Battlefield 7 open-world tease leaves fans divided

It’s probably fair to say that the Battlefield series has lost its way in recent years, but Electronic Arts will surely be looking for the military shooter to make a triumphant comeback with the seventh mainline entry.

It might be easy to forget that EA’s Battlefield series has been around longer than Activision’s Call of Duty, albeit only by a year, but still. Unfortunately, despite being one of the longest-running video game properties of the modern era, the latest entry in the military shooter developed by DICE was a bit of a mess.

Check out our Battlefield 2042 'Wins & Fails' video below!

When Battlefield 2042 was released in 2021, to say that it got off to a rough start is an understatement. It was already facing an uphill task with it ditching the single-player campaign but when it was missing basic multiplayer features and not to mention being plagued by bugs at launch, Battlefield 2024 was doomed to be a failure on arrival.

Granted, developers DICE worked hard to right the wrongs of Battlefield 2042 and I’m sure it’s a much better game now but for many, too much damage had already been done. This is why EA and DICE will surely be hoping that Battlefield 7 knocks it out of the park and re-establishes itself as a Call of Duty contender once more.

One way that EA and DICE might be looking to bring the next Battlefield back in a big way is by making it open-world, that’s at least what a job listing for a senior environment artist has led us to believe.

As first spotted by Tech4Gamers forum member cindiestarlight, the job listing in question requires the would-be applicant to have experience working on open-world games as a “plus”. While EA hasn't formally announced the next Battlefield yet, CEO Andrew Wilson previously teased that the game will be one of the “most ambitious projects to date.”

EA

Of course, the words of Andrew Wilson should be taken with a pinch of salt, because one of his roles is to impress investors and hype up potential customers, as was the case with Battlefield 2042, and we all know how that turned out.

In a Reddit thread discussing the possibility of the next Battlefield being open-world, it seems fans are divided on that prospect but comparisons have been drawn to the popular free-to-play shooter Planetside. “I honestly would love a Battlefield game with maps on that scale and matches which basically go on forever. I wonder how they'd handle destruction though,” asked poklane.

“There's so little reason to have faith in this current iteration of DICE,” replied DeeOhEf.

“I was wondering what they could mean by going open world, but having Planetside in mind makes it sound exciting!” said a joyful Wyzzlex.

I have major reservations as to whether the open-world approach is the way to go for the next Battlefield. Perhaps that could work in a multiplayer mode, but when it comes to single-player campaigns, I’m all for a somewhat linear, narrative-driven story.

We’ll update you once we hear further developments on the next Battlefield entry. For now, at least, Battlefield 2042 is out on PC, PlayStation and Xbox.