It sure is more Battlefield!

Following Battlefield 2042’s rocky attempt at live service maximalism, the latest entry in EA’s long-running military shooter series is turning the clock back by 12 years. Battlefield Studios is looking to the series’ third and fourth mainline entries for inspiration, fulfilling the wishes of fans who have long yearned for a game that felt like a direct Battlefield 4 sequel. Based on the four hours I spent playing Battlefield 6’s multiplayer ahead of its grand reveal today, I’m confident that those hungry fans are about to get everything they’ve been craving. The only question is if that safe slice of wish fulfillment can satiate anyone who doesn’t already have a seat at that table too.

My session was designed to give me a wide-ranging tour of one of the fall’s biggest shooters. I’d get to try a variety of classic modes on four of its nine launch maps, taking me from Brooklyn to Cairo. I’d get to tool around with the new-but-actually-old class system that will be very familiar to long-time players. I’d watch a tank get blasted sky high, have the building I’m sniping from crumble around me, and get to see the sequel’s new Kinesthetic Combat in action.

Kine-what?

Right, let’s start there. Before getting hands on, I got a primer on everything that’s new (or new again) in Battlefield 6. “Kinesthetic Combat” was the flashy new term that led the presentation. Upon hearing it, you might assume that it’s Battlefield Studios’ answer to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s Omidirectional action, which added more dynamic movement to that game. That’s sort of in the ballpark, but also maybe not. I can’t tell you for sure because I’m still not actually clear on what the buzzy phrase is referencing. After struggling to grasp a definition during my briefing before my play time, I asked executive producer John Eisendrath for a clearer answer during an interview shortly after.

“What is a move set that works really well for Battlefield that allows you to tactically think about how to move?” Eisendrath told Polygon. “One of my favorite things that we’re doing is crouch sprint. … Maybe you don’t get there the fastest, but you get there the safest. It’s a bit hunkered down, a little more quiet, and allows you to run behind cover which is huge, especially for the big open maps.”

He then went on to describe another new feature, which allows players to perform a roll during combat. Cool, but those descriptions didn’t bring me closer to understanding what Kinesthetic Combat actually means. Maybe I’d just have to feel it to get it.

After actually playing, I can only offer you a vague guess. There are a host of movement tweaks in Battlefield 6 that really pump up the action movie feel of battle. In addition to crouch sprinting and rolling, I can dramatically smash through a window. When I go to revive a teammate, I can drag them into cover as I safely pull them away from a hail of gunfire. All of these changes are subtle compared to Call of Duty’s John Wick-like diving, but they add more opportunities for exciting hero moments. But is it enough to warrant a label like Kinesthetic Combat? I don’t know; it just felt like Battlefield to me.

I start there because it’s key to understanding the tightrope routine Battlefield 6 is performing. Battlefield Studios wants this to be a big flashy game that feels expensive and modern. At the same time, it also wants it to feel like the game you loved 12 years ago. It’s a bit of a contradiction. Battlefield 6 can’t just feel like a nostalgic regression considering how much money is being pumped into it — and it’s a lot, judging by the spectacular visuals and breathtaking explosions — but it definitely wants to scratch an old itch.

“From a feature set point of view, we wanted to be inspired by [Battlefield 3 and 4] and use it as a foundation,” Eisendrath said when I asked what the original vision for the project was. “Then, of course, we’re also looking at everything else we’ve done over the years … But then, the next step after that is how do we modernize that and push it into the future? Because 3 and 4 are amazing games and we love them, but it was a while ago that we shipped them. So we wanted to modernize, but we also wanted to push. We wanted to go beyond what we’ve done before, and you can see that in a lot of things that we’re talking about.”

Hence Kinesthetic Combat, a term that feels engineered to sound like a totally futuristic idea that sells a $70 game when it’s actually just a light tune-up in practice. And that’s not the only example of that. Throughout the day, I also kept hearing the term “Tactical Destruction,” which was presented to me as another back-of-the-box feature. How is that different from regular old destruction?

“It’s a philosophy, I guess you could say,” creative director Thomas Anderson told Polygon in an interview. “What we’re trying to do with Tactical Destruction is make sure that not only can you read what’s destructible in a space so that you can make tactical decisions, but everything that you’re doing allows people to meaningfully change the environment to their advantage. It’s not just spectacle; it’s substance. We’re making sure that it’s readable, so you don’t just feel that it’s unmasterable chaos. This is something that if you learn how to use these things, you can use that to plan your approach.”

