Recently, I attended EA’s digital preview event for Battlefield 6’s single-player campaign. This event gave me access to three full campaign missions, which collectively highlighted a wide variety of environments and mission types. From storming the beaches of Gibraltar in tanks to gritty close-quarters fights in New York City, the preview contained everything you’d expect from a Battlefield campaign: iconic weaponry, grounded military-style aesthetics, and no shortage of explosions and destruction.
Battlefield 6’s campaign takes place in 2027 after NATO gets reduced to shambles, and a private military corporation known as Pax Armata has risen to power. This corporation’s attempts to further accumulate power threaten to send the world into global conflict. The story follows members of the elite US Marine raiders unit known as Dagger 1-3 as they fight against Pax Armata’s forces on a global scale. During this hands-on session, I played missions set in Gibraltar, the United States, and Tajikistan.
I was first introduced to Battlefield 6’s third campaign mission, Operation Gladus. This part of the story takes place in the city of Gibraltar, which is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. The mission began with our arrival by water to reach the beaches of Gibraltar, as Pax Armata had seized control of the city. The historic rock of Gibraltar was on my left as we reached land, and it was a stunning view despite the low graphics settings my laptop needed to use.
My role was an engineer inside a tank, and I was tasked with providing covering fire to my fellow soldiers storming the beach. Pax Armata’s forces had set up an outpost with trenches and other fortifications, but my tank’s artillery fire easily laid waste to their structures. There was a lot of gunfire, explosions, and smoke as I worked to destroy their forces. I had a blast as I flattened everything on that beach, and it was exactly the type of destruction you’d expect while playing Battlefield–perhaps even greater than what we’ve typically seen in the campaigns.
Once we cleared the outpost, we fought on foot through the narrow city streets of Gibraltar. I closely followed a friendly tank to help make repairs, because the class roles are still utilized in the campaign and should help new players get acclimated to Battlefield’s class-based roles. The tank wasn’t going to move and progress the mission if it was too damaged.
I was also armed with an RPG and a grenade launcher, so I tried to cause some destruction of my own, but the damage I could inflict was more minimal within the city streets. I could destroy chunks of buildings, but I couldn’t level the whole area like I did with the beach outpost. However, I did repair the tank just in time to see it blow a huge building in half, which was satisfying to watch.
The next mission I played was called No Sleep, and the objective was to locate and breach Pax Armata’s Brooklyn Headquarters. This part of the campaign was set in New York at nighttime, so I was equipped with night-vision goggles and a rifle with a thermal scope. This mission had a dark and gritty vibe, as I worked through the streets and apartment buildings of New York City with my squad. Enemy soldiers were waiting for us at every turn, making for tense close-quarters fights.
This mission also let me wield Battlefield 6’s sledgehammer melee weapon, which is a new way to destroy things in the game. You can take out walls, doors, and even floors with the sledgehammer in multiplayer, but the destruction did seem limited in this part of the story campaign. I couldn’t bash holes in the floors of the apartment buildings we breached, but I could smash through enemy cover, bust out entire walls, and even completely demolish an entire bathroom. Bashing bathroom fixtures wasn’t necessary for the mission, but I still wanted to see if it’s possible, and I was pleased to see that it is.
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Following the raid on the Brooklyn HQ, my squad and I ended up underground and hunting Pax Armata troops. This part of the mission provided a thrilling chase–you seemingly can’t have a military shooter campaign without some kind of vehicle-chase segment. We hijacked a vehicle to chase down enemies, who were fleeing on a train inside an old New York subway tunnel. Again, this mission had plenty of intense action-movie-style moments and close-quarters engagements. Despite the short break I took to practice my apartment demolition skills, there was always a sense of tension and urgency during No Sleep, and this was my favorite of the three missions I previewed.
Lastly, I played Operation Ember Strike. This was the most open and free-roaming mission I experienced, as it took place across a spacious countryside in Tajikistan. I was a soldier in the recon role who was equipped with a sniper rifle and a lethal drone. This drone allowed me to locate and mark nearby enemies as well as drop bombs to clear out vehicles and enemy forces.
The playable area for Operation Ember Strike was fairly large, and we had three surface-to-air missile sites to destroy. These were spread out across the land, with the freedom to take them out in any order. There were alarms at each site, and they could be disabled to avoid reinforcements, so I assume this was a mission I could’ve taken slow and stealthy, but I went in guns blazing and bullied my way to each SAM site. Eventually, we destroyed all our targets, and experienced one of the more impressive scenes of the preview, with the destruction of Tajikistan’s hydroelectric dam. The dam was destroyed, and a dramatic cutscene ensued to show Pax Armata’s forces were getting washed away as they tried to flee.
From what I played, Battlefield 6 isn’t doing anything revolutionary with its single-player campaign. It’s the sort of modern military shooter filled with Hollywood-style set pieces you’d expect, but it’s so well-executed that I still enjoyed my time. We aren’t yet able to comment on the narrative, which could help to better distinguish the campaign. However those details may shake out, it’s shaping up to be a campaign filled with tanks, jets, fiery explosions, over-the-top action, and the type of satisfying destruction you tend to only see while playing Battlefield. That’s enough to get me excited to play and destroy more when it launches on October 10.
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