characters and overarching plots, Battlefield's single-player offerings have always been standalone. Battlefield 6 is no different, and the lack of canonical Battlefield universe lets the campaign down from the start.
You play as various members of Dagger 13, an elite Marine squad tasked with taking down Pax Armata, a private military corporation attempting to overthrow NATO. It's already somewhat reminiscent of some Call of Duty games, but the lack of attachment or familiarity with squad members Carter, Murphy, Gekko and Lopez means that attempts at stunning, emotional twists in the story hit like .45 caliber ammunition hitting the side of a tank.
The roughly 10-hour running time doesn't give you enough time to become attached to these characters, even though Battlefield Studios clearly wants you to care about them. However, there is a lot of variety in both location and mission style, and as a result the campaign never fails to be enjoyable. You visit Gibraltar, Brooklyn, Tajikistan and even the Pyramids of Giza near Cairo, racing along a nearby road in a tank.
However, while I'm no geopolitical expert and in no way qualified to talk about what would make logical sense in what is clearly going to be a war that could happen in real life, the places you visit seem mind-bogglingly random. There don't seem to be any thematic connections between the locations, especially in Gibraltar… even if it creates a new setting: HALO jumps, lands on top of a cliff, and descends into the streets of the city below.
Battlefield games tend to focus on war on an epic scale – it's in the name, after all – but most games Battlefield 6 The campaign takes place in small spaces. New York townhouses, Egyptian streets in a huge tank, even missions that may have an open area quickly throw you into corridors and tunnels. There is only one mission that truly feels like Battlefield: Operation Ember Strike. Eighth mission out of nine. This is when the game finally opens up and gives you several options to achieve your goal of destroying three missile sites.
In this mission, you'll face the vast plain of Tajikistan with enemy soldiers scattered everywhere, and you can approach these locations in any order, picking up a variety of weapons along the way. You're also given a drone that can be launched from cover to bomb enemies, allowing for even more tactical approaches. The problem is that while this mission ends with a truly massive story that is Battlefield in a nutshell, subsequent objectives revert to a much more linear format.
However, it is safe to say that Battlefield 6 kept the essence of what works: gunplay. This has always been the series' strongest point, from sniping and hitting enemies through windows to using a launcher and destroying a helicopter. A loadout customization option would have been useful to get a feel for how some of the various attachments and scopes work in a closed environment before jumping into multiplayer, but the weapons have the same feel to them. splendor and the sense of severity that they always have.
In terms of vehicles, there are no opportunities to pilot planes in the campaign, which would have gone a long way towards creating a brilliant set piece. The tanks, meanwhile, are the same as they've always been: clunky, difficult to maneuver, but tough as hell, and apparently accurate – “supposedly” given that I've never been in a tank in real life – in the way they deflect almost all incoming fire.
Ignoring the occasional bugs in this preview build – missing floor textures, AI squadmates either reviving you from 20 meters, running blindly through crowds of enemy soldiers just trying to save you, or your squad not following you at all – Battlefield 6 the campaign lacks a cohesive identity. It has its moments, but it doesn't shine a light on any halfway decent Call of Duty campaign. Nor does it rank particularly high among the Battlefield games released in 2010. Bad Company 2 is still at the top thanks to its incredible settings and depiction of war on such a large scale.
Fortunately, first impressions Battlefield 6The multiplayer – just a couple of matches, mind you, due to the fact that the servers weren't particularly crowded before launch – is already impressive. While the multiplayer component has always been a selling point for these games, we'll need to spend a few days with it post-launch to get a feel for how it performs on full servers before judging this game as a whole. So keep your eyes open. Until then Battlefield 6 It's hard to recommend based on the campaign alone.
