A short video clip from the single-player campaign for the next mainline entry in the Battlefield series has been pulled from the files of the latest Battlefield Labs update, with dataminer Temporyal discovering and posting the clip to X.
The footage is clearly still a work-in-progress which Temporyal points out, and they also clarify that this is not a clip of gameplay from a playtest or the Battlefield Labs test like we’ve seen with other leaks, but just a video file, which also explains why the footage lacks the watermarks that usually accompany your screen if you’ve ever participated in a closed playtest.
According to Temporyal, the clip “shows the explosive finale of a mission to destroy a dam in Tajikistan.” Temporyal also reveals that, based on their findings, the campaign will be eight missions long, nine including a prologue, taking players to locations like Tajikistan, Egypt, the USA, and Gibraltar.
We still don’t have an official release for the next Battlefield game, and we don’t even know what it’s officially called. According to EA, we should know at least one of those two things soon, with a summer reveal currently set to happen at some unknown point in time from now until September, to be generous.
For all we’ve seen of the next Battlefield game through leaked footage like this, there’s still a lot to be revealed. These leaks are useful to get a sense of what’s to come, but they’re never the full picture, and there’s a lot riding on this next Battlefield game. It’s no secret that EA is in need of a big win.
Earlier this year, EA canceled its Black Panther game, shutting down the studio it had created to make that specific game and laying everyone off. It canceled another incubation project at Respawn and laid off more staff across Respawn and other parts of the company. And at the beginning of the year, EA laid off developers at BioWare following the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and its disappointing sales, which reached only half of what EA’s top brass had expected.
A report recently dug into everything that happened with The Veilguard’s development, and how mismanagement by those same leaders at EA plagued the game from the beginning of its development journey.
Add all the layoffs, internal issues, the sunsetting of hybrid work and a return-to-office call, and game cancellations together, and add to that the fact that the latest entry in the company’s biggest sports series underperformed last year, and it doesn’t paint a picture of a company that’s all flowers and rainbows.
EA needs Battlefield to do well to potentially be a turning point for the company. When the full reveal comes this summer, depending on players reactions to the game, we’ll see which way things are beginning to turn.
