By Battlefield 6‘s developers have been very open about the fact that the upcoming FPS game is inspired by Battlefield 3 and 4, but its single-player campaign also takes plenty from other media including war movies and documentaries.
Speaking in an interview with GamesRadar+, DICE narrative director Emily Grace Buck reiterates that “3 and 4 were our biggest touchstones,” as they featured “fantastic campaigns with grounded, interesting characters set in what was then a contemporary setting.” In addition, “I would say we also looked at some of the human cost scale from things like Battlefield 1.”
Battlefield 6’s campaign takes place not in a historical setting, but a current one, so the devs “also looked at a number of other pieces of contemporary media to try and get that feeling of ‘what does war look like in 2027’ in a way that will be unique, hopefully, to players.”
Criterion senior producer Danny Isaac elaborates on this further. “You want it to be contemporary, right? You want it to feel modern, you want the characters to feel like they’re in a real world, in our world. But we did look at a lot of movies, military movies, especially ones where, you know, [there’s] infantry on the ground, under pressure, that kind of feeling.”
The DICE narrative director goes on to mention the TV series Lioness, as well as the 2024 movie Civil War. “We also looked at influences like Generation Kill, and I have watched so many contemporary war documentaries I couldn’t even begin to name them at this point.
“Like we were saying, I think a big part of why Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 worked is they were trying to be a contemporary war story at the time they were being made, obviously they were set a few years ahead of the year that they released,” she continues. “But we wanted to do that here, not just to mimic what was done in Battlefield 3 before, but really embrace that spirit. So we have to look at what war really looks like today through the eyes of people who are experiencing it through stories that are coming out now, and try to bring that into the campaign so that we’re respectful to people who are serving in militaries around the world and surviving through conflicts.”
We’ll just have to wait and see how the campaign compares to previous entries in the series when Battlefield 6 launches on October 10.