As you may have seen in our review of Battlefield 6, it claimed the crown as the new king of online FPS games and took no prisoners in doing so. It has now been more than a week since the games launch, and I must say it has been quite a successful one with over 7 million copies being sold, the servers even managed to hold up with the staggering number of players logging on to the game.

Unfortunately, not everything in Battlefield land is rainbows, sparkles and unicorns, the portal experience has been far from satisfactory with players unable to host or play on community created portal servers due to the server capacity being exceeded. The main reason for the lack of capacity for portal servers has been due to players spooling up servers so they can farm XP against bots, in an order to remedy this EA and Battlefield Studios have made to the controversial decision to nerf XP and progression in portal servers instead of just increasing their hosting capacity. The reason this is controversial is that the game was advertised as having both full XP and progression in portal servers, you can’t just take that away once customers have purchased your product, you would think that lessons might have been learned from the portal experience in BF2042 but it appears that history is destined to repeat itself, and the community is not very happy about it. It is amidst this landscape of controversy that Battlefield 6 finds itself rolling out the roadmap for its first season of content that is scheduled to kick off on October 29th, thanks to EA and Battlefield Studios we got to go hands on with all the upcoming content coming to the game.

With the release of the first season also comes the battle pass, in both free and paid for flavours, EA have promised that all gun and vehicle unlocks will be available with the free version of the pass whilst cosmetic unlocks will be heavily tied to the paid version of the pass. The battle pass will have 4 paths of progression so you can choose what to work towards unlocking as you go, with a 5th path opening up upon completing the other 4. There is unfortunately no information available on how progression will work in the battle pass, whether you progress simply from playing matches or if you need to complete certain challenges is unknown, unfortunately the preview build of the game we got to test out did not feature any battle pass progression. You can learn more about Season 1 as a whole here.

Season 1 will be released in three phases with the first being called 'Rogue ops' themed around high-stakes ops in pursuit of valuable military secrets. Battlefield 6's first post release map "Blackwell Fields" is included in phase 1 and promises to be a large map built for all-out-warfare set in the Californian Chaparral with a focus on outdoor combat and close quarters engagement within scattered structures. A new mode called 'Strikepoint' will also be added to the game, Strikepoint is a 4v4 mode where two teams fight over a single objective with no respawns allowed, so if you die you are out of the game until the next round begins, you win the round by capturing the point or eliminating the enemy team, first to six victories wins the match. As far as weapons go phase 1 will see the introduction of the SCAR SC.300 which is designed for close range combat, and the Glock 22 as a new sidearm, long range combatants haven’t been forgotten as there will also be a new sniper rifle called the Mini Fix Bolt-Action rifle. It is not all just guns though, a new APC is also being introduced, the Traverser Mark 2, this functions as an infantry support vehicle which can serve as a spawn point and a supply station for friendly vehicles.

Phase 2 'California Resistance' starts on November 19, this phase sees NATO and the local militia trying to fend off PAX's incursion into California, Eastwood will be the new map for this phase and is set within a formerly quiet and affluent SoCal neighbourhood that is now a battleground. This map will find you engaging enemies in suburbia, destroying houses with tank rounds and diving onto the floor in living rooms and on porches as bullets fly by your head. Phase 2 also introduces another limited time game mode called Sabotage, which sees 2 teams of 8 attack and defend supply caches around the map, with both teams swapping sides after each round, the team that destroys the most caches wins the match. A new mechanic named 'Battle Pickups' will also be introduced during this phase, where you can find high value and rare weapons with limited ammunition strewn about the battlefield, picking up these powerful weapons can quickly turn the tide of the game in your teams favour. As far as weapons go the DP-12 shotgun will be introduced to the game, with the unique perk of this weapon being that you can load different types of ammunition into each of its tubes, the 8 shot S&W M327 revolver will also be introduced as a sidearm.

Phase 3, dubbed Winter Offensive, begins on December 10. Not much is known about what will be included in this phase except for a special time limited winter version of the Empire State map and a new melee weapon in the form of an ice climbing axe.

My favourite of the two new maps is Eastwood, the map is beautifully designed and aesthetically different than the other maps currently in Battlefield 6, it gives off major Nuketown vibes except on a much larger scale, the map features an abundance of cover between the houses and the hilly terrain on the map and allows for a lot of strategic play and flanking opportunities, not to mention how it good it feels rolling through a pristine neighbourhood in a tank and turning it into rubble. The larger of the two new maps, Blackwell Fields, will be a favourite amongst both aviators and tank drivers alike, the map is large in scale, possibly the largest in Battlefield 6 yet, and with the limited cover available it is catered toward vehicle warfare. After playing conquest for a few hours on the new maps I am happy to say that both are healthy additions to the game and are better than some of the maps the game launched with, they have quickly become my favourites. I only played the new limited time game modes, strikepoint and sabotage, for a short time as Battlefield has never been about CQC for me, but for fans of closer ranged combat these are sure to spice things up a bit when they are released, both game modes are fast and frantic and catered to the sweatiest of players.

Battlefield 6 had an amazingly successful launch and portal controversy aside, things look set to go into full gear with the release of the new maps, weapons and the season pass on October 29th, I will see you on the Battlefield.