Vince Zampella has given us a new peek into the future of Battlefield, and he’s planning the franchise’s return to the basics.
In an interview with IGN, he revealed that the game is going back to a modern setting, and why. Vince said:
“I mean, if you look back to the peak or the pinnacle of Battlefield, it’s that Battlefield 3… Battlefield 4 era where everything was modern. And I think we have to get back to the core of what Battlefield is and do that amazingly well, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.
But I think for me, it’s that peak of Battlefield-ness is in that Battlefield 3 and 4 days. So I think it’s nostalgic for players, for me, for the teams even. Those are kind of the heyday…although I would say 1942 also.”
Subsequently, IGN shared the image that you can see in this article, as the first official image from the next game. IGN also asked Vince about EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s claims that it would be one of the most ambitious projects in the company’s history. Here’s what Vince said:
“Yeah, it’s definitely betting bigger on Battlefield. It’s going in and expanding what Battlefield is. We have to have the core. The core Battlefield players know what they want. They’ve been with us forever, they’ve been amazing supporters. We need to earn their trust back and get them back on our side.
And then it’s expanding out and getting more players into the universe and seeing what we can do, so when you want a different experience, you don’t have to leave Battlefield. You can experience more things within the Battlefield universe. So we’re expanding the offerings that we’re giving.”
We know these quotes in particular sound like non-specific babble, so let’s scrutinize it for what Vince is hinting at but can’t say directly. While there’s a lot of speculation that EA still has live service hopes for Battlefield, this does not appear to be what Vince is talking about.
At least our interpretation of this is that EA is going to return to classic Battlefield as its core, and then build new experiences on top of that. What those new experiences could possibly be would now be the stuff of speculation. But maybe EA is looking at what Epic is doing to Fortnite, and thinking about doing something similar for their franchise.
So are we ready for Battlefield as a platform? It’s a vision of their big franchise that is completely different from the hub idea that Activision and Ubisoft have pursued for Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed, respectively. We don’t know if any of those ideas will work, but it could be entertaining to watch it play out.
