Battlefield 6 Campaign Review: Trash Wrapped Around a Precious Gift

Battlefield 6 has finally been released and, as expected, has caused a stir in the gaming community. High online player counts on Steam, good press reviews, mass depression in Activision studios (against the backdrop of poor Black Ops 7 beta numbers), and, of course, universal adoration. Yes, the multiplayer part of the game really turned out to be very cool and engaging. But what happened to the single-player campaign? Why did EA say nothing about it throughout the entire marketing campaign? Why do gamers try not to mention the game's storyline in their reviews? Or did Battlefield Studios actually manage to destroy Call of Duty on the field of cinematic shooters? The answers to all these questions are in our review.

There has long been an opinion online that the Battlefield series has never had outstanding stories, and its single-player campaigns have always lost in quality and presentation to the Call of Duty series. This is partly true. Although sometimes the series did have glimpses and hints of cinematic quality.

Take, for example, the Bad Company duology: great story, cool missions, and a competent implementation of basic multiplayer mechanics in a single-player setting. Or, for instance, Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4. Yes, the script in them was overly crude, but what great direction and memorable moments for years to come! Even the much-maligned Hardline had a pretty decent story with intriguing twists. That’s why many fans hoped that Battlefield 6 would get a cool single-player campaign. After all, this is a complete reimagining of the franchise with direct competition against Call of Duty.

In fact, it seems EA also wanted to create a good story mode for Battlefield 6, hiring a separate studio — Ridgeline Games — so that DICE and Ripple Effect Studios could focus solely on the multiplayer component without being distracted by additional work. However, according to insider sources and some investigations, Ridgeline Games, after two years of hard work, only managed to produce a pitiful semblance of a campaign, which for obvious reasons did not pass quality control. Some employees anonymously reported that the newly formed team did not have enough resources or people to fulfill all the tasks set by management. In addition, the publisher constantly reallocated the budget, forcing developers to adapt to new conditions each time. Ultimately, the ideologue of the story campaign, Marcus Lehto, left Ridgeline Games, and the studio itself was disbanded.

Two companies — Criterion and Motive — immediately began finishing the story campaign. The developers tried to do something with the groundwork left after Ridgeline’s closure, but at some point decided to start from scratch. On the one hand, this was the right decision: if EA rejected the first version of the campaign, then there was no point in trying to "fix" it. But on the other hand, the studios had too little time to implement anything truly worthwhile, and clearly lacked experience in making shooters.

That’s why EA so carefully hid details about Battlefield 6’s story campaign right up until release. The publisher’s management understood perfectly well that the content they had on hand not only failed to meet AAA quality standards, but barely reached the level of "Polish shooters" from the early 2000s. Frankly, the publisher should have scrapped the single-player campaign or released it separately next year. But in the end, we got a crooked, raw, ugly, and downright boring story mode, which, even compared to the worst parts of Call of Duty, looks like a trashy piece of code absolutely unworthy of your attention. No wonder the developers started recommending deleting the story campaign to save space on your hard drive.

The storyline of Battlefield 6’s campaign is so derivative and uninspired that it can literally be summed up in two sentences: The CIA once again creates an army of mercenaries for a noble cause, but, as usual, it gets out of control and decides to conquer the world. And, of course, the brave patriotic soldiers have to "clean up the mess," killing thousands of enemy troops and blowing up everything that peaceful citizens have spent years building.

Criterion and Motive didn’t even try to come up with anything original or tell any kind of story. Every mission and plot twist is a direct copy of something that has already appeared in the Call of Duty series in one form or another. The protagonist’s comrades being killed at the very beginning? Check. Helicopter boss fight? Present. Night vision mission? Included. Epic parachute jump? You bet! And there’s more: villains trying to kidnap the president, a sniper mission on a vast map, blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, and, of course, a final dash set to epic music. There’s even a Ghost of their own in the game, who, by the way, just appears out of nowhere in the protagonist’s team with no backstory or narrative justification.

While playing, it felt like the campaign missions were created by separate teams working independently, with no clear vision or creative director. The first half of the game is so boring and uninspired that you just want to turn it off and delete it from your drive. The second half at least tries to show that it’s not just a poorly assembled Call of Duty clone, but also a Battlefield game. In at least a couple of missions, you get to drive a tank and smash walls with a sledgehammer. Still, the developers clearly had no ideas of their own, as there are no original or creative missions to be found.

There’s not much to say about the dialogue or plot twists, either. All the characters are clichés. The main villain, who was given an epic introduction in the trailer, turns out to be just another psychopath who appears twice in the entire game. The protagonist’s squad communicates using classic lines from a team-building manual. And the story’s ending leaves only one thought in your head: “Wait, is this supposed to be a retelling of Black Ops?”

It’s funny how DICE’s narrative director claimed in an interview that the writers were seriously inspired by war movies like Civil War and Generation Kill, but in reality, the plot of Battlefield 6 is more reminiscent of Tropic Thunder. The authors didn’t even try to touch on any pressing issues, of which there are plenty these days. The opening cutscene talks about the collapse of NATO and a conflict in Georgia, but these events are never explored in the actual story. In the end, Battlefield 6’s single-player campaign is an empty shell, where military conflicts and ties to reality are just an excuse for endless, meaningless shooting.

The gameplay component of Battlefield 6’s campaign is just as uninspired as its story. Whereas single-player used to feel like a kind of training ground where you could get to know the vehicles, mechanics, and weapons, “Six” is just a basic shooting gallery with cutscenes. The developers had no original ideas, as most of the missions boil down to clearing the map of dumb AI enemies.

