Battlefield playtest gameplay is leaking all over the internet, and fans seem cautiously but genuinely excited: 'Okay, we might be back'
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Early playtesting of the next Battlefield game is now underway—there hasn't been an official announcement to that effect as far as I know, but we can tell because gameplay footage is flooding the internet.
The testing is taking place under the auspices of Battlefield Labs, the initiative announced in February that aims to ensure future Battlefield releases go better than Battlefield 2042, the most recent addition to the series, which did not make an especially good impression among fans. The Battlefield Labs announcement video concluded with a 10-second clip of pre-alpha gameplay showcasing environmental destructibility, and that's central to quite a bit of the leaked gameplay footage as well.
Interestingly, Charlie Intel said on X that the playtest is under NDA and that leaked videos "are being taken down immediately by EA," but it's not clear whether that's actually the case. BobNetworkUK_, who posted a compilation of four clips totalling about eight minutes of gameplay, wrote that "it seems EA retracted the takedowns."
I don't know whether that's true, but there's no overlooking the fact that these videos are still out there, and not hidden in some secret, dark corner of the internet: Charlie Intel has than five million followers on X, so you can be quite sure EA knows it's sharing these videos.
If EA is letting it all slide, it means two things: One, that NDAs are meaningless when developers solicit testing from the general public; and two, that EA has enough confidence in where the next Battlefield game is currently at that it doesn't mind letting the world lay eyes on it.
That doesn't mean much at the pre-alpha stage of things, but on the whole I think it's more encouraging than a PR guy screaming "Don't look at it!" while desperately firing takedown orders like Animal Mother charging an enemy sniper.
To speculate further, if EA did decide to let the leaked gameplay stand, it may have been encouraged to do so by the reaction to it. There is understandable caution and obligatory negativity here and there, but the overall response to the early build's crumply destruction tech that, from a distance, looks on par with The Finals is very positive.
The audio in particular draws a lot of praise, but even though there are some glitches and oddities here and there, the whole thing looks pretty tight for a game that's supposedly still very early in development.
5 minutes gameplay, thoughts? from r/Battlefield
Another point of "more excitement than you might expect": The scoreboard is back.
First look at victory screen from r/Battlefield
(To be fair, Battlefield fans were really mad that EA dropped the traditional scoreboard from BF2042, to the point that they successfully bullied developers into putting it back in.)
Electronic Arts has a lot of ground to make up here. Battlefield has always played second fiddle to the Call of Duty series, and BF2042 was a pretty significant misstep in the eyes of many long-time fans of the series: EA put in a lot of effort into turning BF2042 around and largely pulled it off, but it needs the next game in the series to come out very strong if it wants Battlefield to be taken seriously as a modern military contender. These gameplay leaks are a long way from that, but they do at least look like a big step in the right direction.
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I think it suffers from a pitifully lazy script, sleepy acting, and throwing out the previous film's setup for a dinosaur-ridden dystopia in favor of, echoing Eric Eisenberg's Jurassic World Dominion review, two bland, disparate plotlines that have little to do with, ya know, dinosaurs. However, I do not at all regret watching it and would choose to watch it again over most sequels to Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic, which I realize may come as a shock to many Jurassic fans. Well, allow me to explain… In previous articles of mine, such as my reaction to the recent sci-fi thriller Companion, I have made it clear that I am a staunch technophobe who fears how dangerously technology's advancement could, or already has, affected our society. However, there is one fear of mine that I have been a bit less vocal about in my writing until now: bugs, especially ones of unusual size. So, you might be able to imagine how I felt when the genetically engineered locusts appeared on the screen. Now, I will agree with the widely shared opinion that a Jurassic Park movie focusing its plot on a non-reptilian prehistoric creature is a mistake, but said creatures did manage to get my adrenaline going faster than any of the dinosaurs that appear in Jurassic World Dominion. That being said… Whenever a dinosaur would appear on screen in Dominion, I found it nothing short of impressive. The special effects, boasting the classic blend of practical animatronics with some of the best CGI Hollywood has to offer, were so convincing, I am surprised there was not more praise about that aspect, at least. Aside from their visual effects, I felt that the action sequences involving dinosaurs are genuinely some of the best that the franchise has ever seen. I recall, in particular, being thoroughly riveted by a scene taking place in Malta, when Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is chased on a motorcycle through the city by Atrociraptors. I had to stop and think to myself, Wow, I am actually having fun with this movie, and it did not stop there. Some have said the extended edition of Jurassic World Dominion is better than the theatrical version, but you can get both on a Blu-ray and 4K UHD set from Amazon for nearly half off the regular price!View Deal The one reason I had to be somewhat optimistic about finally watching Dominion was the one aspect that I had heard positive rumblings about: DeWanda Wise as Kayla Watts. I could not agree more with my colleague Sarah El-Mahmoud that the daredevil pilot is the best character from the Jurassic World trilogy for her bravery and quick wit, and for just being a badass. If there are any downsides to Kayla, I would say that she makes most of the other newer characters (including Mamoudou Athie's Ramsay Cole and even Pratt's Grady) look weaker than I already believed they were, and that she should have been introduced to the franchise earlier. With all due respect to Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, a part of me wishes that she were the focus of the upcoming 2025 movie, Jurassic World Rebirth, instead. Despite my harsh words about the newer Jurassic characters, I have to admit that I really enjoyed seeing them finally interact with Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). In fact, I don't think I was ever amused by the OG heroes' return until that moment, as the parameters of their reunion and the moments the trio shared never felt particularly natural. And don't get me started about the random callbacks to the first film, like Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) somehow possessing the fake Barbasol canister and displaying it in his office. What?! Anyway, I can't say that 'natural' is a word I would use to describe Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm's meeting with Grady, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), and others in the final act either. The events that lead them to each other are far too convenient (like many other aspects of the plot), and much of their dialogue feels egregiously forced. Yet, there was something about seeing them all gathered together and relying on one another to survive against the prehistoric wildlife that left me wishing the movie had dedicated more time to bringing them together. Of course, any Jurassic Park fan knows that the real draw of this franchise is not the meat, but the meat-eaters, and the one who rules them all is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Any return by that big behemoth in these movies, no matter how convoluted the reasoning may be, is warmly welcomed by me, and its appearance in Dominion was no exception, especially since it was not alone. I actually really dug how the T-Rex was treated as a hero, Godzilla style, in the film's final act, when it teams up with a Therizinosaurus to bring down the Giganotosaurus. Watching the T-Rex throw the Giganotosaurus onto the Therizinosaurus' claws, fatally impaling it, made for a more satisfying final battle than the Indominus Rex showdown in 2015's Jurassic World, if you ask me. I don't see a future in which I ever boot up my Peacock subscription to watch Jurassic World Dominion again, unless I get curious and decide to check out the extended edition, which I hear is an improvement. Yet, I can't say I feel that I wasted my morning watching it the other day, which is something I can't say about most of the follow-ups to the original '90s movie classic, and that calls for a modest roar of applause in my book.