New Battlefield 6 trailer swiftly puts celebrities to the side and replaces them with marines as EA doubles down on grounded, no-nonsense skins, and fans think it can only be a diss aimed at Call of Duty

Battlefield 6 screenshot — (Image credit: EA)

With Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 both releasing in fairly quick succession over the next couple of months, a big question remains – which of the big AAA first-person shooters is going to be better received? Right now, it's all to play for, but the fires of this rivalry appear to have been stoked by a new Battlefield 6 trailer, which appears to throw shade at Activision's long-running series.

Battlefield 6's live-action launch trailer was posted yesterday, and immediately opens on a group of celebrities – High School Musical (and a few other films, we suppose) star Zac Efron, basketball pro Jimmy Butler, country singer Morgan Wallen, and martial artist Paddy Pimblett – cinematically walking towards a fight, before a missile promptly takes them out.

After the smoke clears, we see a group of realistic Marines – notably, not famous faces – approaching carefully, with one asking, "who was that?" Another is quick to respond, "doesn't matter, let's move," before going into the real action of the trailer as we see the soldiers coordinate on their strategy, blow up a tank, and destroy a building. Yup, that's Battlefield.

Battlefield 6: Official Launch Live Action Trailer - YouTube

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Now, Call of Duty is never mentioned by name, but it's very easy to interpret this as poking fun at Activision's series and its many celebrity skins, which have included everyone from Nikki Minaj to Snoop Dogg and even Seth Rogen. That's on top of all the other wild collab skins, including The Boys' Homelander, Starlight, and Black Noir, and more recently Beavis and Butt-Head, just to name a few. Obviously, it's not the only game that does this – just look at Fortnite – but needless to say, it doesn't exactly feel like the most grounded military shooter out there when you have all these skins running around.

Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 devs have already made it clear that this isn't the plan for their upcoming FPS. "What's really important to us is that things feel grounded," producer Alexia Christofi previously said, noting: "We want people to express themselves and to have cool skins and peacock in a way like 'I look pretty cool and I have this great weapon skin…' but we want it to feel authentic to the franchise, that's the approach we're thinking."

With all that in mind, it seems even more likely that the latest Battlefield 6 trailer was a reference to this starkly less grounded approach. Fans certainly think so, anyway. "Starting off with a celeb cast only to blow them away and to show off realistic soldiers instead is the greatest COD diss I've seen," one responds on Twitter.

"Fucking shots fired at COD," another adds, while one says: "That CoD roast in the beginning was gold."

After Sega appeared to throw shade at Mario Kart World in its recent Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds ad, it suddenly feels like game rivalries are out in full force again.

I got to play Battlefield 6's single player for 3 hours, and it's a clear return to the grounded shooter campaigns of the early 2010s.

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I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.

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