After claiming they’ve invented “the most dangerous ring in gaming” earlier this month, EA and DICE have released a fresh Battlefield 6 campaign trailer that sees a soldier bloke deploy yet another ‘the most something in something’ line. Yep, amid a bunch of the usual militarying about, a man teases a battle over “the most strategic rock in the history of warfare”.
Maybe it’s just because there was far less helicopter boomage in this look at the conflict between Dagger 13 and evil private goons Pax Armata, but the line’s struck me. Stop shouting about the CIA for five minutes, Battlefield trailerfolk, we need to delve into rock history.
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First of all, the trailer’s above if you want to give it a watch. The line about strategic rocks comes at around the 40 second mark, with private military corp Pax Armata seemigly on the verge of securing this most strategic of stones. Naturally, you and your buddies “elite Marine Raiders unit” Dagger 13 can’t be having that, hence the next line being “Want to help our friends take back this rock?”.
Does history have enough strategic – or strategically significant to be gramatically correct – warfare rocks for it be worth crowning one king, I found myself asking, responding to a question with a question in a fashion that’d definitely get me kicked out of Dagger 13. Having racked my brain for five seconds, these are the ones I’ve come up with, in no particular order:
- Gibraltar, which is the site of the rock being teased here. It has plenty of strategical warfare history, having been the site of a great siege during the American Revolutionary War and played a role in World War 2. Control over it’s also long been disputed between the UK and Spain, because colonialism.
- Alcatraz, which plays a major strategical role in the 1996 Michael Bay film The Rock. Like this trailer, it involves a lot of military folks arguing. Sean Connery’s also there.
- Some rocks that stopped me reaching a city in time for it not to collapse into civil unrest in Civilization one time. Though my memory of that’s hazy, I might just have deployed my response too late.
In googling strategic war rocks, I’ve also uncovered this research article about carbonate rocks and American Civil War infantry tactics, which could be very interesting or the driest thing I’ll ever read.
Looping back to the video game, EA wrote in PS blog that during the campaign: “You’ll be able to command the rest of Dagger 13 to engage enemy forces as a group in order to suppress them as you reposition to snipe, flank them, or take out multiple foes with a well-thrown grenade. Additionally, as you step into the well-worn boots of different members of the squad, you’ll be able to take advantage of their respective abilities and talents to gain the upper hand when engaging the enemy.” There’s a rundown of all the squad members’ names and bios in the post, if you fancy meeting them.
The battle royale testing is set to begin at some point this week, and you can sign-up to be given access here if this’ll be your first jaunt into Labs ahead of Battlefield 6’s release on October 10th.
