Battlefield Briefing: Get Ready for Launch

Ready yourself, No-Pats.

The worldwide launch of Battlefield™ 2042 on November 19 is closing in. We’ve shared a lot of details with you over the past months, so let’s recap everything so you’re ready to jump onto the Battlefield.

Here’s what you’ll learn today:

• Find out timing for when you can pre-load and play
• A brief recap of everything we talked about so far
• A reminder of our expectations for community behavior
• Content you can expect after launch
• How to stay informed on updates and status for Battlefield titles

When You Can Play Battlefield 2042

The biggest and boldest Battlefield is nearly here, No-Pats. Here’s when you can expect to play the game (and pre-load it).

Pre-load

Pre-load is now available on all platforms!

Early Access

Players who pre-ordered the Gold and Ultimate Editions of Battlefield 2042, and EA Play Pro members can play the full experience via Early Access starting November 12, 2021, while the 10-hour early access trial for EA Play, Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will grant subscribers access for up to 10 hours.

Worldwide launch

The Battlefield opens up for everyone starting on November 19.

To find out more about when you can play in your local time zone, visit our article on EA Help.

Now that you know when you can jump onto the Battlefield, let’s take a brief look at the most important details we’ve shared so far about Battlefield 2042.

The World of 2042

Multiplayer is the core of Battlefield; but we have a story to tell about our World of 2042. It will unravel over time, and plays a big role in the experience you'll have with Battlefield 2042.

The world of Battlefield 2042 is engulfed in chaos. Resources are dwindling as the world faces the greatest crisis in human history and the United States and Russia are on the verge of war. As entire countries collapse, people find themselves with no nation to call home. These nomads are known as the Non-Patriated (“No-Pats”), a diverse group of people who have bound together in clusters across the globe in order to survive the turbulent new world.

In Battlefield 2042, you’ll play as Non-Patriated soldiers with unique skills who’ve taken up arms. They are known as Specialists, tasked with carrying out military operations. In-game, each of these unique Specialists have their own unique Specialty and Trait that you can use to give yourself the advantage in combat as well as fully customizable equipment loadouts.

To learn more about The World of 2042 and the stakes you’re fighting for, you can read our dedicated Battlefield Briefing here.

Three Core Experiences

Battlefield™ 2042 is the next generation of the series’ exciting sandbox gameplay, containing three distinct multiplayer experiences:

Within Battlefield 2042’s All-Out Warfare experience, fan-favorites Conquest and Breakthrough once again make their return and are bigger than ever. Using the power of new generation consoles and latest PC hardware, expect matches featuring up to 128 players on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PlayStation® 5 and PC.

Battlefield™ Portal is a brand new community-driven platform within Battlefield 2042 that will let you create and find fantastic experiences made by the series’ creative and passionate community. The creation suite includes Settings, custom modes, and a Logic Editor so you can build your own signature spin on Battlefield’s sandbox; you’ll be able to change team ratios, tweak victory conditions, restrict weapons, and even put different factions from different eras in Battlefield’s history against one another. For example, do you want to pit an 1942-era team against foes outfitted with modern weapons and tech? Go for it!

Those who want to focus on discovering what others have created will have easy access to an entire world of unexpected battles featuring some of the series’ most famous eras mashed together in distinct, exciting experiences.

That’s just a small summary of what you can do in Battlefield Portal. For a more in-depth rundown, head here.

In Battlefield™ Hazard Zone, you play as an elite task force assigned to retrieve critical Data Drives. You and your squad must locate, gather, and extract these drives before a storm overtakes the area in a high-stakes experience. You and your squadmates only have one life each, and will battle rival squads and Occupying Forces patrolling the area. You’ll need to play your cards carefully if you want to escape with your lives (and more Dark Market Credits to buy weapons and valuable equipment).

Battlefield Hazard Zone is unlike anything we’ve ever done before and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. To learn more details about the mode’s progression system and how matches play out, you can read the briefing here.

Progression & Cosmetics

All experience you earned in Battlefield™ 2042 is universal and shared across all its modes, which means you’ll be leveling up and unlocking new weapons, gadgets, and cosmetics no matter which mode you’re playing.

