Battlefield 6’s campaign falls apart with a middling plot and repetitive missions.
Electronic Arts’ latest outing in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield 6, features the series' first singleplayer campaign since 2018's Battlefield V. Battlefield 2042, the last installment in this military shooter franchise, eschewed a campaign to expand on its lore via multiplayer modes instead. Even Battlefield V and Battlefield 1's campaigns opted to tell anthology stories with different characters, rather than a single connected story.
Battlefield 6’s story campaign offers much more straightforward fare by comparison. The campaign follows a team of U.S. Marine Raiders’ efforts to thwart Pax Armata, a private military group sowing chaos worldwide. While the campaign’s focused storytelling and blockbuster visuals stand head and shoulders above its recent predecessors, repetitive missions and a nonsensical plot likewise lead to some of the series’ lowest lows.
Battlefield 6's worldbuilding could use some work
Battlefield 6 is set just a few years into the future (roughly around 2028). A military group named Pax Armata has come into play globally, with the aim of propping up countries that have gone unsupported by a fractured NATO. In the midst of what was meant to be a peaceful transfer of power to Pax Armata, however, a team of U.S. Marine Raiders named Dagger 1-3 finds themselves under attack from the military group without just cause.
While the main story follows Dagger 1-3’s international pursuit of Pax Armata’s leader and big bad Alexander Kincaid, the story does diverge from their perspectives on occasion, to give us a glimpse of what this war has done to other countries on the planet. These small detours serve to flesh out Battlefield 6’s world, though they also draw attention to a major flaw in its storytelling.
For a campaign so steeped in global politics and military conspiracies, Battlefield 6 is immediately and bafflingly apolitical. Pax Armata itself is a thinly-veiled stand-in for a big bad that needs to be devoid of connections to any real-world entities, so as to avoid any sense of controversy over its actions. It brings to mind Top Gun: Maverick, and its total unwillingness to flesh out its own unnamed hostile enemy faction. We never knew who exactly Maverick’s protagonists were fighting, and the movie could not have been more uninterested in diving into the politics of its central conflict.
Pax Armata, at least, has a name. What it doesn’t have is history, or any concrete buildup for its geopolitical warfare. There is no reasonable explanation given for how a military group like this one has not only come to exist, but been given enough military power to take on multiple nations at a time. Even when the game attempts to lend Pax Armata some credibility via a last-minute twist in the story, it feels laughably nonsensical.
The human face that Pax Armata wears throughout this story, a mercenary named Kincaid, is the sole reason this cartoonishly evil faction could have worked at all. However, with so little screentime to work with–he only appears in two or three cutscenes in total–he comes across as yet another consequence of Battlefield 6’s undeveloped main plot. It all feels so flimsily tacked together, with both the campaign’s shadowy faction and nothing villain only serving to give Dagger 1-3 a poorly-justified reason to shoot mobs of Bad GuysTM in a handful of recalibrated multiplayer maps.
A villain without anything to say is a villain without character or personality, a see-through plot device that only exists to provide our protagonists conflict without meaning. Kincaid, at least, provides hints of a backstory laced with disgruntled military work. Unfortunately, his side of the story is never given the time of day. All we're left with are the “ooh-rah, ooh-rah” adventures of a group of marines killing swathes of enemy soldiers in a plot that meanders, never quite makes sense, and finally falls off a logical cliff when the credits roll.
At least there are plenty of explosions to look forward to
Where Battlefield V put players through stealth missions in a shooter series widely-known for being as loud and chaotic as possible, Battlefield 6 at least understands the assignment. This campaign is short, but it’s just as cinematic as a Battlefield game should be, throwing players into action-packed setpieces that only grow more frenzied as the story progresses.
While most of these levels do eventually boil down to a series of shooting galleries, there is a satisfying mix of mechanics thrown into the campaign to keep players engaged from one level to the next. One level might have players infiltrate a series of houses in search of a target, while another might have them control a tank in a drawn-out vehicle battle. The final mission even throws in an open-world level with three objectives for players to take down in any order they wish.
That does keep the missions' pacing breezy for the five-to-six hours it will take players to beat the campaign. It also serves to tutorialise mechanics which new players might find harder to grasp in Multiplayer, like the specific functions of each character class’ signature gadgets.
What is disappointing is that players aren’t given much freedom over their loadouts and gadgets between each mission. Specific gadgets can take tens of hours for players to unlock in Multiplayer, but having them unlocked in Campaign off the bat would have given the mode some sorely-needed replayability, on top of giving players a reason to actually stray away from Multiplayer. The story campaign also doesn’t feature any air vehicle segments, which seems a puzzling exclusion, given how prominent they’ve been in the series historically.
While Campaign levels are satisfyingly fast-paced, it’s worth mentioning how repetitive they can get despite their short length. Shooting galleries can wear out their welcome very quickly thanks to utterly broken enemy AI, with Pax Armata grunts occasionally breaking cover before confusedly standing in one place to get shot at. Game audio also seems bugged at the moment, with weapon audio FX becoming muffled or outright muted randomly.
While the game’s narrative is disappointingly bland, I still see this as an upgrade over the last few Battlefield campaigns gameplay-wise. Granted, that's not saying much. Battlefield 1 and Battlefield V opted for standalone anthology stories, which wound up being inconsistent in quality. This tale is more linear, and allows players to grow attached to the crew of Dagger 1-3 over time. There’s plenty of room for improvement, but it’s nice to see the series put more effort into its singleplayer campaigns again.
There are big blockbuster moments to take in, but the bulk of these cinematic setpieces lie in between a swathe of elongated tank fights and chase sequences. A little more variety would have been appreciated here, as only a few of these levels offer a gameplay experience players can’t get in Multiplayer.
Verdict
I had my expectations set a little too high for Battlefield 6’s Campaign, given developer Motive Studios’ fantastic work on the 2023 Dead Space remake. Both Motive and Criterion (Need for Speed Unbound) reportedly worked on this campaign, which theoretically would have afforded plenty of breathing room to make the story their own–giving DICE and the rest of Battlefield Studios more time to focus on Multiplayer.
At best, however, Battlefield 6 only repackages some of the best moments in the average Battlefield 6 multiplayer match–from exploding buildings to tank battles–in a singleplayer format. Repetitive objectives, uninspired shooting galleries, and one too many vehicle chases only bog things down, and with a nonsensical plotline that veers into hammy territory by its end, the appeal of this campaign quickly wears thin.
While it does serve as a solid tutorial of the game’s basic mechanics, I can only recommend Battlefield 6’s Campaign to diehard fans desperately seeking out lore on its shadowy big bad, Pax Armata. Even then, you might be surprised by how swiftly your curiosity is rewarded with disappointment.
Battlefield 6 is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC for US$69.99. We received a copy of the game for this review. This is a Campaign review; you can read our Multiplayer review here.
