Nearly seven months after it released Battlefield 2042 is getting its first season of content on June 9 – introducing a single new map and a new specialist into the mix alongside two new helicopters as well as three new weapons.
It is, in short, not looking like an update that will turn the tides for Battlefield 2042, a game that’s struggled since launch thanks to design decisions that sat poorly with players as well as the baffling omission of key features such as a leaderboard and voice chat. Those features have since been reinstated, and Battlefield 2042’s certainly improved a fair amount since launch – and while slim the new updates do at least seem to keep DICE’s troubled first-person shooter on the right trajectory.
Battlefield 2042 | Season 1: Zero Hour Gameplay Trailer Watch on YouTube
New map Exposure is the headline addition, offering a smaller play space than the vast – and somewhat empty – maps of the base game, and are in keeping with a philosophical shift from DICE as it slowly moves away from the big 128-player count the original was sold on.
The new map Exposure feels like an improvement, and despite its name doesn’t make you feel as exposed as you were in Battlefield 2042’s initial wave of maps. If anything it’s the antithesis of that bunch, with dense cover amidst its rich forests matched by the same kind of overstated vericality offered in the likes of Breakaway, while a Bond-like lair nestled in the mountainside offers tighter combat encounters.
It’s a very different feel to what’s gone before, and older maps are being brought in line with Battlefield 2042’s new way of thinking – though it might take some time, as the previously trailed changes to Kaleidoscope which breaks up the previously barren space won’t be seen until August when the revised map launches.