An example of a Tier 1 Mastery Outfit and Player Card.

Hardware you unlock has its own mastery-based progression journey, with you earning new unlocks for reaching certain criteria with that hardware. At certain Mastery milestones such as performing 40 kills with a weapon, you’ll also gain cosmetics for that hardware such as a new skin, and a new tier of Mastery Badge you acquire to decorate your Player Card and boast about your achievements.

An example of Mastery Tier badges for the K30. 

Specialists

Each Specialist will have their own Specialty and Trait unique to them that you can use to give yourself the advantage in combat, which ties into their class of either Assault, Engineer, Recon, or Support.

For your Loadout this means you can now fully customize it to your liking:

• Primary Weapon
• Equipment (items anyone can use such as a Medical Crate or Supply Crate)
• Secondary Weapon
• Throwable (such as Frag or Incendiary Grenade)

Class type will no longer restrict what weapons, equipment or throwable you can equip, offering you more flexibility than ever before in the series when it comes to Loadouts. You can also save these custom Loadouts, and select them for any Specialist you’d like to play with.

How you customize your squad and what Specialists you use can lead to thrilling tactical plays on the Battlefield. Want to be able to build a fortress and take it with you wherever you go? Why not scout ahead using Casper to spot enemies and lay down cover fire, and then pair Boris’ ability to spawn a sentry gun with Irish’s deployable cover? Add Angel to the mix to keep you alive and supplied with ammo and you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

Countless combinations and tactics exist at your fingertips. It’s up to you and your teammates to figure out the right plays to bring you to victory.

At launch, there will be 10 No-Pat Specialists you can play as in All Out Warfare, Battlefield Portal, and Battlefield Hazard Zone. You can find out all about them and their abilities here. 

Maps

Battlefield 2042’s maps take players on a journey across a world engulfed in chaos. From Egypt to South Korea and beyond, you’ll be fighting across the biggest and boldest Battlefield yet, featuring up to 128 players per match.

For Conquest, we’ve made two distinct gameplay changes for Battlefield 2042 that will optimize larger-scale battles while preserving the essence of the classic Battlefield experience.

• The first is called Clustering. We’ve introduced this to create deliberate areas of activity and capture areas for players to engage with.
• We’ve also added Sectors, which changes how players gain control of an area. In order to successfully capture the Sector, teams must seize and maintain control over all flags within a Sector, otherwise it will be treated as a neutral and contested area.

An example of the Sectors you’ll find on the Orbital map.

These changes mean that you’ll constantly find intense battles being waged wherever you go. You’ll also find quicker options to move swiftly across these landscapes. From calling in vehicles to your location with the press of a button to soaring through the air with a wingsuit (or using it to swoop down from a cliff on foes below), there’s more traversal options than ever before.

You’ll need the mobility, too. Deadly storms and other catastrophic events can occur at any given moment during matches, displacing No-Pats, shifting the landscape, and perhaps even tilting the scales of victory in the other direction. Where many might see these forces as impending danger, some No-Pats (particularly those equipped with wingsuits) might see them as tactical opportunities…. Be swift, be smart, use the landscape and your equipment to your squad’s advantage and you might win the day.

Also: keep your eyes peeled and your ears tuned into the environment. You might find some information about The World of 2042 and its story and characters.

For a rundown on which 7 maps you’ll be able to play in Battlefield 2042 (including the 6 classic Battlefield maps that are being reimagined at 2042’s visual level), head here.

Cross-play & Cross-progression

We’re excited to bring cross-play to Battlefield 2042. Here’s what you can expect at launch for cross-playability on who will play together:

• PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation®5 consoles
• Xbox One and PlayStation®4 systems

If you wish, you can opt-out of cross-play but this means you’ll only play with players on your own native platform. For example, opt-out of cross-play when playing via Xbox Series X|S, and you’ll only play with other Xbox Series X|S players.

As a reminder, we also have cross-progression functionality within Battlefield 2042, which will be shared across all platforms and travel with you wherever you go as long as you play on the same EA account. This means your unlocked progress and completed purchases in your PlayStation® copy of the game will carry over onto the Xbox or PC version, and vice versa.

