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EA shook up the first-person shooter space with the reveal of Battlefield 6’s multiplayer, creating a lot of buzz across the community. With its sights set firmly on the top spot of the scoreboard for shooter releases this year, Battlefield 6 is shaping up to be a true sandbox warfare title of the ever growing first-person shooter market.
Whilst you can read my hands-on preview HERE ahead of the open beta this week, I also had the chance to talk to DICE producers David Sirland and Alexia Christofi to chat about how BF Labs is shaping the game’s evolution and how they’re laying the groundwork for a new era of large-scale destruction in this iconic franchise.
What led to the decision to launch Battlefield Labs ahead of the full game reveal? Were there any significant stories or things you’ve learnt from the Labs?
David Sirland: Battlefield Labs is something I’ve always wanted to do before launch. The fact we got to do it before launch, that was the biggest unexpected. I’ve tried for many Battlefields. Is it going to lead to the best combat? Yes? Okay, let’s do it basically.
And I think also, from that point on where we could start talking about, that was the first thing we said publicly, we’re doing labs. You were allowed to come in.
This is not only a way to make it a much better game. It’s also our way to make sure our community is with us and that they’re liking what they see. They understand where we’re going and they think it’s Battlefield.
@xpgoose Knocked out a helo using the AA vehicle in #BF6 – first helo frag from the preview event in LA #pcgaming
Were you concerned that you’re revealing too much from Labs, as we saw from the leaks?
David Sirland: We made sure it trailed us with enough time – so it’s quite old but it’s still useful for us. So we can do what we can do now, ‘wow’ people with the beta, the reveal build and what it looks like – the final touch, the magic if you will.
So it’s not completely all known – you haven’t seen it all yet.
I think there is a level of, do we want to show the cake before it’s finished? Like that’s scary, but like the benefits of doing it and there’s like the validation we get from knowing that we’re making the right decisions is so much more valuable than like worrying that it’s not finished because it helps us finish it and get the game out there.
A tiny thing but a really important thing is practising releasing things. Pre-launch the real game in a place where it’s okay if we fail – it’s okay if it goes bad. Because we learn and fix that and the team and processes around the team to become a well-oiled machine before you launch the game. I think the only way you can get closer to a perfect launch of the game is to make sure you basically semi-launched a bunch of times before.
Destruction is a key ingredient for Battlefield 6. There’s a lot of moving parts, debris, verticality – Were there any concerns in terms of gameplay design and balancing it? Like in BF: Bad Company 2, you can level whole maps?
David Sirland: It’s funny you bring that up because with Bad Company 2, we want to fix destruction and we knew from this game, we wanted to heavily invest in destruction. We are on current gen consoles and we have a pretty solid starting point. We can support a lot of destruction. We want to make it the best we could ever do – make Battlefield greater and not become fluff for the visuals alone, right?
Like the end of a Bad Company match (Bad Company 2 is often decided as one of the best destruction of the series – at least at its time) is great for what it is right? But yeah, the problem is there’s no cover afterwards. Like it’s almost unplayable. And the other one we wanted to solve is Battlefield 4 Levolution where it’s like a mega event, but it happens once and then it’s over. It’s sort of, you had to be there or you know, it’s kind of useless.
When I extend the experience, I make sure it happens all the time throughout the match. And to get there, we knew we would be able to do a lot of destruction, because technically we can’t like we can do many pieces, if you will. But for that to have any value, we need to control when you’re allowed to do it. And we need to do that in a way where it matters to gameplay and it’s readable and like deterministic and all of these things we talked about on stage. But also in a way where it’s readable.
But we started out when we prototyped the first map for this game, started out with like boxes and like coloured things for destruction. You just have to figure out how much we can do because we need to have something left when it’s gone. But we realise quickly that you can’t really appreciate it unless you have the fluffy part. You know, the particles, the effects, the granularity to it, we needed to upgrade our dev tech, basically, to show cracks and to show the health state of the thing you were shooting at for that sort of sink in for you to get a full experience. And I hope and feel like what you see in the trailers is actually how it plays. Not all matches, but when there is a chaotic moment, it sort of everything just goes off.
