With every passing day this summer, we undoubtedly approach the reveal of the next Battlefield. EA said we should expect it sometime in the summer, and though the game has yet to be given a proper title, there’s a lot the teams behind it have been comfortable sharing.
This may be the first time, however, that an open beta has been confirmed for a game with no name, because that’s exactly what EA just did.
The “announcement” was made on Battlefield’s official Twitter account. Quite surprisingly, the tweet itself was about something else, and the open beta news seemed to have just slipped in there.
“Open Weapons vs Closed Weapons. Why not both?” the tweet reads. “Starting at Open Beta players can choose official playlists with Signature Weapons locked to class, or not. More to come.”
So yes, that’s confirmation of an open beta, even before we know what the game is going to be called. What the tweet is referring to is all the drama amongst the community about a particularly major change in the way classes and weapons work in the upcoming game. DICE first revealed its intention to make all weapons available to all classes back in May. The reaction from longtime fans was immediately negative.
However, given that it was meant for Battlefield Labs – and not necessarily confirmed to be in the full game, some were hopeful that DICE’s intention was indeed to use the testing environment to validate such a controversial change.
Unfortunately, DICE returned earlier this month to confirm all those players’ worst fears – that it’s sticking with its original intention. While the game will incentivise players to stick to their class’ assigned weapons – dubbed Signature Weapons – they won’t be forced to do so.
That tweet is the first acknowledgement that there’s a major desire from fans for Battlefield to stick to, well, what made it great for decades – and class limitations and co-dependancy are high on that list.
It’s obviously not clear whether the playlists the tweet refers to will also be available at launch. For all we know, DICE may want to use the open beta to see which of the two will be popular, and whether the majority of players will even notice, or care.
At any rate, the reveal of the next Battlefield must be incredibly close now, which means the aforementioned open beta is not far off, either.