Season One, entitled “Zero Hour” has been announced (yesterday) and (today) will launch around 1pm UK time. It has been six months since the release of the Battlefield 2042 base game and since then the Battlefield community has really not been in a happy place. People came, tried the game, found it wasn’t for them and then left. Which seems to be what the majority of the player base has done, or at least that’s what the mainstream media has been reporting. I can tell you it isn’t that way for everybody. Some players have stayed and tried to make the best out of what was a very buggy game when it first released.
Developers DICE have over the past six months released several patches to try to address some of the bigger (and smaller) issues identified by the community as ‘game-breaking’. Several improvements have been made along the way and while the game is nowhere near perfect, it is a lot better than it was at release. What this method of patching has done however over the six months is pushed back any planned content releases to the game, which has further upset the wider community who have become bored of the title. – That’s understandable. But the hope was that the situation the community was in would change with the release of Patch 1.0 and the forthcoming Season One…
Take a look at the Gameplay Trailer released by EA / DICE Below:
It’s happened… to a point. Sure, we don’t know exactly what Season One will bring in terms of unannounced features and content, but we do have a good idea of what will be available from day one (today, the 9th June 2022) or “Zero Hour” as it is called. The things we know we are getting are: A new Shotgun and a Crossbow (which actually looks good) and a new gadget for those who like to play as Medics… in the form of a smoke grenade launcher. We are also getting two new helicopters, the RAH-68 Huron and YG-99 Hannibal, both stealth capable helicopters, which thanks to the gameplay reveal trainer look great to fly.. (which usually means I can’t get anywhere near them). There are a few new skins in there for both characters and weapons.
There’s also a 100 level ‘battle pass’ which will include rewards for free as well as premium paid content drops. All (as far as I am aware) cosmetic only. – According to developers all the gameplay elements to be unlocked will be obtained from the free levels of the combat pass. Additionally there is a new specialise (love them or hate them) called Lis who is an anti-vehicle expert and has a shoulder-mounted surface to air missile (like a rocket launcher), but the ones from BF3/4 that you could guide in flight ‘TV Missiles’ perhaps..?
You can view the full selection of changes made by Patch 1.0 here. (Opens in a new tab or window).
The community feeling right now, from what I have heard and read is that it should have been titled “Zero Content” rather than “Zero Hour” which pretty much tells the story of what the wider community seems to think of this Patch 1.0 release and the start of the Seasoned content for Battlefield 2042. Perhaps they are right, perhaps it really is too little too late for this game and the wider franchise. I don’t know. I didn’t have extremely high expectations for a great deal of new content for this first Season, and I thought that the patch would simply be to prepare the game for the start of the Seasoned content. So personally I am not too disappointed with a new specialist, two new helicopters, the battlepass, two new weapons and also a singular new map. – Now this new map, called ‘Exposure’ is set in the Canadian Rockies and includes a lot of vertical terrain travel. Ground-to-air combat as well as tight, close quarters infantry fights. Looking at the short preview of the map, it looks like there is a lot of verticality, which I love, reminds me of Damavand Peak with the big cliff to jump off from, and then some inside bits, that remind of of the Close Quarter combat we saw in some of the BF3: Close Quarters DLC we saw, specifically reminding me of the glory days of Ziba Tower where the walls were thin enough to legitimately shoot through in a non-annoying-buggy way! Parts of the map shown off in the video too also reminded me of some of the fantastic maps from the Battlefront games (also made by DICE). One thing to consider however is.. this looks like a big map with several points to explore, which seems to directly go against the ‘realisation’ that DICE came to in a community update from during the past six months, in which they admitted that the maps in the game were ‘too big’, and subsequently reduced the player count in several maps and across several modes. 128 player Breakpoint (which was a marketing point for the game) has since been removed and reverted back to a 64 player gamemode, and the team ‘was’ at work to re-work some of the launch maps to tighten things up at bit. But who knows, I feel I have to give this new content a go with Battlefield 2042, and I certainly will be. I am looking forward to it. If it’s good, you can expect to see some gameplay in a view in a couple of months!
