Ahead of Battlefield 6’s second season launching later this week, I jumped into a Zoom call with producer Phil Girette and associate producer Kit Eklof to talk about all the new changes and additions coming to the blockbuster shooter. As expected, there was a lot of ground to cover, and only 15 minutes to do so.
So, I quickly started to explore the stuff that really matters to me as a player: the content rollout throughout season one, the season two delay, and what we can expect in terms of maps and overall map size going forward.
“We see that feedback, and hear it very loudly,” Girette tells me. “And we’re really happy that people just, you know, want more of the stuff that we can provide. After the extension of season one and after the launch, which went pretty smoothly for Battlefield standards, we decided that season two needs a bit more time. I think the extension was one of the major factors where people now feel like, where is the new stuff? So if we had people playing the new stuff already, hopefully that would be a little bit better.”
The aim is to keep the seasons tight and deliver on time in the future, with a solid three-month structure accompanied by three main “beats.” Neither Girette or Eklof confirmed whether subsequent seasons would have two or three maps as standard, but did note that each season would feature “hardware, vehicles, guns, and gameplay additions,” which for season two include the VL-7 gas limited-time mode alongside Night and Operations.
“And what we’re doing on top of that, like we see in season two, is more maps, and bigger maps. We need to make sure that the maps hit the quality and match the expectations of what the players want,” Girette explains. “We’re already testing Golmud Railway early on Labs now, so that’s a step in the right direction. And then more maps is, of course, something that we will look more into. But also maps are one of the most time-intensive things that we build. We’ll need some more time.”
“But also maps are one of the most time-intensive things that we build. We’ll need some more time.”
On the topic of maps, we also discussed the new battleground that arrives with the launch of season two, Contaminated. It’s a medium-sized map with ample verticality, and honestly, it’s now one of my favourites in the entire game. “Verticality is one of the things we always think about when it comes to maps,” Girette tells me. “One of the main goals of Contaminated was, ‘We traverse the globe here, we’re in Europe now, Germany being a big member of NATO, of course.’ With the mountain region and the forest, that was an easy way to introduce some more verticality. Contaminated is an all-out warfare map, and it plays really well on the bigger modes, like Conquest, Escalation, and Breakthrough. So verticality is an important part of the map, and we’re hopeful that players really like it, and then, of course, it will make its way into future maps as well.”
As well as the new map, every season so far has introduced new limited-time game mechanics. For season two, this will initially be the VL-7 gas followed by utter darkness on Hagental Base, the second map in season two to be released at a later date. “So what we wanted to do with the VL-7 is next to doing more maps, more guns, more vehicles, and so on, is just to have a different take on gameplay features as well,” says Girette. “So we have a different spin on that with season two. We want everyone to check it out and hopefully like it, but if there’s players who just say, like, it’s not my cup of tea, then you can just play the map on the same modes without the gas.”
Season two also introduces the new VCR assault rifle, which I played around with a fair bit during the preview session on Contanimated. Eklof, a hardware producer on Season 2, had some interesting insights into how the team goes about balancing new weapons. “There’s a whole lot of steps. When we have new hardware, we want to make them impactful in the beginning, otherwise we’re better off not doing them at all, right? So I think we’re good going with something that feels a little bit impactful, and then we might tweak it, scale it down a bit depending on what data we see and the feedback we have from players as well.”
Balancing weapons is a multi-stage process, Eklof tells me. “We do internal testing, and we get a sense from people working on the team – regardless of what they’re currently working on – there’s a whole bunch of people providing feedback. Everyone gets engaged even if they’re working on something completely different. That’s the first step. Then after that, we look at the data, and then push it out to Labs, and that’s where we get player feedback. That provides that last percentage of where we want the gun to be. Then it goes live, and that’s where we get the bulk of the data. That’s actually when we’re able to get it perfect. Usually it’s not perfect when it goes out.”
As well as new weapons, season two introduces some much-needed weapon balances and recoil adjustments. I was keen to see if the team were aware of some of the community complaints around weapons feeling too similar to each other, particularly with players using the same loadouts on all guns because they are considered meta. “I can’t confirm any specific changes going forwards,” Eklof says, “but we’re definitely looking into SMGs and assault rifles. How fast some of them are, how fast time-to-kill is on some of them. Are they fulfilling their purpose? Are they correct in relationship to each other in the distance where you want to see the kills happen most reliably?”
SMGs are quite powerful at the moment, even a little bit more than they should be. We’re looking into it. And I think the identity, that they can all be specced to kind of feel the same, that’s something we must pay closer attention to. We will always be working on this, because the weapons are bread and butter.”
Season two of Battlefield 6 launches on February 17 on all platforms.
Battlefield 6
4.0/5
- Released
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October 10, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, In-App Purchases, Users Interact
- Developer(s)
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Battlefield Studios
