Amidst the freshly retextured cliffs and relocated crates of the new-look Breakaway map, I find myself feeling–as I so often do in Battlefield 2042–both surrounded by enemies yet all alone.
erched on distant ice walls, Snipers pick off me and my teammates at our main spawn point, my squadmates keep reviving me into the jaws of death, and any sense of a ‘front’ is constantly being undermined by enemy teams parachuting in and UAVs casually picking me off from above. One of the big paradoxes of the latest Battlefield game since its inception is that–that in its pursuit of a grander, more formidable scale, it’s spread things out too thin.
The big 3.2 update for Battlefield 2042 is seeking to remedy that, even if slightly, and I got to go hands-on with it at a preview event hosted by EA. The update is called ‘Return to Class,’ which speaks to the fact that–along with the map redesigns–EA DICE is also reinstating a class system of sorts following the pushback against its chirpy (yet at the same time dull) Specialists.
The new tighter conditions on Breakaway–the most sparsely spread of maps–have led to some standout moments–a five-minute shootout at enemies pushing in from the (now much closer) oil rig, some twitchy skirmishes amidst more sensible placed sandbags and shipping crates–but I still struggle to pick up any sense of camaraderie or momentum.
That class system should really be simple to implement on paper. Chuck all those silly Specialists into Classes–check–then restrict those classes to using certain weapons and gadgets. Alas, that didn’t quite happen. Each Specialist within each Class has access to the full range of weapons, traits, and most of the same throwables as everyone else, leaving gadgetry as the only thing that distinguishes one class from another. To say it clashes with the Specialist system would be flattering to its impact, because in reality the Class system is drowned out by Specialists, whose individual abilities are what really distinguishes them.
The Class system in Battlefields of old was great, allowing you to synergise with your squad by simply glancing and the squad makeup and filling in what’s needed; the Medic (which has been left out of 2042 altogether) was invaluable to a well-functioning squad, or you could grab an Engineer, lay down that LMG with your ever-replenishing ammo supply, and start suppressing. Sure, you can still technically do these things, but what’s missing is the sense that you’re ‘doing one for the team’ by picking a certain class. When all classes have access to all the same weapons, that removes a big part of each class’ identity.
Beyond that though, the choice of gadgetry is largely what you’d expect for the respective classes, albeit with a few big head-scratchers; in particular, it’s strange that the Support class is hogging both ammo and health crates, which makes the class too much of a Santa’s sack of goodies for the team. Laying down crates for your team is a longstanding Battlefield tradition, but a big part of the appeal was having everyone chip in with their humble bits of aid, not just have the Support class (aka Father Cratemas) whack down all the crates themselves.
Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to try and force synergy and tight teamplay into a game designed around Specialists who can wingsuit, grapple-hook, and lightning-sprint around with carefree abandon, but that just makes me think that the devs may as well have just cut their losses and left the Class system out of this entry; its presence is not so much a step in the right direction as an acknowledgement–an apology in the form of reintroducing a concept that’s always defined Battlefield–that this entry went fundamentally in the wrong direction. OK, you could argue that even this acknowledgement is a step in the right direction and gives hope for the future, but in the here and now it’s taken its own missteps and has too little impact on the experience.
The redesigned Breakaway map, as mentioned earlier, is certainly an improvement. It feels more compact, more lively, less frigid and hollow like the Arctic setting it takes place in. With that said, Breakaway often comes up in discussions about the very worst maps in the game, and there’s only so much that can be achieved with that baseline. To me, the redesign elevates Breakaway from ‘bleak’ to ‘middling,’ and I question how much value that adds for players over, say, bringing more beloved maps back in Portal.
It’s worth also stressing that Breakaway has historically been too much of a sniper’s paradise (especially given the presence of the controversial one-shot 50-cal sniper rifle). The extra cover doesn’t really compensate for the fact that snipers basically have top-down views over large chunks of the map from their lofty ice cliffs. With the new class-specific Weapon Proficiences, which are fairly discreet for other classes, Recon players get a further sniping boost by getting instant (and constant) steady scope. It's a bit much, and suffice to say I’ve found myself on the wrong end of their newfound privileges a little too frequently for fun.
To be clear, it’s good to see EA DICE continuing to acknowledge their mistakes with Battlefield 2042, but their means of fixing them don’t quite hit the mark. During my short time with the update, I observed odd design choices–giving the Support class both Ammo and Medical Crates, further buffs to already overpowered snipers–create new problems that undermine their attempts to fix other problems, like the Breakaway map layout. Sure, these updates and fixes may themselves be fixed or reversed in short time, but as the planning for the next Battlefield game is underway, it’d be reassuring if we started seeing fewer missteps in the middle years of this entry.
In the end, the returning class system is a nod to better times for the series rather than a meaningful change capable of fixing the present rut. On the bright side, it offers a glimmer of hope for the future, with these changes suggesting that EA DICE is aware of what the series is really about, and will surely surely make the next iteration a ‘return to the roots’ of sorts. We can only hope…