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Okay, so it hasn’t quite clocked up Call of Duty’s air miles, but the Battlefield series has still managed to spread its arm(ory) across two-thirds of the globe. Join us as we go for a run (and gun) around the world...
New York, USA - Battlefield 3
New York, New York, the city that never sleeps... because everyone’s ears are ringing from all the gunfire. It’s here that the mad dash through a subway train that bookends Battlefield 3’s campaign occurs, as Sgt Blackburn rushes to foil a terrorist plot. It all ends in Times Square with a car crash and a final battle with quite the audience.
Florida, USA - Battlefield: Hardline
Offshoot Battlefield: Hardline turns its attentions to a different type of war – the war on crime. This unorthodox cuff-’em-up largely has you unleashing police brutality on the city of Miami, but you also get a chance to stretch your legs in the sweltering swamps of the Everglades – which, as it happens, make for an ace multiplayer map.
Bolivia - Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Oh, hi Ghost Recon Wildlands. Set in Bolivia, are you? *scrambles for ‘condescending Willy Wonka’ jpg* Tell me more about how you’re half-a-decade behind the campaign of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which focuses on a group of commandos who travel around the Andes on the hunt for a top-secret WWII-era Japanese weapon.
English Channel - Battlefield 1942
The first ‘true’ entry in the series, Battlefield 1942, offered a Conquest map based on the real Battle of Britain attacks from 1940 (just go with it), in which the German Luftwaffe launched a number of night attacks on British airspace in an attempt to bully them into surrender. In game, this translates into a tense battle of aerial wits as two teams jostle to either defend or destroy factories and radar.
Upper Bavaria - Battlefield 2142
A map set in war torn 1942 Germany? Boooo-ring. But a map set in 2142 Germany, which sees the former European superpower buried underneath several feet of snow, as a second ice age forces the European Union and an Asian alliance to battle for what little habitable land remains? Sign us up.
Tunis Harbor, Tunisia - Battlefield 2142
Remember in Germany we spoke about Battlefield 2142, with its second ice age shtick? Most of the remaining ‘habitable land’ is located around the Suez Canal, leading to several maps centred on taking control of a strategically important African port. The infantry-focused Tunis Harbor is one such map.
Italy - Battlefield 1942: Road to Rome
Battlefield 1’s campaign is set in part in the Italian alps – but it’s not the first time we’ve been given *googles Italian for ‘nosebleeds’* epistassis on Italian soil. The Road to Rome DLC sees French and German forces clash over Monte Cassino.
Baku, Azerbaijan - Battlefield 4
Battlefield 4’s campaign opens with an intel mission in the Azerbaijani capital that goes tragically wrong. While fleeing Russian forces, the car carrying Tombstone Squad plunges into the Caspian Sea, causing protagonist Recker to make the difficult decision to leave his trapped leader, Sgt Dunn, for dead.
Arabian Peninsula - Battlefield 1
Battlefield 1 focuses on many of WWI’s untold stories, including the events that occurred on the Arabian peninsula. One of the playable characters is a Bedouin warrior woman, and there’s also a booster pack named after the British military officer, Lawrence of Arabia. Hey, that’s not an untold story!
Serdaristan - Battlefield: Bad Company
Battlefield: Bad Company’s campaign takes place in this fictional, cowardly central Asian country, which shares a border with Russia and has access to the Caspian Sea, likely placing it south-east of Kazakhstan. In Mirror’s Edge, Serdaristan’s war with fellow make-believe country Tasbekistan is covered in the in-game news tickers.
Gulf of Oman - Battlefield 2
First appearing in Battlefield 2, then remastered for Battlefields 3 and 4, Gulf of Oman is one of the most popular multiplayer maps in its series, due in part to its diverse terrain. It’s undergone several facelifts, with the most recent iteration introducing a dust storm that significantly reduces visibility.
Vietnam - Battlefield Vietnam
Lucky old Vietnam doesn’t get stiffed with a single map; it gets an entire game based around the 20th Century war that sadly continues to define the south-east Asian country to this day. Released in 2004, Battlefield Vietnam was an early, and successful, stab at creating an asymmetrical multiplayer experience, with the US side’s military heft counteracted by the Vietnamese team’s underground network of tunnels (meaning, effectively, mobile spawn points).
Russia - Codename Eagle
It all started here, maybe, depending on where you place the pin. Refraction Games’ 2000 PC title Codename Eagle, which explores life in the Russian Empire in an alternate reality 1917 where World War I never happened, is considered the spiritual predecessor to the Battlefield series. Shortly after release, the studio merged with DICE and began work on Battlefield 1942.
This article originally appeared in Xbox: The Official Magazine. For more great Xbox coverage, you can subscribe here.
