ComicBook has an exclusive interview with some of the developers of Battlefield 6 to talk about the maps, guns, and more in the game’s multiplayer. A lot of great games have already released this year, but one of the biggest titles of the year is still a few weeks away. Battlefield 6 has stolen a lot of the thunder from other fall releases despite only being revealed at the end of July. The game made a sizable impression on fans thanks to its return to a grounded, modern day setting with incredible destruction and large-scale battles. The open beta drummed up a lot of hype for the game as well, giving fans first hand experience with what Battlefield Studios is doing with this new entry.
I recently got to go hands-on with Battlefield 6‘s biggest map, Mirak Valley, as well as the remake of Operation Firestorm and was really impressed with the game’s scale. The beta showcased a lot of dense, close-quarters maps, but the bigger maps prove that Battlefield 6 still absolutely has the juice that fans are seeking from the all-out war experiences. I got to speak with producer Jeremy Chubb and level design director Shashank Uchil about Battlefield 6‘s multiplayer. The two fielded questions about levolution in Battlefield 6, weapons, map sizes, and more. You can view our full conversation below.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
How do you guys feel about the response to Battlefield 6 compared to Battlefield 2042? Obviously, there was a bit of a mixed reception. How do you guys feel going into this launch compared to what you maybe felt in 2021?
Chubb: It’s quite different. I would say that for this game, we revealed it quite early and with a lot. We’ve been working pretty close with the community for quite a while, and we decided to share pretty early builds of the game. We wanted to know what people thought, we wanted to see data from how they played.
We started that program, BF Labs. We really wanted to get a little closer and it was a challenging learning process to do that, but I think it has been really invaluable and then we’re able to follow it up with I think the biggest open beta in terms of the scale of content offered, number of maps, number of modes available. We didn’t do that for 2042, so I feel like we have a much clearer picture of what people like, what they don’t, how people feel about the experience.
So I think in that sense, we feel much more comfortable coming into launch. I think we’ve got a pretty clear read on how people feel about it, but also we feel much more confident generally in terms of where are we with performance, where are with quality bug counts, all of those things. And again, even things like BF Labs, we’ve seen a million different PC configurations run the game and we kind of know what that’s going to do at launch. So all of those things really help.
So I don’t know, I feel good. Obviously we saw an amazing reaction from people initially at the reveal and then in open beta. It was overwhelming to us on the team because it’s a long road when you make one of these games and a few years of effort and some long hours, and it really comes at an amazing time where it’s a real lift to the team to see the reaction from people and you hear people say, yeah, this is totally it. This is Battlefield. This is what we wanted. It’s still a little hard, it’s a tough crowd as well. It’s a really passionate audience and there’s still things that they love to see us improve or change and for sure that’s all part of it right now is to understand and make some tweaks and improvements as we go. So that I think is still hard. But yeah, I’d say generally we’re really happy with where it’s at.
I’m curious about 2042’s influence on Battlefield 6 specifically. There were cool ideas in that game, like changing attachments on the fly and calling in a vehicle. Did you guys ever consider bringing in any of those features from that game or did you want a clean slate?
Chubb: We’re always thinking about bringing features in from that game, from the game before, from the game before that. But for this game, we were just really kind of inspired by Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, to so many people and even to you Cade, when we were chatting just before this session started, that is kind of a high point for the franchise. It’s remembered so fondly by such a large part of the audience.
We were like, wow, what would a modern take on that be? What would it be to deliver that with modern era hardware? That just felt very exciting to go to and we sort of felt we knew exactly what that would be really early. So that’s been kind of the main focus and we do definitely pull inspiration and learning from 2042 and all of the games that have come before it. But I would say that if you like those games, you’re going to like this one. I think this is a game, which is I’m very directly inspired by some experiences you’d find there.
How do you guys determine what the right size of a map is? I’ve had some passionate conversations with friends about this and I’ve made the argument that I care more about density rather than overall size, which I think we saw in Cairo for example. But how does that come about?
Uchil: We talked about size, but size for me is the secondary factor. The primary factor is what the experience we want to give for the player. So we start with that as a base. Do we want to do a CQC map? Do we want to do a map with tanks or do you want to make a map with jets? And that is a point that kind of defines the scale because if you’re going to make a CQC map, it can’t be too big because then you lose density.
CQC works with high density urban warfare. That’s your kind of Siege of Cairo. And then if you want to have infantry and tanks, then it’s more of a mid-level and then it may get a bit bigger. But if you want to have jets, it just means you need to have a big map. Like with Mirak Valley, you could never make a CQC Mirak Valley because it’s just way too big for that. Whereas Mirak Valley fits into more of all out warfare with Conquest, jets, and tanks. So, that’s what we start with. It never starts with we want a map which is like 2k by 2k. That kind of would be the wrong approach. The push always is what is the player experience and then we make a map to fit that player experience.
