Battlefield 2042 Nixes Campaign, Battle Royale

Earlier today, Electronic Arts and DICE officially revealed Battlefield 2042, the next game in the long-running series. While we'd usually expect new game reveals to be light on details, the two companies actually revealed quite a bit about Battlefield 2042 today. The focus was entirely on multiplayer, and there's good reason for that, as Battlefield 2042 apparently won't ship with either a single-player campaign or battle royale mode.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Battlefield 2042 would feature a campaign, given how much of a backstory this game seems to have. That narrative, however, only seems to serve to bolster the game's multiplayer mode. DICE revealed the lack of a campaign to Eurogamer today.

"I think that's just something that enables us to really lean into what we are best at," Battlefield 2042 design director Daniel Berlin said in an interview. "If you look at the DNA of the studio, what we've been doing for so long, we just said you know what, we're not going to have a traditional single-player campaign this time around, but we're going to put all that emphasis and all those resources into building depth into the multiplayer. Because that is what we do best."

Just as well, the game won't have a battle royale mode, despite seemingly every game having a battle royale mode these days. Berlin, however, suggested that there are other modes that will be well worth paying attention to. "Battle royale is definitely something that is exceptionally popular right now," he said. "We don't have any battle royale plan at this point, but we do have other experiences within the game that we can't talk about which we are super excited for."

One of those modes is apparently in development at DICE LA at the moment, but we're not going to get any details on it until EA Play Live on July 22nd. It'll be interesting to see how DICE manages to fill the gap left by the lack of a single-player campaign, which is something that's been present in recent Battlefield titles. We'll have more information on Battlefield 2042 as DICE and EA confirm it, so stay tuned for more.