One of the biggest announcements for Battlefield 2042 was the Battlefield Portal, a standalone component to the game where players could mix and match eras, weapons, and game-types into their own custom matches. But how exactly does it work? Justin Wiebe of Ripple Effect Studios (who are heading development), explained how, and also, why, in this month’s edition of Play UK.
“We wanted to build a love letter to fans. When you release a Battlefield game you always hear from people like ‘Oh I hope the next Battlefield is going to be like Battlefield 3’, or ‘No no no, it has to be like Bad Company 2. Our answer wanted to be: Yes, let’s do all of that.”
Creating these game modes in the Portal is also a lot more involved than just flicking a few switches. The Builder, which allows players to create their modes, is web-based, allowing for fast tweaking and to be very responsive to feedback. It also helps the Battlefield Portal to be able to truly be a community forum, according to Wiebe.
“Let’s say you’re working on a piece of logic, and you’re stuck…You can grab the link, you can send that out on a forum, to the community, to a friend, whoever.”
Wiebe gave a few examples of how the Portal can work, such as a hybrid mode of Gun Master and Infection, or a squad of modern soldiers taking on a horde of World War 2-era troops, or even, Wiebe joked, a game where the winning team is whoever jumped the most.
Along with all of this, the Battlefield Portal also can add a huge amount of variety to a number of minute details like team composition, win conditions, time-to-kill, and health regeneration. With all of this creativity, Battlefield might take on a whole new life with so much community input, which Wiebe is aware of.
“Over the years, as our technology has improved, we’ve sometimes lost sight of…how powerful it is to put it in the hands of the community, and to just be amazed.”
We’ll be able to check out the Battlefield Portal ourselves when Battlefield 2042 and the Portal itself come out on October 22 of this year for the Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC, Xbox Series X, and Playstation 5.