Battlefield 6 devs abandoned the chaos of Battlefield 4's destruction mechanic because they thought "the game wouldn't be fun" if everything in it was dust: "We want it to serve a gameplay purpose"

Battlefield 6
(Image credit: EA)

Love is a battlefield, the Panera Bread parking lot where I may have rear-ended someone 10 years ago is a battlefield, but – if we keep using this line of thinking – Battlefield 6 is not a battlefield, in the sense that its seems its developers deliberately cut down on the scale of destruction in it, according to what they tell Edge for its new magazine issue 415.

Battlefield 4, the 2013 installment of the military shooter series, introduced "Levolution," a bit of a silly word for a visually, physically impressive thing: Players could trigger hazards to totally upset their environments and overhaul a map, like by breaking a levee to flood the streets around them, or collapse a dam to trigger a power outage in local buildings.

"We love the spectacle of that destruction," general manager at studio Ripple Effect Christian Grass tells Edge. "It looks awesome, sounds awesome, it's really cool." But when it comes to destruction in Battlefield 6, due October 10 – "we want it to serve a gameplay purpose."

So the devs are employing something they instead call "tactical destruction," which Grass says comes from the fact that "we want people to be flanking by destroying things, to take down a building to eliminate an enemy."

It's a more calculated rampage. "If you could destroy everything, once there's nothing left, then the game wouldn't be fun," concludes Grass.

So you can break a heart, I can allegedly tap someone's bumper when I'm 17, but don't be ridiculous and try running around Battlefield 6, knocking over every building. What do you think this is, Battlefield 4?

Battlefield 6 uses the same destruction systems for both Multiplayer and Battle Royale mode, but you'll have to think wisely before smashing: "Just destroying everything isn't a good idea."

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Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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