I think we also never want the destruction to feel random and to feel like it’s altering the gameplay in a way that you can’t know what you’re going to be doing or how things work. So we wanted it to feel fresh and varieties, so we make sure that there’s lots of things that are available to be that are destructible.
There’s been a lot of talk about skins and cosmetics in shooters in general lately, from what I’ve seen and played – BF6 seems more realistic and grounded. Can you talk about the cosmetics, progression etc. for Battlefield 6.
Alexia Christofi: So we’re intending of having season updates and with that comes new apps, new modes, new weapons etc. but all of that content will always be earnable for players and any gameplay affecting content will never be something that players have to spend any money on. That’s available to everyone. Everyone can partake in that.
But yeah, we’re looking at cosmetics, we’re looking at ways for people to kind of show themselves off individuality on the battlefield, but in a grounded way that feels authentic to the franchise.
What about weapon skins? Battlefield 4 and 3 had a lot of different weapons skins which are ‘grounded’. Are we looking at similar style skins this time around?
Alexia Christofi: What we’re looking at right now is skins that feel authentic and good to what you’re doing. We have progression for all our weapons in the same way that we have in previous games, where you unlock things on different mastery levels and we want ways of players being able to. I guess, show off what they’re doing and how far they’ve got, like mastering a weapon in a way, again, that feels authentic.
David Sirland: And the weapon customisation system, not only how you can customise what it looks like, but also how it affects how you play. It’s one of the deepest ones we’ve ever made. and is also very malleable.
I mean, we’re looking at weapon categories as a way to sort of set up a foundation for what all the attachments can bend these weapons towards. And some of our categories are made to be really bendable, like carbines. It’s supposed to be, you, when you play close weapons, carbines is sort of your go to, for, oh, I want that SMG carbine, or I want an assault driven carbine, a DMR sort of carbine because those attachments have way more power as well. So as much character is possible there, and that goes through all of the weapon systems.
@xpgoose #BF6 Multiplayer Reveal Event – here’s some domination MP7 Assault gameplay #pcgaming
Battlefield 3 and 4 were talked about a lot for the Battlefield 6 reveal. Were there any other elements from titles such as BF2042, Battlefield 5 and 1 that kind of inspired and moved over to Battlefield 6?
David Sirland: Yeah, we looked at all of our titles like not cherry picked but looked at crouch sprints from Battlefield V. We wanted to do ‘drag and revive’ in Battlefield V but we did not have a Labs environment to validate it, and it was too late in the development cycle. Because the way we wanted to make it, the way it is in this game – so engrained in that base squad play loop.
Alexia Christofi: I think we’ve taken a lot of learnings from our previous titles as well, like things that maybe didn’t work the way that we hoped they would and that’s been really important for us building Battlefield 6 and making sure that we’re doing what we think is best.
Will BF6 feature any dedicated servers on PC? Something that was prominent in BF4. Like 1000 tickets Operation Metro or something?
Alexia Christofi: Absolutely, Portal is back bigger than ever. We’re making it more prominent than it was in the previous title. So we’re making sure that it’s front and centre on the main menu and we give you so many tools for stuff to do.
So yeah, you can change ticket amounts. We’ve got spatial editing now, which allows you to move stuff around the map and make the map look how you want. We’ve got a whole bunch of tweakables with things like hardcore or you can set it as closed weapons and we now have a new kind of custom scripting tech to make custom UI so people are making like all sorts of crazy stuff. And then AI improvements too. And if you make it pretty lenient on the verified experiences as well, which means if you do regular stuff, you can set up a server with, you, the map list you want and plate your way and you have a server.
Basically, and you would get full XP and progression. So we always make sure that once you create, if you create a very hard experience that will always have full XP. So, and when people go in to play an experience, we tell you whether that experience has full XP or whether it has modified XP. And the same thing is true for close weapons or hardcore or any of those like built in preset sort of controls that you have.
Battlefield 6 will available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 10th, 2025. The cheapest copy is $89 with free shipping on Amazon.
The author traveled to Los Angeles as a guest of EA Games for the Battlefield 6 Multiplayer Preview Event.
