Battlefield 2042 will have a brand-new mode called Battlefield Portal as announced by EA and DICE today, and it sounds like it's going to blow the first person shooter experience wide open.
Described as a "love letter to our core fans", Battlefield Portal will incorporate elements from past titles in the franchise, and encourages players to discover the wide universe of Battlefield through the experience.
The game will be a giant sandbox of Battlefield bombast, but don't take our word for it, take a look at how it works in action below!
As you can see, Battlefield Portal will blur the lines between Battlefield games past and present, with players able to play on maps from Battlefield 1942, Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 2042, as well as using characters and weapons from all the games aforementioned.
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Fan favourites El Alemein, Battle Of The Bulge, Valparaiso, Arica Harbor, Caspian Border and Noshahr Canals are all confirmed, bringing the total map count to 13, including the seven new maps which you can read all about here.
Any Battlefield player worth their salt will know that the gameplay often revolves around highly destructible maps. As such, those maps that didn't have destruction when they were originally released (like El Alamein) have had some things retroactively added, to make them in keeping with the modern Battlefield experience. Assets have been rebuilt from the ground up and reimagined for the latest Frostbite engine.
Ripple Effect Studios have been tasked with working on the mode, which at its core, is being touted as a community-driven experience. Players will be able to create their own custom match types (using the all new "Battlefield Builder") implementing a fairly simple series of checkboxes that deal with things like rules, player count, usable weapons and anything in between. Want to see what would happen if one team all had knives and the other all had defibrillators? Well now you can.
Mind you, that's only the tip of the iceberg. For those who really want to dig into the customisation options, there's an entire logic editor that allows creators to tweak the minutiae of their games. In truth, it looks far too complicated for the average player, but will give those with a spark of creativity a place to unleash their wildest creations upon the virtual battlefield.
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Thankfully, Battlefield Portal also comes with a bevvy of premade scenarios to get stuck into, and other players' creations will appear on an ever-changing roster, presumably similar to how playlists work in Call Of Duty.
Until today, there were only two confirmed modes, with Battlefield Portal rounding out the three experiences that will comprise Battlefield 2042. All-out Warfare is described on the EA website as "the next generation of fan-favourites Conquest and Breakthrough". It's here where players will get to play on the largest maps ever seen in the franchise, with up to 128 combatants battling it out over the sprawling landscapes.
The second mode, Hazard Zone, will be an all-new experience for Battlefield players and will be a squad-based, modern take on the multiplayer genre. Just don't, whatever you do, call it a battle royale, as EA have been quite insistent that Battlefield 2042 will not include such a mode.
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We've got a full breakdown of everything Battlefield 2042-shaped right here, and the game will be releasing on October 22nd on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC. If you can't wait that long (and honestly, who could blame you) an open beta is being planned for September. We'll keep you updated when we know more!
Featured Image Credit: EATopics: GAMING, DICE, News, Battlefield 2042, EA