Battlefield 2042’s Climate Change Narrative Premise Has Nothing to do with Social Commentary, Developer Says

Battlefield 2042 is finally a thing that we know about officially, not just through leaks, and quite a few interesting details have emerged on the shooter. Even though it’s going to have no single player campaign, it definitely has a narrative element. In its near-future setting, the world has been brought to the brink due to climate change, and US and Russia are fighting over food and fuel shortages. Players play as Non-Patriated soldiers (referred to as No-Pats), who owe no allegiance to any nation, and instead pick and choose who to fight for.

The parallels between the game’s central premise and major real-world issues are extremely easy to draw- but developer DICE says that there is no social commentary involved with any of it, and all of these choices have been made purely for gameplay purposes.

“It is definitely purely a multiplayer game for us,” design director Daniel Berlin said to IGN. “The reason we decided to go down this route is so we could create a narrative with this world that we could create through the eyes of the No-Pats. We wanted to get more spectacle in there, and more massive events happening. The setting fits that perfectly. It fits that scale, and it gives us reasons to go all over the world. It’s for gameplay reasons across the board.”

It’s not uncommon for games to go with what are clearly and overtly political settings and premises charged with some level of social commentary, only to publicly deny those elements for PR and marketing purposes. A very recent example was when Ubisoft stated that Far Cry 6, inspired by the Cuban revolution, wasn’t trying to make a political statement– though they later expanded on and, in effect, retracted that.

Battlefield 2042 is out for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on October 22. On PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, it will cost $70.

Check out details on the game’s maps through here. Meanwhile, a brand-new multiplayer experience developer for the game by DICE LA is going to be unveiled next month.