It looks like Battlefield 6 might end up being the more violent releases in the franchise. As spotted by GamesRadar, the Xbox store page for the upcoming multiplayer shooter now has an ESRB rating of M (Mature 17+) that notes that the title features Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language.
What makes this especially notable is that the last few Battlefield games – specifically Battlefield 1, 5 and 2042 – haven’t been rated for featuring Gore by the ESRB. As noted by fan social media account BFBulletin, Battlefield 6 is the first title to feature Gore since Battlefield 3, 4 and Hardline.
It is worth noting that the multiplayer modes for Battlefield 6, as seen from the open betas last month, weren’t particularly gory by multiplayer shooter standards, and definitely not gorier than what we’ve seen in Battlefield 2042 or 5. This would indicate that the rating likely applies to the upcoming game’s single-player campaign, which so far hasn’t been showcased in a meaningful way yet.
Battlefield 6 is being developed for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and is slated for release on October 10. The PC version of the game recently got some love from EA’s marketing department thanks to a new trailer, as well as statements by technical director Christian Buhl, who spoke about how important having low minimum requirements has been for the studios working on the game under the Battlefield Studios banner.
“We built maps, and had to go to our artists and tech artists to adjust these maps so they were more performant,” explained Buhl about how the development teams worked on making sure that the game’s large-scale and chaotic multiplayer maps would work on lower-specced machines. “We’ve put in a lot of effort across the board to make sure these performance targets were set, and whether you’re on min spec or ultra spec you’re going to get the experience we’re targeting.”
Buhl also spoke about the importance of players on minimum spec PCs, and how it was important to ensure that the game runs smoothly for them as well for it to have as wide of an audience as possible. “Min spec is certainly one of our most important specs […] it’s super important from both a commercial and business perspective – we want as many people as possible playing the game,” he said.
“We did a lot of analysis, we did tests on the game on a wide range of hardware above and below our minimum and recommended specs. We figured out what we can hit, what we need to hit from a business perspective, and that was to capture a wide audience on PC. It’s been super critical.”
Buhl has also confirmed that Battlefield Studios has no plans to bring ray tracing to Battlefield 6. This comes despite the franchise featuring ray tracing quite heavily in its marketing since the release of Battlefield 5 alongside the launch of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2000 series of graphics cards.
For more details about Battlefield 6, check out our thoughts about the open beta.
https://twitter.com/BFBulletin/status/1963033150746939585
