DICE has teased Battlefield 2042’s Season 4, named Eleventh Hour.
They shared a tweet linking to the scheduled YouTube video. The video goes live on February 17, 2023, in a matter of hours.
Originally released on November 19, 2021, Battlefield 2042 is the twelfth game in the series, and disposed of having a single player campaign in favor of an entirely multiplayer experience.
Interestingly, there is still a story for the game, based on the premise of a Kessler syndrome event being the impetus for a new war between the US and Russia in the far off future of 2042. This story is told within the multiplayer campaign itself, supported by a short preview film.
EA never released sales numbers for Battlefield 2042. While analysts shared data that it was the 2nd best-selling game on its launch month, and the 5th best-selling game of 2021, EA’s own executives confirmed that they considered the release a failure.
However, that isn’t the whole story for this game. While the Battlefield franchise head Vince Zampella himself said that the game was too ambitious, DICE did continue to work on improving the game via a steady stream of patches and updates. By December of 2022, DICE developers stated that they were finally satisfied with the state of the game. They delayed plans for the seasons of content for the franchise in favor of making those vital fixes to the game, so much so that season one didn’t properly start until June 2022, and Season 3 didn’t arrive until November of that same year.
DICE also revealed they were moving forward with a 5th season of the game, with both this 4th and 5th season coming in 2023. Alongside this announcement, they shared a lot of what we can expect for this upcoming 4th season reveal.
The biggest addition Season Four is going to bring is one final specialist. After Season Four, specialists will go back to being a class system, but before that is one more character to add to Battlefield 2042’s overarching story. That character will come alongside a new Battle Pass, gear, and a map. Some existing maps will also be getting tweaked, to adapt to the changing needs and tastes of the community.
In spite of Battlefield 2042’s failure, EA has made the unusual decision to fix the game and keep it going, even as they have cancelled Apex Legends Mobile. It just may be that Battlefield low-key had enough of a core following that taking all this effort was worth it.