The missions are extremely primitive and boring. To make the gameplay feel more large-scale and the main action more like a big-budget blockbuster, the developers added a couple dozen pyrotechnic set-pieces to every mission. To give you an idea — literally everything explodes in Battlefield 6. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a stealth mission or an assignment on a large map where you’re supposed to carefully destroy artillery — everything ultimately comes down to blowing something up or destroying some large object. And since the developers have no sense of moderation, by the middle of the campaign you’ll be looking at all these pyrotechnics as just everyday routine. It’s clear that Criterion and Motive tried their hardest to replicate Call of Duty’s success, but at least CoD’s creators understood how to properly manipulate the player’s attention.

Most missions boil down to clearing out territory from huge waves of enemies and classic Battlefield-style defense. The Criterion game designers’ inability to create interesting situations is especially noticeable. More often than not, you’re given a small area with cover, and waves of Pax Armata mercenaries just charge at you. As with the pyrotechnics, the developers have no sense of balance here either. Even though I was almost always aiming for headshots, I ran out of ammo faster than enemies on the map. By the way, you get way more ammo in the single-player campaign than in multiplayer.

The AI in the story campaign is, surprisingly, very primitive. Enemies rarely take cover and often just stand there waiting to be shot. They especially love to rush you in groups, relying on sheer numbers. And they get stuck on obstacles, too. On top of that, they always know where you are, since for some unknown reason they forgot to turn off the cheats. This was especially infuriating in the mission where you have to clear the streets of Cairo in a tank. The moment I peeked out from behind a corner, the rocket launcher guys instantly unloaded everything they had. There were also plenty of times when, right after a cutscene, a huge mob of mercenaries would spawn and start shooting at the protagonist with perfect accuracy, giving you no chance to react.

The AI of your squadmates is just as bad as that of the enemies. Yes, unlike the allies in Call of Duty, they do help clear out waves of mercenaries. You can even stand aside and wait while they do most of your job for you. However, there’s a huge chance they’ll get stuck in the environment somewhere or, even worse, get knocked out. Bringing them back into action is quite a hassle, since enemies will inevitably get in the way and shoot in all directions. Sometimes, there are even more annoying bugs: for example, a squadmate might disappear from the map or fail to step on a trigger to activate a script. And that’s it — you have to restart from the last checkpoint.

There are no specific class restrictions in the story campaign. Over the course of the story, you’ll get to play as several squad members. Playing as the sniper is by far the most interesting, since enemies don’t run around like in multiplayer and just patiently wait for a headshot. The developers also let you control a drone and guided missiles. As for the engineer, there’s exactly one mission where you have to repair a tank. For the rest, most of the missions are played as a classic assault trooper: just walk and shoot.

There’s exactly one mission in the mountains of Tajikistan with a somewhat open location, where you can get creative and try out different tactics. For example, you can storm an outpost in a jeep or bomb enemies with a drone. And that’s probably the only mission that even slightly fits the Battlefield formula. In all the other missions, you participate more as a spectator than as a key player.

At the same time, the hastily assembled scripts break immersion and prevent you from really getting into what’s happening on screen. Characters constantly twitch or levitate. Story items fall through the environment, and the protagonist respawns on the map after every cutscene. This creates a constant sense of jankiness, like you’re playing an unfinished alpha version. It’s obvious at a glance that the game was made in a rush and cobbled together from disparate pieces. In the early chapters, key characters have crude animations and faces like static NPCs, while in the later ones, you can clearly see some actual motion capture work.

And the saddest part: the Battlefield 6 story campaign is more of an “on-rails shooter” than any Call of Duty entry. All the interesting events happen in cutscenes, which are often just pre-rendered videos. Shooting dumb enemies gets tiresome by the second hour of gameplay. You can’t leave the mission area, and the corridor-like levels offer no real variety. At least Activision’s internal studios try to break away from the tired shooting gallery formula by introducing new mechanics and good set pieces, but Battlefield Studios — with a $400 million budget — couldn’t even make a halfway decent single-player game.

The story campaign also has visual problems. You’d think it was made using multiplayer assets, but for some reason it looks even worse. The visuals are dirty and washed-out. The explosions, which happen every two minutes, are just a mess of sprites. New York in one mission looks like a pile of boxes with some lighting. The particle system works poorly and just fills the game space with gray. Backgrounds are blurry and sloppily cut out.

The character and NPC models in the game are terrible. Animations are jerky and unnatural. Facial expressions are mostly nonexistent. Key characters just open their mouths and stare into space. Throughout the playthrough, I constantly felt like I was playing a game from 2007, not a modern AAA shooter.

The soundtrack is completely generic. There’s no uniqueness or distinct style.

As for the technical state of the story campaign — as I described above — it’s like an alpha version. Scripts don’t trigger. The AI constantly glitches out. Character models are twitchy. Objects clip through the environment. Lighting doesn’t work properly. Props levitate in the air. On the plus side, though, performance is actually quite good. No lags, drops, or long load times. The game always delivered stable FPS and never crashed.

The Battlefield 6 story campaign can be described in one word — misfire. There’s nothing here that grabs you in any way. It’s a toothless copy of Call of Duty, from game design to story, with no sign of individuality. A dull shooting gallery where you spend hours mowing down huge crowds of enemies and following an incredibly boring plot made entirely of tired clichés. What’s more, the campaign is poorly assembled and looks like a game from the early 2000s. Hopefully, the multiplayer won’t disappoint, or else what was the point of this global reimagining of the series?