Forget the World Wars. Say goodbye to the near future battlefield and Specialists. The next Battlefield game is a return to "the core of what Battlefield is" and a return to a modern-day setting.
IGN has an exclusive interview with head of Respawn and the group general manager for all of EA Studios Organization, Vince Zampella. Zampella not only shared some rather base details on the upcoming Battlefield title, he also shared the first official piece of concept art for this new title.
First and foremost, there is no release date yet for the next Battlefield title. Hell, there isn't even an official name for the next Battlefield title yet, unless it's just called "Battlefield" as the above concept art implies. Speculation is that the next Battlefield game will be released in 2025.
At the various EA studios working on Battlefield, including at DICE, there are apparently weekly play testing sessions already underway. At present, four separate studios at EA are working on Battlefield. They include DICE, Motive, Ripple Effect, and Criterion. At one point, Ridgeline Games was also working on Battlefield but then Marcus Lehto parted ways from EA and Ridgeline was shuttered.
Speaking with IGN, Zampella began by giving a shoutout to Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4.
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.
Yeah, the 128 player, did it make it more fun? Like...doing the number for the sake of the number doesn't make any sense. We're testing everything around what's the most fun. So like you said, the maps, once they get to a certain scale, become different. It's a different play space, and I think you have to design around that. So we are designing something that is more akin to previous Battlefields. I'd rather have nice, dense, really nice, well-designed play spaces. Some of them are really good. I can't wait for you to see some of them.
Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA, said at one point that the next Battlefield would be one of the "most ambitious projects" in the company's history. He also said that the next Battlefield will be a "tremendous live service" title. When asked to shed some light on what makes the next Battlefield so "tremendous" and "ambitious," Zampella offered a vague response.
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 have a program that we're going to announce next year around getting more community in, because that's kind of the core of what we have to do — get the community back on our side, get that trust back. So I think we're in a really good place. Is it challenging? Of course, but it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't.
