Battlefield 6 Preview - Returning to Operation Firestorm and testing Escalation

The beauty of a preview like this is that you don't need me to explain the core experience of playing Battlefield 6. Millions flocked to the recent beta weekends and clocked countless hours in Battlefield Studios' shooter, and this means that I don't need to tell you about how the gunplay feels, or how the destruction has been improved, or how the user interface and menu design is more streamlined, or how the performance is rather excellent. These are all things that so many of us are familiar with. Instead, I can focus entirely on three areas in this preview, three elements that were not present in the recent beta weekends, those being the maps Mirak Valley and Operation Firestorm, and the mode known as Escalation.

Before getting there however, let me pivot and just briefly discuss how Battlefield 6 has been improved in the weeks since the betas. Naturally, after such an immense data gathering experiment, the developers had a lot of information on hand to determine where changes were needed. Immediately a few things are noticeable. For one, movement is a tad stiffer and this slows down the combat a little more and sees fewer enemies attempting to slide-cancel or drop shot you in the heat of battle. It's a Battlefield-geared change that further pushes it away from how modern Call of Duty games play. Also, the weapons are a bit more unruly to handle, which is noticeable at range and on bigger maps, where it's more of a challenge to accurately gun down enemies 40 or more feet away with anything other than a sniper or a marksman rifle. The matchmaking is a bit smoother and I noticed next to zero bugs during this preview, which is an improvement over the few I picked up on during the beta weekends.

Beyond this, the other areas where the game had changed included in offering more options for players to customise with, be that additional class-specific core abilities, extra gadgets like ladders for Assault kits, more weapons and even attachments. These were all things we expected in the full game and if this preview session is anything to go by, we'll have more than enough tools to master come launch.

So after a few weeks, Battlefield 6 feels more refined and polished, with greater playability options, and an immediately altered sandbox that means shotguns no longer rule the world, for example. Generally speaking, I have nothing but positive thoughts to share on this front.

Let's move onto the two maps that were being presented in this preview session then. To begin with Mirak Valley was front and centre, with this being a behemoth of a map that will go down as Battlefield 6's biggest at launch. It's a whopper that is based in Tajikistan like Liberation Peak, which should give you an idea of the geography and the aesthetic, ultimately delivering a rocky and quite run down area. Unlike its counterpart however, Mirak Valley is flatter and is generally designed in such a way that small villages, a military base, and open fields, are polarised by two enormous construction sites where the majority of boots on the ground warfare occurs. For Conquest, expect tons of vehicular depth, both on the ground and in the air, and in general for this map, expect a location that somewhat resembles the ultimate Battlefield sandbox, a place where you can get down to objective-based business or look to score a gnarly clip doing something frankly mad.

Moving onto Operation Firestorm, there's actually not a whole lot to add here if you're familiar with the map. It's an authentic and instantly recognisable remake with all of the details you might remember. There are enclosed indoor spaces and tight pipelines where infantry action occurs, and open desert and completely unhindered skies where helicopters and fighter jets tussle. It's also a much bigger map than you may remember, with the various objectives absolutely requiring the use of vehicles if you intend to frequently move between them. All things considered, it's a fan-favourite map for a reason, and even after just a couple of hours, you fall back in love with one of the finer and better sculpted examples of a Conquest map.

Now, you may notice that I've referred to both maps above with Conquest in mind, and that's because frankly this is where they are at their best. Both Mirak Valley and Operation Firestorm have functioning Breakthrough options, but compared to Siege of Cairo or Empire State, the scale and the grander focus on vehicles always makes these maps better for the more sandbox-oriented mode rather than the tighter, objective-geared alternative. It's a similar story to Battlefield throughout the ages, including Battlefield 3 where Operation Firestorm was introduced. This map pips many Conquest options in that beloved game, but in Rush, there were many better options, without question.

So what do you do if you're not much of a Conquest player in Battlefield 6 but still want to play these new maps? Enter Escalation. The simplest possible way I can explain this mode is that it's for Conquest players who don't understand how to play Conquest. You know who you are... And yes I'm referring to the Recon kit trying to snipe someone from two miles away. This mode is Conquest, it's set up with the same flags and the same map size and the same player count, but the difference is that if you don't focus on the objectives, the game will be over very quickly. Unlike Conquest where the match can last half an hour without you ever capturing a single flag, Escalation is an objective-geared mode where a timer ticks away and at the end it scores a team a point based on how many of the total flags they hold. To start with, you might have four of the seven flags and thus score a point, but the second round, as it eliminates flags progressively each round, you might only have two of the six, and thus lose a point. It trickles down and offers tug-of-war-like action until at the latest three flags remain (or perhaps the game ends because one team scored a maximum of three points), and usually these flags are the central ones in the map, leading to the most infantry-based action, and therefore steadily shifting the focus from wide-scale vehicular chaos to closer-quarters soldier warfare as each game progresses.

Escalation definitely has something interesting to offer, but it's not so fresh that it stands out like something completely new. If anything, it reminds of the evolution between Rush into Breakthrough, and I can see a world where Escalation becomes the norm and Conquest falls to the wayside, as is the case today with Breakthrough completely dominating Rush.

After just another taste of the action in Battlefield 6, I feel the same way about this game, perhaps even a tad more confident in fact. To me, it seems like Battlefield Studios has delivered a true winner here, a project that is precisely what the Battlefield fans have been pestering EA about for years. It's loud, chaotic, stunning, well-optimised, has plenty of depth, and features a whiff of nostalgia in returning maps too, but not nearly an overwhelming sense of nostalgia that it feels like this is solely what will drive the game's success, as many remakes tap into. Every single time I go hands-on with Battlefield 6, I come away from the experience more and more excited for October 10, as it sure does seem like 2025 - as crazy as this feels to say considering recent memory - will be a year when Battlefield bests Call of Duty.