Hello, this is Luke Plunkett from Kotaku, one of the 17 people on the planet who regularly enjoy and cover the game live Battlefield 2042.
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If you haven’t played the game in the first 12 months – and it really has problemswho can blame you! – EA has decided that now is the time to convince you with an offer Battlefield 2042 for free (first days of December on all platforms) or at least as part of the subscription fee you already pay for Game Pass.
They do this, of course, for two reasons. The first is that far from enough people bought this game in the first place, so the player base was sometimes tragically low (here in Australia, for example, only a single multiplayer mode is ever populated enough to get regular games). The second, and it’s related, is that Battlefield 2042 has cosmetic microtransactions, so the more people EA can get to play the game, the more they hope to earn weapons, vehicles, and player skins.
I will now tell you that you don’t have to buy these skins, the ones you unlock are fine and I will also tell you that you should play this game! Battlefield 2042 launched with many problems and many changes, both of which annoyed many long-time players, but as I said at the time, there was still good (or at least potential) in what it was trying to do.
Now, 12 months later, after a lot of work and (remaining) fan feedback, Developers DICE have the game… at the point it should have been at launch. That’s a low bar I need to clear, I know, but this game is being developed right during a pandemic, it’s going to be free (or basically free on Game Pass) and clearing low bars is what these kinds of services are for and weekends are there.
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It turned out pretty good too! The original maps are revised, The new maps are great and many of the things that older fans were missing at launch – from scoreboards to the class system – have either been reintroduced or are about to be.
When announcing free/Game Pass availability, DICE also released a video and blog today Outlines new weapons, map changes, and special tweaks coming as part of Season 3, along with a very brief reference to something different beyond what they posit as something more substantial. That something else is discussed in a movie of soldiers looking at ominous weather, so since the game is set in a near-future climate apocalypse (and already has in-game storms that can ruin your shit), it’ll be interesting too see if this something else makes dramatic changes to the way weather shapes and affects maps.
Battlefield 2042 will hit Game Pass when Season 3 launches soon, while the free weekend/week runs December 1-4 on Xbox, December 1-5 on Steam, and December 16-23 on PlayStation.
