We trace the rocky road of BF6’s story campaign.
“It still looks pretty rough.” is the response from many fans after Battlefield 6 finally unveiled its single-player campaign. The otherwise positive overall impression is clouded, and skepticism is high.
Yet there is a lot that we rate positively in the first two hours of the BF6 story!
So did something go wrong during development? Our chronology shows a story full of hurdles and uncertainties.
The development history of the BF6 campaign
Table of Contents
1. The plan
November 2021: Battlefield 2042 is released—without a single-player campaign. Instead, the story was to be told via live service in multiplayer. Ultimately, however, it never amounted to more than a collection of confusing snippets of information.
December 2021: EA announces a “Battlefield universe.” Under the leadership of Respawn founder Vince Zampella, the Battlefield brand is to be given a fully-fledged lore with stories and characters that tie the brand together across games.
August 2022: Zampella brings Marcus Lehto, Halo creator and Bungie veteran with 15 years of professional experience, into the Battlefield executive suite. Almost immediately, he reaches out to fans and asks fundamental questions about the tone and style of Battlefield.
2. The Rise
September 2022: A new Battlefield studio called Ridgeline, located in Seattle, Washington, is officially unveiled. At the helm: Marcus Lehto. He is tasked with creating a story set in the Battlefield universe. New staff have been recruited for this project since the announcement of the Battlefield universe in 2021.
February 2023: Unlike BF2042, the next Battlefield game will definitely feature a full single-player campaign. However, Ridgeline needs help from DICE in Stockholm, where the multiplayer game is actually being developed. Story teams in Sweden and the US join forces.
April 2023: Marcus Lehto wants to incorporate modern innovations. His stated goal: a single-player campaign “that will captivate players in a whole new way, while remaining true to the classic elements that make Battlefield so unique.”
3. The Fall
February 2024: Ridgeline boss Marcus Lehto makes a surprise departure, leaving not only the studio but EA as well. Fans quickly become concerned: What does this mean for the future of the brand, and does this spell the premature end of the single-player ambitions?
March 2024: The next piece of bad news follows hot on its heels: Ridgeline is finished after less than two years and is being closed down. Some employees are being transferred to Criterion, where, according to EA boss Laura Miele, the campaign is now to be developed.
April 2024: After his departure and the studio closure, Marcus Lehto harshly criticizes EA. He criticizes the current mass layoffs in the industry and makes it clear: “I don’t have a single positive thing to say about EA.”
4. The aftermath
May 2024: Canadian developer Motive, founded in 2015 by Jade Raymond and known for games such as the Dead Space remake and Star Wars: Squadrons, becomes part of Battlefield Studios. Among other things, Motive is to design single-player missions.
June 2024: Hardly any content from the Ridgeline project can be reused. Instead of continuing development, Criterion, Motive, and DICE are now forced to start almost from scratch, while the release deadline is fast approaching.
April 2025: Battlefield Labs has now been launched, and the delays in single-player development are becoming apparent: the campaign is the only mode in BF6 that has not yet reached alpha status. According to EA sources, the company is considering cutting parts of the campaign.
June 2025: A leak reveals the first scene from the single-player campaign of Battlefield 6. But what the public sees looks massively unfinished: textures, animations, and assets are missing. Fans are concerned about the state of the scenes four months before release.
What do you think of the first impressions of the campaign so far? Are you skeptical about the single-player mode due to its development history, or are you just looking forward to some Modern Warfare-style military shootouts? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!