Chubb: Yeah, it’s funny, Cade, the way you sound talking to your friends, that sounds like conversations we often have on the team. There’s passionately held views on this, but yeah, we try to look at the package overall and what we’re looking for is variety and balance and then we look at the rotation for each mode. It’s so important that you feel like a freshness that it doesn’t get stale. There’s always a slightly different take on the experience and so I don’t think there’s a right answer there, but I think we’d be really disappointed if overall we didn’t touch the biggest of scales, the densest of close quarters. We kind of want a little bit of everything in there.
What balance are you looking for with regards to infantry focus maps and the bigger all-out warfare maps? I mean, do you want an even split at the end of this thing where there’s like 10 close quarter maps and 10 all-out warfare maps? Or is it kind of just whatever feels best at the end of the day?
Chubb: I mean it’s pretty mixed. I would say some of our bigger maps feature some really excellent closed quarter spaces. We showed Liberation Peak in open beta, one of the all out war maps. It has some really amazing closed quarter space for a Domination layout right in the middle of the map, like a fully destructible kind of village area that’s a lot of fun to play in. So I don’t know if even within one map we kind of have a consistent, sometimes it’s close call and sometimes it’s more vehicle focused. I think everybody’s got a different impression.
Before we started this chat, I was interested to know which games you came in on, which was your first Battlefield and which is your favorite? And that can be different for a lot of players. A lot of players, they really love the big scale. They really love Conquest, what we deliver in terms of destruction and jets. Some players love that, but they play it on the ground. They’re into tanks or they play infantry only.
Battlefield is an unusual game as far as players play so differently from each other. So, I think what we’re looking for is as long as we can deliver on the Conquest experience, sometimes more intimate, sometimes very large scale, but always unique, always destructive, always a heavy focus on classes then I think we can create a game which is going to have a broad appeal to all our fans.
Mirak Valley has a crane that could be taken down in the middle of it, which then creates some cover in that middle portion of the map and stuff. But it’s not as big as the skyscraper from Siege of Shanghai or whatever. I feel like as time has gone on, we’ve moved a little bit away from the crazy spectacle of levolution as it was called back then. But I’m curious, is that something you guys want to return to? Do you guys want those big levolution events? Is it something we could see more in post-launch maps, anything like that?
Chubb: Well, we can’t talk about post-launch. It was a big focus for us this time around to dial in on tactical destruction, a dynamic sandbox of destruction. Environments that changed and evolved and demanded a tactical response or presented cool strategic opportunities. It invites players to explore ripping them up in different ways and different modes. I think that’s a primary focus. You mentioned we haven’t done Levolution in a while, but 2042 we did some big stuff, we were blowing up rockets and some pretty over the top spectacular scenes,
With this game, we wanted it to be more grounded in feel, I guess more unpredictable and demanding in strategy or tactics. I think that was a very deliberate choice, but we love that stuff as well. We put the crane in, it’s always tempting and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a return to some of the bigger scale in the future.
During my preview, we all worked together as a team to try to figure out how to take down the crane. We weren’t quite sure exactly what triggered it. And then I launched a rocket right into the center of it and it came tumbling down. That stuff is so fun. I mean, you think of Siege of Shanghai, everyone stops what they’re doing and just turns even 10 years later, you look at it and you’re like, I got to see it fall. So that stuff is always really exciting.
Chubb: Yeah, we’re still talking about it, right? That means a lot. Obviously we try to work as close as we can with the community on this one and come close to understanding what the audience wants. We definitely hear that that people love that stuff.”
There are almost an overwhelming amount of guns in Battlefield 6 off rip. I’m sure those are all locked behind levels in the final game and whatnot, but what we saw, we had access to everything. Why was it important to have that many guns and how did you decide on the ones that are there?
Chubb: I can try and speak on behalf of that team. What we try to do is really deliver a wide variety of experiences across everything: Maps, classes, weapons, and weapons is obviously at the heart of it, that’s what you’re doing second to second an awful lot of the time. So, that team is kind of obsessed with what does that feel like? What does that look like? What’s the sound? They’re doing a really incredible job. But more variety, more diversity, more to explore, that is really important. We know to the audience that we see just a huge demand that we can almost barely keep up with.
From a maps perspective, we really like the idea that we create these kind of carefully crafted combat spaces. So, for example, we sort of curate the sniper experience a little bit more than we did in 2042. But we also create a lot of cool close quarter spaces somewhere like an SMG or a shotgun can really come to the fore. We do a lot of street scenes, a lot of building to building and all of those things, I think they create different scales of environment for combat and that I think is a perfect showcase for a wider variety of weapons. I couldn’t tell you which came first, I guess the weapons, but we always kind of knew that we wanted to build maps that were capable of showing what they could do.
