Post Script

Battlefield 6's singleplayer offering wouldn't have matched Call Of Duty in 2011

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Following the Battlefield 6 campaign’s second helicopter crash, former high-school quarterback Haz Carter is wheeled away on a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance. “All your wounds are superficial, so you're going to be OK,” says Lopez, the unit’s medic. “You know, aside from whatever you picked up swimming in the East River.”

There’s a beat before Carter replies: “You should see the one that got away.” It’s the kind of half-sensical quip that characterises a muddled and miserably stoic story. This is a campaign that regularly biffs its character moments, drowns any drama in militaristic jargon and fails to translate almost any of the magic of multiplayer to solo shooting.

There was hope, for a while, that things could be different. Past Battlefield campaigns showed flashes of brilliance when they leaned into the hands-on, multi-vehicular problem solving that fans associate with the series. Maybe you'd be taking on a tank with a bag of C4 and a prayer, or tackling freeform objectives as a Bedouin fighter in Battlefield 1, stealing horses, jeeps and mounted guns to undermine the plans of the Ottoman Empire.