Vince Zampella’s plan to save Battlefield is to actually make it feel like Battlefield

A back-to-basics approach

DICE / EA

In its bid to save the Battlefield series after the disastrous Battlefield 2042, EA has made Vince Zampella a developer plenipotentiary for the next entry into the series – given his resume in the shooter and action game space, there’s hardly a better person for the job. Speaking to IGN, he revealed that the next Battlefield game will have a contemporary, modern setting, modeled after the likes of BF 3 and BF 4, which he sees as the “peak or pinnacle” of the franchise.

“I think we have to go back to the core of what Battlefield is,” he stated. That’s certainly what any fan of the series likes to hear after BF 2042 managed to single-handedly throw everything unique about the series out of the window in a bid to chase the success Call of Duty and hero shooters had at the time. Being cynical about it for a second, individual characters also allowed for more opportunities to sell cosmetics.

Going back to the basics means a few things for Zampella aside from a modern setting – most importantly the return of classes. BF 2042’s experiments with individual specialists as opposed to the series’ bread-and-butter system seemingly has been deemed a failure – rightfully so.

Another departure will be made in regards to maps and player counts with the next game having more focused battlefields as opposed to the sprawling areas of BF 2042. Connected to that is a step back to 64-player matches from the massive 128-player battles in the current entry.

A first piece of concept art shows a European-looking city located at a coast with helicopters buzzing through the air, ships cutting through the waters – one of them finding a fiery death – and munitions having caused a massive wildfire behind the city. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all of these elements are present in the final product, but it’s the best indicator we have right now.

Fans are happy about those first few crumbs of information, which definitely go into the direction they want to see, but the overall skepticism is not so easily dispelled – the last few launches for this series have left their marks on the fandom and even Vince Zampella might find that he’s got much work to do to win back trust and create enthusiasm.

EA is investing a lot into this new Battlefield game, having created a task force consisting of four studios to develop it – DICE, Ripple Effect, Ridgeline, and Criterion are all on the project.