Insider Tom Henderson, known for numerous leaks related to the Battlefield and Call of Duty series, spoke about the problematic development of the shooter Battlefield 2042. He collected all the information in a half-hour video, combining both known and insider facts.
According to Henderson, EA is very tightly controlled by the DICE team, not giving developers freedom. This has prompted the departure of several key developers, including Patrick Söderlund, the former vice president of DICE. The team was tasked with creating a “royal battle”: according to Henderson, it was because of this that the call for equipment from the air and the menu for configuring weapons in battle appeared in the game.
A big problem for DICE was the refinement of the Frostbite engine: EA forces the company to release new games every two years, which is why the specialists simply do not have time to refine the technology. Nevertheless, specifically for 2042, developers were allocated six months to work with the engine, which eventually stretched out for one and a half – many of the specialists who created the Frostbite framework had already left DICE, which led to a delay in schedule.
Another cause of difficulties was the pandemic that began in 2020. Moving to remote work, some of the developers have lost access to powerful hardware or one of the five planned platforms. It often took several hours to download the latest build versions, and finding people with the platform needed for testing was difficult due to the development specifics.
In mid-2020, EA decided to change course and Battlefield 2042 returned to a more familiar formula. It was decided to move the “battle royale” to a separate Hazard Zone mode, and the developers had, in fact, to start development almost from scratch. Thus, the team had a little over a year to create the full version of the title – the production of the final build started in August 2020. They tried to compensate for the speed of development by bringing in additional studios, so Criterion joined the Battlefield 2042 team.
Communication difficulties led to new problems. In early 2021, EA received information that DICE was ahead of schedule, which was a mistake: the alpha version of the shooter was not ready in April, as the management thought, but in September. Because of this, the first gameplay trailer was filmed in such a way as to avoid the demonstration of numerous bugs and shortcomings.
The transfer, which happened in the fall shortly before the release, was carried out at the request of engineers who wanted to have time to finalize the interface and other components that required intervention. However, they asked for more time than EA could provide.
At the end of the video, Henderson reiterated that the next Battlefield will be a game with specialists and no specific combatants. Other developers' narrative games in the universe will add context to the heroes.
Battlefield 2042 was released on November 19. The title is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X / S. Despite high sales, the game was ranked in the ten worst titles in Steam history according to user ratings – gamers noted a large number of bugs and various problems. The developers promised to release several patches with bug fixes, but one of the updates brought even more bugs to the game.
Watch