'Specialists will not be coming back': The next Battlefield will emulate Battlefields 3 and 4, 'the pinnacle' of the series, says EA

I liked Battlefield 2042's experimental character—lonely hikes across its giant 128-player maps reminded me of how awesome the scale of Battlefield 1942 felt back in 2002—but I held a minority opinion on that one. For the next Battlefield, the series' new boss aims to recapture what he calls the «peak of Battlefield-ness» found in Battlefield 3 and 4.

That boss is Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella, who previously co-founded Infinity Ward and helmed Battlefield's biggest rival, Call of Duty. EA announced in 2021—not long after Battlefield 2042's disappointing launch—that he's now overseeing the Battlefield series, and in an interview with IGN this week, Zampella dropped a few details about what we can expect from the next game, which is still unnamed.

The big news is that the next Battlefield will return to the modern setting of Battlefield 3 and 4—the last three were WW1, WW2, and near future—and will ditch two of the features that made Battlefield 2042 stand out at launch (in a bad way, for many): 128-player maps and specialists, which replaced classes with characters who had special abilities and gadgets.

«I don't know what the rationale [for specialists] was, but for me, it's like the team tried something new,» Zampella told IGN. «You have to applaud that effort. Not everybody liked it, but you got to try things. It didn't work. It didn't fit. Specialist will not be coming back. So classes are kind of at the core of Battlefield, and we're going back to that.»

As for 128-player maps, Zampella said that they're «designing something that is more akin to previous Battlefields» and that he'd «rather have nice, dense, really nice, well-designed play spaces» than a big number for the sake of a big number. 

There aren't many more details to share beyond that, but the big picture Zampella's putting down is: We're going back to Battlefield 3 and 4.

«I mean, if you look back to the peak or the pinnacle of Battlefield, it's that Battlefield 3… Battlefield 4 era where