I Can Confirm: Battlefield 6 Has Fixed Its All-Out War Problem

I recently got to play four hours of Battlefield 6‘s biggest maps, Mirak Valley and a remake of Battlefield 3‘s Operation Firestorm, two maps that addressed one of the loudest critiques of the shooter. The Battlefield franchise is known best for its large scale battles, allowing as many as 64 players to duke it out with guns, tanks, jets, helicopters, and everything in between on massive maps. It’s a series that has tried to immerse players in cinematic war zones that aren’t necessarily realistic, but provide a shell-shocking feeling of chaotic warfare. There really aren’t many other games like Battlefield thanks to its signature destruction and overall grand scale.

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While many were initially pleased with the beta, there was one big complaint that came out of that period: Battlefield 6‘s maps weren’t big enough. During the beta, four maps were available and most of them focused on close-quarters combat with dense environments. The closest we got to the epic-sized maps that we are used to was Liberation Peak which had one attack helicopter per team, some tanks, jets, and buggys with mounted machine guns. The map still felt pretty small, especially for pilots who had very limited room to escape infantry locking on to them. Naturally, there were some concerns that these maps were the best Battlefield 6 had to offer, but that’s far from the case.

Battlefield 6‘s Biggest Maps Are True All-Out Warfare Experiences

I went hands-on with the biggest map in Battlefield 6, Mirak Valley, which places players in a war-torn countryside. There are dug out trenches for tight, close-quarter combat, small villages that can be leveled while battling over an objective, and a giant construction site that has a crane that can be collapsed in typical Battlefield fashion. There’s a lot of variety in the overall space and the map is big enough that you won’t feel like every single fire fight is parallel to another. On Liberation Peak, it felt like you didn’t have to look too far to interrupt another battle and that can be a bit obnoxious if you’re getting picked off from a third-party.

There’s room to breathe, but also room to strategize. You can sit out on the side of the map and find a quiet spot to snipe from without feeling like you’re too vulnerable. The map also has a tremendous amount of verticality at the construction site, which allows Assault players the opportunity to leverage their deployable ladder to quickly reach a second or third floor via an unexpected and improvised flank.

All of this is complimented by an emphasis on vehicle play where handfuls of ground and air vehicles work to rain hell on foes. Mirak Valley also gives air vehicles the chance to get away from enemies that may be locking on to you from the ground. While there’s really only two buildings you can “take cover” behind as a pilot if you need to act fast, the map is wide enough that you can easily flee from anti-air rockets and gather your bearings without being spammed.

If you felt like there weren’t enough vehicles to use during the beta, Mirak Valley addresses that issue head on. During a match of Battlefield 6‘s new Escalation mode, I counted as many as 10 tanks available to deploy from our spawn. This may have been specific to the mode as Conquest only sported 4 tanks, which is still quite a lot. On top of that, each team gets two jets, an attack helicopter, a transport helicopter, and a handful of buggys that can carry a whole squad.

Specific objectives also have their own vehicle spawns, so if you capture C, you can actually gain an extra attack helicopter which incentivizes players to not capture objectives for the sake of obtaining an extra vehicle, but also preventing the enemy team from getting it.

If you’re someone who enjoys jets being on a runway instead of flying in from the ether, Mirak Valley and Operation Firestorm both have runways for jets to take off from which creates an even more immersive experience. Ultimately, it all feels like the classic, cinematic, and chaotic Battlefield experience we have been longing for.

Battlefield 6‘s Operation Firestorm Is a Faithful Evolution

When it comes to bringing back a classic map from an older game, it can be tricky. Some developers “reimagine” it with a new aesthetic or lore-based reason for its existence, making it feel new, but also familiar. Others just largely leave it as in while empowering it with the benefits of new technology. Operation Firestorm does the latter, allowing players to play Firestorm as they have remembered it in their head.

That’s not to say there aren’t some changes such as more pieces of cover and adjustments to lines of sight, but they’re more like extra touches rather than grand retoolings of the map. The beauty of bringing old maps like this back is that there are nearly 15 years of technical evolutions since it made its initial debut. As a result of that leap in technology, Operation Firestorm feels more destructive than ever with the warehouses near the center of the map being the most effected by explosive blasts and tanks plowing through walls.

The original map designer for Operation Firestorm still works at DICE and producer Jeremy Chubb noted in an interview that the team would show it to them for feedback. Ultimately, this is the version of Firestorm they wanted to make back in 2011 but had to make some compromises on due to hardware limitations at that time.

“In some ways, you’re getting the director’s cut of that map,” said Chubb. “You’re getting what the team imagined what they could do, but they experienced more severe limitations based on the PC and console hardware at the time. There’s a temptation to change it and we do a little bit, but we want to respect that map because it’s so treasured by the audience.”

Battlefield 6 Has Addressed a Number of Issues from the Beta

It’s clear we weren’t shown these two maps just to prove that there are bigger maps in the final game, but also to highlight the various changes made since the Battlefield 6 beta. While this new hands-on time with Battlefield 6 still represents a work-in-progress, the team has made major efforts to improve the game based on player feedback. Yes, that pesky shotgun has been fixed to require more effort and shots to kill someone. Additionally, helicopters have been tuned to handle a bit more similarly to Battlefield 4‘s flying, engineer can only carry one launcher at a time now, and much more.

One of the biggest gameplay critiques during the beta revolved around movement. Some felt that Battlefield 6‘s movement behaved too much like Call of Duty, allowing players to jump and slide around without much penalty to their shooting. Battlefield Studios has tuned the movement to reduce the amount of speed and momentum you can build while also ensuring no one can bounce around like a kid hyped up on Mountain Dew without having their accuracy hindered. I played with a ton of YouTubers and streamers during this event, the kinds of people you’d expect to be a bit sweaty in a game like this, and didn’t feel like anyone was able to unfairly jump or move around.

That’s not to say you can’t slide into someone while shooting and be successful, it’s just not nearly as over the top with how twitchy it can be. The team has found a careful balance between skillful movement without being too unpredictable. More refinement is expected to come at and after the game’s launch as well.

Battlefield 6 will release on October 10th for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. What do you think of Battlefield 6‘s maps so far? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!