Should you skip the Battlefield 6 campaign?

The first positive thing I heard about the Battlefield 6 campaign was that it throws up an “uninstall” button once you’ve watched the credits roll. On one hand it’s a genuinely helpful way to save some precious hard drive space, especially at such a release-heavy time of year, but given how divisive the reception has been towards this story-driven single player portion of the game, that button certainly has some emotions attached to it.

I wouldn’t exactly call past Battlefield campaigns an afterthought, and there’s some real highlights from their varied efforts, though they are never the reason for the season. In the same way that I blitz through the Call of Duty campaigns before touching Zombies or multiplayer, I’ve traditionally done the same with Battlefield, knowing that the beating heart of these games rests within their brand of all-out, never-ending online warfare. Of course, when it came to Battlefield 2042, there was no such option.

It’s hard to say whether a thrilling string of solo missions would have vastly improved EA and DICE’s previous punt at their flagship FPS franchise, but even the barest offering could have helped flesh out its near future setting. In Battlefield 6 we’re immediately introduced to the game’s two warring factions: NATO and the private military corporation known as Pax Armata. While the two peacefully coexist for a time, Pax is on the rise as a growing coalition in its own right. 2027 Pax make their move and ambush unsuspecting NATO forces stationed in Georgia.

It’s the ultimate game of chicken. For the longest time NATO has gone unchallenged, and in its slow response to the sudden Pax threat, it loses credibility, with former allied nations now rallying under the protection of the ambitious PMC. What follows is an effort by NATO forces to retake territories and strongholds, spliced with cutscenes that probe into a deeper conspiracy of who is actually behind Pax.

There’s nothing all that gripping about the story. It succeeds in doing some basic stage-setting, giving players a pit stop tour of the various locations they’ll be blowing to smithereens in BF6’s multiplayer. While there has been a clear effort to weave in added layers of intrigue through the narrative’s framing, there isn’t much of a pay off – in fact, the game ends on an abrupt cliffhanger, just as things are starting to heat up and the conspiracy has begun to unravel.

One thing the campaign does get right is an emphasis on squad-based gameplay, even if it’s only lightly implemented as opposed to being a core feature. While you don’t get to directly control your fireteam, you can activate their class abilities to help turn a firefight in your favour, ordering them to deploy a smokescreen, scout enemy locations, or toss frag grenades. It’s a small touch, and one that’s very easy to completely ignore, yet it can lightly offset some of the repetition that comes from gunning down enemies at each checkpoint.

There is another staple Battlefield feature evident throughout the campaign: environmental destruction. It adds an extra strategic dimension to firefights, allowing players and NPCs to blast chunks out of walls in effort to flank enemies to hinder them as you retreat to safety, with plenty of stereotypically explosive barrels conveniently scattered through each location.

It isn’t all running and gunning. There are a handful of cinematic on-rails sections where you mount a machine on an armoured truck and one mission where you take control of a tank. These help add some variety, as do some of the gadgets you get to play with such as the tactical drone. However, given just how important vehicles are in multiplayer, it’s a shame we don’t get a campaign mission dedicated to fighter jets or helicopters. With no in-game tutorials explaining how to control these aircrafts, I’ve been in plenty of online matches where the sky hosts a flying circus of rookie pilots struggling to keep the sky above them and the ground below.

Clocking in at around 6 hours and spread across 9 missions, length isn’t really an issue for Battlefield 6’s single player. The problem is that, after investing all of that time, there are few memorable moments outside some technically impressive set pieces. Rather than being a satisfying conclusion to the story, the last cutscene feels more like the introduction to a final act that doesn’t exist. Unless EA and DICE decide to pick up where they left off in a sequel, of course.

To no-one’s surprise, the Battlefield 6 campaign isn’t an essential part of the overall package, but playing through these missions should give players more insight into the near future setting DICE has created and the motivations fuelling its two endlessly fighting factions.