For example, your new unlocked skin for your M5A3 assault rifle on PlayStation®, alongside your in-game progress such as Player Level and Mastery, carries with you if you now choose to jump into the action on Xbox Series X|S.

PC Minimum and Recommended Requirements

Following the Open Beta earlier this year, we’ve been able to make some revisions to our Minimum and Recommended PC Requirements, effectively lowering the requirements. The final details are available below:

Minimum Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor (AMD): AMD Ryzen 5 1600
Processor (Intel): Core i5 6600K
Memory: 8GB
Video Memory: 4GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon RX 560
DirectX: 12
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Hard-drive space: 100GB

Recommended Requirements
OS: 64-bit Windows 10
Processor (AMD): AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Processor (Intel): Intel Core i7 4790
Memory: 16GB
Video Memory: 8GB
Graphics card (NVIDIA): Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060
Graphics card (AMD): AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
DirectX: 12
Online Connection Requirements: 512 KBPS or faster Internet connection
Hard-drive space: 100GB SSD

Our commitment to Positive Play

We want you to be proud of being a part of the Battlefield community – a globally inclusive and diverse community where any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, or country of origin are welcome.

For that reason we’ve created Community Guidelines outlining our expectations for members of our community that join us on the Battlefield:

• Treat Others as They Would Like to be Treated - Squad up and play the objective, together. We won’t tolerate players who negatively disrupt or engage in harmful behavior towards others.
• Keep Things Fair - Be on the right side of the fight. If you see players breaking the rules, report them.
• Share Appropriate Content - Don’t fight dirty. Make sure whatever content you’re sharing is appropriate for Battlefield players.
• Keep Things Honorable - Protect your squad. Keep it legal in Battlefield, and do not participate or encourage in dangerous or illegal activities.

We take our commitment to Positive Play seriously, and won’t tolerate bad actors on the Battlefield. As a community, we play the objective, together.

Visit our website to read the full Battlefield Community Guidelines.

What To Expect After Launch

Launch is only the beginning.

We’re taking a new approach to live service with not only a commitment to new content, but a goal of enhancing the Battlefield experience through seasons that will continue to evolve the world of Battlefield 2042.

In our first year of live service, we will deliver four Seasons, with four Battle Passes, four new Specialists, and new locations along with more fresh content. We also intend to deliver updates to Battlefield Portal that will give players more ways to build and share new Battlefield experiences with the world.

That means for Season 1, you can expect a new Specialist, Battle Pass and Portal content, and maybe even some new sights to see as the story of Battlefield 2042 continues to unfold. Expect more details early next year.

During launch we’ll also kick off the Preseason with Weekly Missions and Rewards, Limited Time Modes, featured Creator Spotlights and experiences in Battlefield Portal, and more!

Staying informed: Battlefield Direct Communication

As we're heading into launch, we’ve launched a new Twitter account, @BattlefieldComm. Short for Battlefield Direct Communication, this is your guide for everything live status for Battlefield.

This account will help us keep you informed on status updates including dev updates, server status, patch details, and more! We encourage you to follow the page to ensure you’re always in the know for all things Battlefield.

This is the last Battlefield Briefing before we head into launch together. And to mark this occasion, we’d like to end it with a special note from Creative Director Lars Gustavsson and the team for you, the Battlefield community.

To all our No-Pat friends,

What a journey it’s been! From the first moments of a near-future Battlefield game being no more than an idea on a piece of paper way back, to the incredible ride since we revealed Battlefield 2042 to you this June.

The team has been putting their hearts and souls into creating this completely new Battlefield experience for you, and we can’t wait to get it in your hands.

We’re looking forward to you joining us for launch as we dive into the World of 2042, together. We truly hope you will enjoy it, and we’re looking forward to creating new Battlefield memories with you.

From all of us here across the Battlefield teams at DICE, Ripple Effect, Criterion Games, and EA Gothenburg - a big thanks to all of you!

Lars Gustavsson

Creative Director, Battlefield 2042