Battlefield 2042 has easily been the most experimental installment in the long-running series. Suffice to say, that experiment hasn't really gone to plan. Battlefield 2042 has not been the heavyweight contender EA and DICE hoped it would be. So much so that the studios are already looking to the next chapter in the Battlefield saga, a chapter that will seemingly return to its games including a single-player campaign.
That's according to a job listing by EA (via PCGamesN). The listing has actually been live since February of this year. However, it wasn't until it was highlighted by BFBulletin on Twitter that the listing has started making headlines. EA is hiring a design director at Battlefield Seattle. The new studio was specifically set up with Battlefield in mind, hence the name, and is being led by Halo's Marcus Lehto.
The design director's job description has given away that a single-player campaign will return to the Battlefield series in its next game. Applicants are asked to “embrace the core tenets of the Battlefield franchise and make sure they are woven through all layers of a masterfully designed single-player campaign.” Successful applicants will need at least a decade of experience at a director or large team leader level in the video game industry.
Battlefield 2042 omitted a single-player campaign in favor of big multiplayer modes. Some maps can house as many as 128 players at one time, although Breakthrough's limit was capped at half that last month. There's no way of telling whether a proper campaign would have saved Battlefield 2042 at this point, but EA's move to include one in what comes next suggests the studio believes it's something the series needs, and probably an element 2042 should have had.
Even though work on the next Battlefield appears to have already begun, or the pieces are being put in place at least, 2042 has not been entirely abandoned just yet. Season one began earlier this month, an event EA will be hoping breathes new life into Battlefield 2042. DICE also revealed a little more than a week ago that it's all hands on the Battlefield 2042 deck at the studio right now, so no one is throwing in the entire towel just yet.