All Out Warfare
Conquest (and more recently Breakthrough) is the Battlefield staple. Now 128 players (supplemented with bots when numbers fluctuate) battle for control of points on a map. In 2042, these are spread out more than ever. Instead of single flags, the map is now broken into sectors. A sector can have up to 3 capture points, and all points must be held for it to count to your team.
It’s a small change, brought on by 2042’s massive maps and player size. Fortunately they’re designed in such a way that there’s usually a flow to the battle, built around key points of interest.
These maps are each broadly distinct in tone and colour, from the split desert sands and green farms of renewal, to the white glaciers of Breakaway. There’s even map design choices that evoke “modern battlefield maps” – an open air apartment on top of a skyscraper on Kaleidoscope brings memories of BF4’s Siege of Shanghai, while Renewal’s map spanning wall and checkpoints are clearly reproduced from Caspian Border.
Matches tend to spiral. A single flag sector is easier to capture, and these are normally centrally located. Multi flag sectors hold to the edges of the map. Teams start by pouring forces to those single flag sectors, a dozen squads piling in. After a little while in the meat grinder, squads interested in playing the objective will splinter off and attack the other flags held or defend against counter attacks.
So far, so Battlefield.
The difference with 2042 is a question of scale and how this impacts player autonomy.
In previous games, with only 32 players on a team, a single squad was capable of meaningful action by the right attack at the right time in the right place. At most you’d have to fight one or two squads, maybe a vehicle in a counter attack.
In 2042, as soon as a flag starts to fall, you can have multiple squads, vehicles and aircraft immediately respawn on the point to contest. And for all the will in the world, a single squad is going to have a tough time of handling that.
So a single squad can’t be the scalpel anymore. They can no longer swoop in, take a point and then hold it to flip the battle.
Instead they’re the tip of the spear.
It’s teamwork focussed, forcing reliance on the whole team reading the flow of the battle and knowing when to pile in behind a push.
Unfortunately that does mean that this is completely in the face of years of ingrained gameplay. And for players used to feeling like they can make a genuine impact on their own, it’s potentially something they can’t enjoy. Being a contributor isn’t the same as being the star.
Being 1/64 is a fundamentally different, less impactful experience than 1/32. For me, I can get behind it. Battlefield for me isn’t a game that requires spectacular plays and whole squad wipes by single brilliant snipers. It’s a set of medics sprinting between fallen players, keeping an objective push up. A transport pilot dodging missiles as they get a few more passenger spawns in to drop on a point from above. A squad coordinating to hold a point just long enough that the rest of the team can arrive.
For others, making the solo effort of getting to a capture point, killing a whole squad and then your impact being immediately wiped out because the other team reacted as a whole is frustrating.
Breakthrough goes some way to mitigating this. I’ve been a fan since its inception in BF1’s Grand Operations as the mode is a distillation of Battlefield to me. Cinematic attack and defend gameplay, where ticket management is valuable for the attackers and tight teamwork is the only way to succeed on a staggered version of a full conquest map.
It translates to 2042 astonishingly well. The spiral of gameplay tightens, with almost the whole team pushing one point. Vehicles clash and aircraft rain from the sky, causing chaos for infantry trying to hold a single sector.
If you already were predisposed to prefer the smaller population numbers, Breakthrough won’t save that for you. Instead you just get the full Battlefield 2042 experience in a more concentrated fashion.
These are the only two modes in All Out Warfare, and due to the size of maps you’ll be thrown into any match randomly. No Server Browser here – see Portal. So the variety in this mode is coming from the progression of weapons, gadgets and specialists. This is important, because Classes are overarching themes now, rather than set equipment loadouts.
Instead, you’ll pick one of ten specialists, then equip. Each specialist comes with one gadget set and one passive ability. Broken down into themes across the classic classes of Recon, Assault, Engineer and Support.
Let’s take Sundance. As a Passive, they replace their standard parachute with a wingsuit that gives excellent controlled gliding. They also have a set of three grenades, where the player can select between a scatter grenade, homing anti armour or a UI interrupting EMP blast. Similarly, this character can use any class of weapon, switching custom loadouts between Sniper rifles, shotguns or LMGs between spawns.
To some, all of this is sacrilege. It means that you simply don’t know what your teammates are capable of. You can’t guarantee that a medic will drop health for you, or an engineer will be able to target the tank that’s been chasing you.
But as someone who’s spent years watching half a team composed of recon players immediately grab a vehicle and wander to the edge of the map to snipe, that’s no change. Same as a medic who just wanted the SMGs/Assault Rifles and has no interest in revives. These are player behaviours that already existed, that DICE have acknowledged and just opened up the board for everyone to play the way they want.
The progression on this is classic Battlefield, with challenges being simply to gain experience to unlock new specialists at set levels, score kills with weapons to certain thresholds to get new attachments and use vehicles for captures, kills or assists to advance them.
Its refreshing being able to look at a scenario and then spawn in with a custom loadout that suits. Especially when the plus system is taken into account.
Decide on three attachments of each type to add to a menu, which can be accessed immediately in game. This lets you switch out accordingly. Fighting at range, long barrel and 4x Scope. About to charge the objective, switch to a red Dot and a quick swap magazine.
One of the few instances where infantry play in Battlefield 2042 feels genuinely valued, the Plus system giving players complete freedom in action.
Playing the objective has been incentivised. Indeed, PTFO has gone from a meme to marketing material for Battlefield 2042. But the structure of the game has gone some way to disincentivizing the tight infantry play of the last game. The focus on vehicles and wider scale fights means medic and ammo bags are less useful by default. In addition, whole movement mechanics like submerging in water and rolling from falls are just gone.
It’s easy to tell why. At 128 players, the player profile needs to be simplified to be readable easily. Not knowing whether someone is prone on their front or back isn’t helpful.
Being a ground pounder is fun in the tight zones and for capturing, but Battlefield 2042 wants you in a vehicle as often as possible.
Fortunately to balance out the infantry drop, the vehicle play has been massively boosted.
Vehicles are a selection from the spawn menu, but you can also call them in as airdrops. (Provided the limit for the team isn’t reached). And sometimes you can even find level specific trucks/quad bikes/tuk tuks lying around for infantry to commandeer.
Vehicles themselves have been revamped. They now come with slowly regenerating health if they take no damage – necessary in a game where there might be one repair tool among 64 players. The different seat positions now come with meaningful (and customisable by the pilot) roles. An armoured vehicle might have four completely separate types of guns, one for each seat. Which means in most fights, a squad managing a single vehicle can handle a lot more situations than a solo pilot going rogue.
There’s even a wonderful feature where if you die in a vehicle you are delayed from spawning in another to avoid particularly bad pilots punishing the team.
Overall, the focus on vehicles is a necessary part of the scale of 2042. As an infantry player, you can sometimes find yourself needing to jog for whole minutes to reach the next point. So having vehicles on demand and accessible ends up being essential. For me, it’s not the part of the game I enjoy most, but I can appreciate that the devs have tried to ensure no one is left behind.
Overall I really like 2042’s All Out Warfare. I think it’s a spectacle that never stops being impressive, with a scale and sheer extravagance that I find easy to lose myself in. The chaos and freedom on offer to exist in that space is joyous.
I’m not riding the wave, I’m being carried along by the tide.