A new Battlefield 2042 mode is set to be showcased very soon. The game’s developer Dice has confirmed that it will premier a trailer for the currently under-wraps Hazard Zone mode this week and fans are already speculating as to what this new offering will entail.
Currently, the Hazard Zone announcement trailer is scheduled to launch on Thursday, October 14 at 11 a.m. ET and the mode has been described as “an all-new high stakes multiplayer experience” where “every bullet, every skirmish, and every decision counts.” Definitely sounds an awful lot like a Battle Royale mode to us.
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If Hazard Zone is indeed a Battle Royale style mode it wouldn’t be the franchise’s first stab at one. 2018’s Battlefield 5 received a mode called Firestorm several months after launch, which tasked players with competing to be the last man standing on a rapidly shrinking map. The mode showed promise but was never able to find a large enough player base to sustain itself, and is generally considered a failure in the Battlefield community.
Hazard Zone will be one of the three core pillars of Battlefield 2042. It will sit alongside All-Out Warfare, which is the traditional Battlefield experience with modes like Conquest and Rush played on massive maps. As well as Battlefield Portal, which will allow players to mix and match content from a range of classic Battlefield games to create custom matches.
Is a Battlefield 2042 Battle Royale actually needed?
While we don’t know the exact nature of Hazard Zone quite yet, it certainly seems likely that it will at the very least have elements of a Battle Royale mode. That begs the question does anybody actually want a Battlefield 2042 Battle Royale?
Community reaction to the prospect has been fairly muted. Let’s not forget that the majority of core Battlefield players didn’t take to the series' previous attempt at a Battle Royale, so unsurprisingly many are wary of Dice having another crack of the whip.
There is also the problem that Battlefield 2042 is a full-priced $70 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X, and even on PS4/Xbox One it still costs $60, which gives it a fairly high barrier of entry. This could easily result in Battlefield 2042’s Hazard Zone not having the necessary player base to sustain itself. After all, the biggest names in the Battle Royale genre such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty Warzone are all free-to-play for a reason.
There is also the question of whether investing in a Battle Royale mode is a good use of developer resources. After the Battlefield 2042 beta, it’s clear that the game is in a rather raw shape and definitely needs a lot of extra polish. Could the time and effort that’s being dedicated to chasing the Battle Royale gravy train not have been better spent ensuring that Battlefield 2042’s staple multiplayer experience was a little more polished?
Of course, there’s every possibility that Hazard Zone will be a more unique spin on the Battle Royale formula, or it even might be something different entirely, we’ll soon know. Plus, expect to see plenty more of Hazard Zone and Battlefield 2042 in general as we get closer to its November 19 launch.