It’s great to see Operation Firestorm back, it looks great, feels great. It’s exactly how we remember it. Are there ever any discussions when you bring maps like that back to you’re like, maybe we could change this or where you think we can make it better?
Uchil: So we did speak about it and we got a bunch of us ago about it. One conversation is, is it inspired by Firestorm? Is it a reimagination or is it a remaster? I think for this one, we agreed very early on we want to be as true to the original as possible. So we’re like, stick with it. This is what the map is. Players expect this to be a certain way and we will deliver on that. And yeah, that’s what you have right now.
Chubb: Yeah, it’s hard because we want to change it, right? We always want to change it. I don’t know if you were at the LA event, the reveal event, but so to show even just a glimpse of that map was just a huge cheer. Everybody’s excited to see it back. It’s a fan favorite map and we are really excited to bring it back, but we got some new tricks up our sleeve. Our destruction is more dynamic and more comprehensive. The possibilities are there to change things. And we have changed some stuff. The warehouse buildings throughout the center of the map are way more destructive than they were in the original. There’s a higher density of prop placement and cover placement.
It is evolved a little bit, so I would say very authentically true to the original scale. It is the same map, but we play it and we’re like, this is an improvement, is it too much? And then we have the original level designer for that map in DICE. So we play it with him and we’re like, what’s he going to say? What’s he going to say? And sometimes he’s just like, okay, cool. Yeah, if we had what you guys have now to build that map, when we built the original, this is what we would’ve built.
So, I think in some ways you’re getting the director’s cut version of that map. You’re getting what the team imagined that they could do, but they faced much more severe limitations based on the PC and console hardware that they worked with at the time. So yeah, there’s a temptation to change it and we do a little bit, but yeah, we obviously want to respect that map because it’s so treasured by the audience.
I was surprised when we got the invite to do this hands-on preview because it’s very rare that, especially given the short window of time between reveal and launch, that you get multiple hands-on opportunities between the reveal event, the beta, and now a secondary preview. Was that always part of the plan, if you can speak to that or was that a response to people being critical of the maps?
Chubb: I mean, we always had a lot early on this game, a lot to play, a very playable experience, probably two hours a day for two or three years. I feel like we just had more upfront this time than we have in the past. It has been a luxury on the project that we’ve had just so much playable all the time. I think that that helps. We just have that opportunity.
But we have talked a little bit about in open beta, we’d selected maps originally to start on, at the beginning of the project, the first maps we wanted to work on were some of the hardest to deliver. You mentioned density, urban close quarters. There’s 64 players running through a tight sector in Cairo, tanks, massive scale destruction of buildings and full physics and all of that in a environment which is all photo scanned, like close to photo real in places.
That is a pretty testing thing to do and we really wanted to hit consistent performance. That was everything to us, and it’s everything to shooter to fans. So that was a big thing and we picked those maps because they’re really hard, and I guess we arrived at open beta and that’s what we had. That’s a lot of material. The biggest open beta in terms of the scope of what was available with multiple modes. We were really excited to show it, but it was biased a particular way. It probably wasn’t fully representative of the variety and scale of the map package that we’ll launch with.
You certainly saw a reaction from the audience so I think it was then it was important to come back again and show, hey, there’s more to this. I don’t think it was ever really sort of a strategy upfront. It’s more, we’ve got great software, great builds, and we’re really keen to show them and share them. But I think it was probably a little bit of both.
Is there anything you guys have seen fans say critique or have questions about that you haven’t had the opportunity to directly address?
Chubb: I want to say the shotgun. [laughs]
That’s a reasonable thing to say!
Chubb: I mean look, that would’ve probably been the one, I think when we saw feedback on maps, I think we were like, wow, I wish people could play what we are playing. I wish people could see the full package and then we’d kind of know whether it’s right or wrong. I think that to give people that insight that we had, I think it would’ve been good. It would’ve maybe been a different conversation, but we’re all on this journey together. Us, you guys, the community, and the wider audience. So we’re all kind of learning together.
So I think we’re just excited now. We’re just looking forward to release on October 10th. We’re so excited to see the game in players’ hands and continue to improve. We also saw data feedback in open beta. We saw low attacker victory rates in Breakthrough, which we hadn’t seen in internal testing and I wish we could see that for the whole package. So we know that we’ll be tuning and tweaking and improving those values, that experience all the way to launch, and then probably a little beyond.
So I suppose if I could choose any feedback to respond to, I wish I knew what people were going to say on the 10th of October about sector two of Siege of Cairo. Is it balanced and is it going to be the 50/50 experience we hope it could be. We know we can fix that stuff, so it’s more like a timing thing.
Battlefield 6 releases on October 10th for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
