Off the back of my eight hours of gameplay during the multiplayer reveal event, and the additional 20 or so during the open beta weekends, I’ve been fairly vocal about my excitement for Battlefield 6. Going back to a modern conflict setting and aiming to recapture the series’ heights of Battlefield 3 and 4, the upcoming entry is ticking a lot of boxes for long-time fans like myself. One thing missing from my experience with the game so far, however, has been the larger-scale maps that incentivise purposeful use of vehicles and force players to adapt to ever-changing combat situations.
Battlefield Studios has my phone tapped or can read my thoughts, as we were invited to attend a digital preview session highlighting the two largest maps that will launch with the game. Over the course of four hours, I went hands-on with the new Mirak Valley map and the returning favourite, Operation Firestorm. The preview session also included the new Escalation mode that was only hinted at earlier, giving us a better impression of what the full package will look like come October 10.
Introduced to the map with a round of Conquest, Mirak Valley makes a hell of an initial impression. Reminiscent of Battlefield 3’s Damavand Peak, Mirak Valley is a long map comprised of control points laid out in a fairly even line, capped by the team’s HQ at either end. Players frantically jumped into tanks, quadbikes, and light-armour transports as the match began, bombing it towards the nearest flag, with a brave few making a beeline for the central point. As all great large-scale maps do, Mirak Valley’s layout builds a wonderful tension as both teams slowly make their way to the centre of the map for that first all-out firefight.
Don’t get caught out in the open, whatever you do
And the two control points that make up the map’s dead centre are the highlight. Two under-construction buildings, complete with a massive climbable crane, loom over the surrounding landscape. The cover afforded by the two structures ensured that the infantry largely determined the direct fight for control, but making it to them without getting turned into paste by a tank demanded some teamwork, or some lateral vertical thinking. Fights within the buildings were tense too, contrasting nicely with the open spaces, though few things beat hearing jets scream overhead, adding to the atmosphere.
The rest of Mirak Valley is a playground for heavy vehicles. Open plains are ripe for tanks to tear across, while tree lines, rock formations, and small collections of houses provide players on foot a chance to hide from the shells being lobbed across the map. Avoiding those open areas is essential for infantry, as Mirak Valley demonstrates the power afforded to airborne vehicles in Battlefield. Players who can wrangle helicopter and jet controls (of which I am not one) dominated the clear spaces of this map, picking off all poor souls desperate enough to sprint across a field.
These elements are essential to the Battlefield experience, highlighted perfectly by the series’ signature large-scale maps, with a truly great hall of fame location making a comeback. Operation Firestorm returns from Battlefield 3, looking and feeling just as I remember it from 2011. That might sound like an indictment, but I mean it as a compliment. The work Battlefield Studios has put into modernising this classic map is commendable, with updated destruction, modified points of interest, and tweaked geometry making Firestorm feel like a nostalgia trip that’s worth taking on its own merits, not just to walk down memory lane.
Ahh, it feels like home
Playing rounds of Conquest and Breakthrough gave me a chance to explore both maps in a familiar framework, but the new mode, Escalation, was the key takeaway from this session. True to its name, Escalation kicks off like a game of Conquest before slowly ramping up to a nail-biting crescendo that could see either team walk away with the win.
Control points are scattered across the map, with both teams vying to capture them. Instead of bleeding the other team of tickets, the team controlling the majority will fill their bar, earning a single point when it reaches the end. At this point, each team’s bar resets, and one control point is removed from the game, pushing players in that area to join another fight. This continues until one team scores three points, securing the victory.
Multiplayer matches of Battlefield can often feel like you’re either steamrolling the other team or you’re the one being flattened. Escalation, in my brief time with the mode, felt like an antidote to that dichotomy, with every round of it we played ending in a standoff for the final point, where the entire lobby descended on the few remaining flags. I’ve always been a Conquest man through and through, but after this preview event, it’s Escalation that I’ll be reaching for come the full release.
I was mostly focused on the new mode and maps during my sessions, but I’d be remiss to not quickly mention a particular new gadget I played around with. With the entire arsenal unlocked, I was able to mess around with the telescopic ladder that you’ve likely seen in the game’s various trailers and let me tell you, they are going to be a menace. Need to flank an enemy camped on a second story? Ladder. Want to access a platform that you’d otherwise need to parachute down to? Ladder. Decided that you’d prefer your team’s respawn beacon to be placed in a terrifyingly annoying place to find? Ladder. It’s restricted to snapping to an object, but I just know that the community will do horrendous things with this climbable calamity.
Adding another four hours to my overall time with Battlefield 6, I’m still so annoyed that I can’t immediately jump back in and play more. The larger maps offer that classic Battlefield gameplay, while Escalation introduces a fun new wrinkle to the established formula. There are components of the final package, namely the campaign and Portal, that I’m cautiously waiting to see more from, but Battlefield 6’s multiplayer suite has continuously impressed me at every turn.
Battlefield 6 releases on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 10.
