Battlefield 6 Open Beta PC Preview
With the recent announcement of a release date and key details on the multiplayer component, the first of several Battlefield 6 open beta events took place this weekend. I geared up and got the squad back together to see how the game is shaping up ahead of its October 10th release date.
At first glance, everything looked worryingly similar to 2021’s Battlefield 2042. Anyone who experienced that disaster will be immediately familiar with how the game presents itself. Thankfully, the similarities start and end with the main menu’s presentation, and the game itself is very different.
A huge list of sweeping changes has been made over the previous instalment to the long-running franchise. First and foremost is the return to a traditional class-based system.
The assault, support, engineer, and recon archetypes are back, and each features unique abilities that set them apart from one another. Support classes can use the defibrillator and drop ammo and health packs, quickly bringing a unit back to full operational abilities. Engineers can repair and maintain vehicles while being able to efficiently dispatch them. Recons sniper returns to its sniping-oriented roots, and assault remains a jack of all trades, a good all-rounder that doesn’t specialise in anything.
Another big change is a renewed focus on dynamic destruction akin to that seen in the Bad Company series. An enemy dug in on top of a building? Bring the building down. An objective below you? Remove the floor, etc. The level of destruction seen in those older games added to the immersion; the map evolved in real time as a direct consequence of player action, and Battlefield 6 moving back to it is very welcome.
The maps available in the beta were a mixed bag for me. One aspect of the more recent games that I wasn’t a fan of, especially in 2042, was how open and barren they felt relative to earlier titles. Each of the available maps during the beta mostly gets away from this. Two maps set in busy city centre areas are highlights, making the most of the destruction mechanics and claustrophobic nature of the arenas, which ramped up the intensity of any firefights. There’s a huge amount more debris and incidental objects scattered around every map that go along way to make them feel like actual places.
In terms of how Battlefield 6 plays, for me, it felt somewhat like 2011’s Battlefield 3. While not my favourite entry into the franchise (that will forever be Bad Company 2!), it’s up there, and I instantly took to the game. Weapons are mostly impactful with beefy sound effects and suitable recoil, though the starting sniper rifle is the exception to this, sounding a little pathetic compared to everything else.
Visually, Battlefield 6 has a very similar style to 2042, albeit now with a way to adjust the frankly absurd level of sharpening that is applied to the image. This alone dramatically increases the presentation. Performance, for me at least, was flawless, though that is somewhat expected when running anything on a 9950X3D and RTX 5090. Friends on much lower-end machines managed to get high, stable framerates, albeit at lower settings without issues.
I feel like the term ‘return to form’ gets thrown around a lot (something I am occasionally guilty of), but if this initial round of open beta events is anything to go by, then Battlefield 6 very much feels like a return to form for the franchise. I, for one, eagerly await the full release in a few months.
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