Once again, this is just Battlefield in practice. During my hours of playtime, I’d see some fairly standard destruction that wouldn’t look out of place in Battlefield 4. In one firefight, I’d watch a tank blow a building to smithereens, leaving the shooter hiding inside comically exposed — like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. In another match, I’d climb into a building that was half destroyed, giving me an unusual opening I could peek out of and fire down at rival soldiers huddling around a capture point. Moments like that were plentiful throughout my four hour session, with maps getting torn apart in new ways each time.

Some of the new maps are especially designed to take advantage of the system. Siege of Cairo is a highlight among the launch lineup, throwing me into an Egyptian city full of buildings to tear down as tanks terrorize the narrow streets. On the other end of the spectrum, Liberation Peak is less destructible. It’s more built around a rocky battlefield with lots of crags for players to duck behind. It’s more built for tense firefights, but it still features a few hovels that can be blown apart if anyone dares try to post up in them.

There’s a bit more depth to Tactical Destruction that high-skill players will likely find over time. For instance, it’s possible to blow a building’s facade open and leave a climbable heap of rubble that can take you straight up to the second floor where an enemy was camped out. It’s also possible to shoot a floor out from under someone, creating situations that make Battlefield 6 feel more like The Finals. But coming in casually, the destruction didn’t feel any more or less tactical than old Battlefield games. It just felt like a higher-budget continuation of that feature.

None of this is meant disparagingly. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Buzzwords aside, Battlefield 6 feels more like a direct sequel to Battlefield 4 than Battlefield 5 ever did. Squad coordination is paramount, destruction takes center stage, vehicles can turn the tides of battle in an instant, and each player’s individual contributions to a match actually matter. It’s a game designed to be dubbed a “return to form” built to pacify fans who simply hated Battlefield 2042. (When I tried to ask Eisendrath how that game influenced this one, he strategically brushed past the thought entirely and only invoked Battlefield 3 and 4 in his response.)

You can see that strategy in action in something as simple as the class system. It’s another area where Battlefield 6 just goes back to something that players liked previously, forgoing specialists and going back to the days of four tentpole classes: Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. You know it, you love it, so it’s all back.

There is a tweak to that system, though, which could divide players: an open weapon policy, which means that classes can use any weapon rather than the one they specialize in. An engineer doesn’t just have to use an SMG. While that creates more player freedom, it does make each class feel kind of the same in practice. Everyone can revive teammates. Everyone can snipe. It turns classes into a roundabout perk system, but it’s still close enough to Battlefield 4 to recapture its elegance.

All of this should be exciting news for old fans, but I can’t help but wonder where it will leave more casual players or total newcomers. After all, EA wants this thing to be big. (Ars Technica reports that the publisher has its sights set on courting 100 million players, though my question about that number was shut down by a PR handler before I could finish asking Eisendrath and Anderson about it.) Will a very safe retread of an old formula do the trick?

I’m a little unsure where I stand on that after playing. Somewhere during my session, as I was milling around in search of enemies to kill during a Breakthrough match, I thought back to the first time I demoed Battlefield 2042. Believe it or not, it grabbed me at the time. Its ambitious mass-multiplayer swing meant that there was less pressure on me to keep my kill-death ratio high and hover around control points. I had more flexibility to experiment and create my own war stories. Each time I respawned, it felt like I was on my own sidequest. The idea didn’t hold up long-term, but there was something new in that flow that got me interested enough to see where it was headed.

Battlefield 6’s trajectory is more predictable. Little surprised me during a long session that felt just like riding a bike (or tank). The action was familiar, even if my “Kinesthetic” enhancements made my movements feel a little faster and more fluid. Maybe that’s exactly what the struggling series needs: an easy reset built to win back its core audience’s good will. Strong word of mouth is as good as gold in the volatile live service market, even if that word is just “solid.” That’s the anti-gamble EA has on its hands with what’s sure to be a reliable crowd-pleaser that’s light on future-defining shake-ups.

After a long day of getting blown to bits, I was curious to see what everyone else in attendance thought – especially the ones who had been hooting and hollering throughout the day. I asked three people for their impression, and they all gave some variation of the same answer: “It’s Battlefield.”

It sure is.