How Battlefield 2042 Made Me Interested in Online Shooters

I’ve tried a few multiplayer shooters over the years, and hated them. I play on easy mode, so when I’m getting headshot within three seconds of starting a match, I’m not having fun. That means that I choose not to play competitive online games. However, I’ve played almost every single-player campaign mode from the Battlefield series, except for Battlefield V. So, when Battlefield 2042 was announced as having no campaign mode, not even the War Stories of 1 and V, I figured that I’ll give it a miss.

But then that trailer at E3 showed 128 players fighting it out in Battlefield 2042. It wasn’t so much the action that caught my eye, but where the trailer took place. If you haven’t seen it, it’s alpha footage and most of it takes place in a city. It’s a city under attack, and a dust storm is closing in. And I don’t mean that it’s vaguely in the distance, it actually moves in to cover things during the trailer. You might be thinking that the city is surely an on-foot affair with loads of cover, well we don’t see much cover because there are too many people driving humvees and tanks around the place!

Did I mention that the dust storm turns into a tornado? Because it does, and we see people running into a building and taking the elevator to the roof. Which takes a good few, quiet, seconds. It does a nice job of showing off the weapon customisation, too.

But then it’s back into the action, the tornado’s right there, a dune buggy takes out a helicopter, people zipline to an adjacent building and then the dude just leaps off the building! He’s wearing a wingsuit, sure, but that makes it even more impressive, since you can clearly use the verticality of buildings to great effect!

The trailer finishes off by showing things getting literally sucked into the tornado in a way even Just Cause 4 didn’t accomplish - because Rico just bounced off of it… It’s insane, and it absolutely made me want to play Battlefield 2042 when it comes out.

There are teases of other maps in the trailer, and it certainly appears as if verticality is going to play into it. One of the rifles has a grappling hook! I’m a big fan of grappling hooks - yes, I saw the one in the Halo Infinite trailer, too.

Of course, since the maps are so big, and there are over 100 people in each match, it does mean that my chances of survival are much greater than normal. So that’s a bonus.

Battlefield 2042 releases on the 22nd of October 2021 on Xbox X|S, Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4.