Battlefield 6 is undoubtedly shaping up to be one of the strongest entries in the iconic shooter series yet. Battlefield Studios is looking to bring back what makes Battlefield special, and it’s united four studios across two continents to do it: Criterion, DICE, Ripple Effect and Motive. They all bring strengths and a whole lot of experience to the table.
As we gear up for this huge collaborative effort to release in just a couple of months, Checkpoint Gaming had the chance to sit down with Ryan McArthur, Senior Producer at Ripple Effect who has worked on the franchise for decades, and Alma Talbot, Director of Production at Motive, who is overseeing production of several campaign misisons after working on amongst other things, the Dead Space remake from 2023.
While the duo remained relatively tight-lipped about the campaign, the studio is keen to deliver a strong experience across the board. The Battlefield Universe, as it’s referred to, needs to be firing on all cylinders.
“The key for us is to make sure that this game delivers against everything players expect from a true Battlefield experience,” says McArthur. “Multiplayer has to be amazing, but players also deserve that rollercoaster massive bombastic single-player experience like in BF3 and BF4, so that’s the vision that the team has been given, deliver against that experience to make sure this feels like a Battlefield game.”
“…we started with a really clear vision of what makes Battlefield great: tactical destruction, class play and an unmatched gun experience…”
There’s no doubt that Battlefield 2042 did not live up to the lofty standards of Battlefield fans. There were three targets that McArthur notes were crucial when the team started to build out what Battlefield 6 would eventually become.
“The big ones for us, we started with a really clear vision of what makes Battlefield great: it’s tactical destruction, it’s class play that accentuates playing together as a squad, making your roles feel purposeful, and it’s an unmatched gun experience in the world of FPS. Nailing that, and then everything else wraps around this experience in a really strong way.”
That tactical destruction is incredibly fun to mess around with. In my hands-on time with Battlefield 6, I found it to be liberating, ripe for experimentation, and a bloody good time. What struck me most is that, despite the chaos and destruction, it still feels quite balanced. Destructible environments are always cool in theory, but how do you make sure they work effectively within such an intense shooter?
“As the team looked through the lens of destruction, it’s about what things you should be able to do if you can destroy the world,” mentions McArthur. “For example, bringing floors down, that’s new pathways to go up, to go down, new ways to destroy the opposition. It’s about making sure the input reflects the outputs you’d expect in a world like that. It even goes down to blowing up a building with C4, which should come down, but what about when somebody uses a sledgehammer? That sort of minutia means you can break things down, be smart, be clever, or just be bombastic in the way we deliver it.”
EA pulled together four studios to form Battlefield Studios, with Motive being the most recent addition. Across two different continents, the teams have all come together with a singular goal; to make the best Battlefield they possibly can. When discussing what a collaboration of this massive scale was like, Talbot excitedly chimes in.
“Being at Motive, feeling like the new kids on the block and new to Battlefield, it’s a huge opportunity, really rewarding and galvanising to be part of such a humungous franchise, such a huge player base and deliver this high calibre experience to fans, and to have the support of EA behind us,” proclaims Talbot. “For me, it’s the opportunity to learn from industry veterans, to be able to collaborate and get exposed to different ways of working. Every studio has its own culture based in different parts of the world, and we all bring a different flavour to things.”
“For us at Motive, coming in with different expertise, it really is a melting pot, and people have been super receptive to each other and open to the collaboration of these four different studios. It hasn’t always been straightforward because people come with their different perspectives, but everybody wants to make the best Battlefield possible. With all of us coming at it from the perspective of we want to make a kickass game, you feel that with the weight of experience people are bringing towards it.”
McArthur agrees with the sentiment wholeheartedly. “For lack of a better term, it’s been fucking awesome. We don’t get the game we do without the differences of the studios, and those differences make us stronger as a team. You’ve got DICE, I spent 10 years there building multiplayer experiences; you’ve got the team at Ripple Effect and their experience with live service and working on everything from Battlefield 3 all the way through; Motive’s experience telling amazing stories and building amazing campaigns; and Criterion who have worked on single player games, open world experiences like Need for Speed… all of their combined experience working with us makes us better as a team.”
Following up from the successful Dead Space remake, a slow-burn, intense horror game, and quite different from Battlefield 6, Talbot notes the shift from one project to another. “There was a bit of a whiplash, learning all the new acronyms and workflows, but it’s been a phenomenal experience. It comes with its challenges, but it’s been a lot of fun. I sometimes say, for the level of challenge and what we’re trying to achieve, I have no right to have as much fun as I’m having.”
Of course, with any live-service shooter, it lives and breathes well beyond its release date. In the best cases, a game as huge as Battlefield 6 with a captive audience can expect to have years and years of ongoing content and updates keeping the community energised. When it comes to those ongoing moments, McArthur says they’ve learned a lot over the years.
“The launch of Battlefield 6 will only be the beginning of this journey. We want to get into those seasonal updates as imminently post-launch as we can. We want to build off of this world and drive as much excitement and engagement as we can. I live and breathe live service, and I think not only with the launch of this game (but beyond that), the world is going to be pretty excited about what’s coming post-launch.”
But, will we see Nicki Minaj, Star Wars characters, or cartoon heroes in the maps of Battlefield? Thankfully, it seems realism and ensuring Battlefield stays true to itself is of utmost importance.
“We’ve always wanted to make sure players have a great experience; immersion is always key, and tonality is really important,” states McArthur. “For us as a team, we talk about the pillars: destruction, classes, the things that make Battlefield, Battlefield. It’s important for us to be true to that, because that’s what allows the game to grow and evolve. We’ll constantly look at how we make this game better and what our players want and where the industry is going… that’s important, but the Battlefield DNA is critical to the success of that, and it’s important to be true to that as we look to where we go in the future.”
Right now, that future looks bright. We’ll certainly have a lot to look forward to in Battlefield 6 come October.
For more on Battlefield 6, check out our multiplayer hands-on preview.
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Checkpoint Gaming was flown to Los Angeles as a guest of EA for this interview.
About the Author
Luke Mitchell
he/him
Luke spends his time making radio, playing video games, binge-watching TV, getting unreasonably invested in wrestling, and hanging out with his beautiful pets.
