Battlefield 6 Open Beta
I was reading through my RSS feed this morning and found a post by Heartless Gamer, regarding how Battlefield 6 requires Secure Boot enabled on your PC. If it is not, then the game will not launch and you’ll get an error message. Naturally, this raised several questions. First off, what is Secure Boot and do I have it on my PC? Well apparently it is a security feature that protects a computer from malware during the startup process, by verifying the digital signatures of bootloaders and other software components before they are allowed to run. By using the msinfo32 command in the Run Window, I determined that I do indeed have it and went directly to the BIOS and enabled it. The next question to address was, why have I not been invited to the open beta for Battlefield 6? I subsequently checked the EA Game Launcher and discovered that I had. So I installed the game.
I like the Battlefield franchise and have played them all to varying degrees. I found Battlefield 3 to be the most enjoyable but a lot of that was due to the time and the place. Call of Duty: Warzone claimed my attention during the pandemic but that franchise has continuously shot itself in the foot over the intervening 5 years, with an innate ability to always make the wrong decision in development terms. Hence Battlefield 6 has appeared at the perfect time and the developers and publishers have made it abundantly clear that they’re aiming to take CoD’s crown. From what I’ve seen so far via the various reveal trailers, the game has embraced all its old school features and tempered them with the contemporary ones that work. So the game will have big maps, vehicles, environmental destruction, as well as a viable form of omnimovement, a variety of game modes and an aesthetic that stays broadly with “milsim” parameters.
The first major open beta test for Battlefield 6 multiplayer is on the 9th-10th August. I have checked my PCs specifications and they are close enough to the recommended settings, which are as follows: Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel Core i7-10700. Memory: 16GB. Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 6700-XT or Nvidia RTX 3060Ti. Direct X: DX12. Hard Drive Space: SSD - 80GiB. I have started the game client to see if I need to optimise any settings but the game by default seems to have gotten the measure of my PC and set everything accordingly. The only minor issue I’ve encountered so far is that I cannot get the game to switch to using my second monitor. My go to app, DisplayMagician, that usually resolves this problem has not managed to do so at present. However, I can simply change the default monitor within Windows if need be.
Although optimistic about Battlefield 6, I am aware that YouTube footage curated by influencers gives a somewhat skewed perspective. Edited highlights show all the fun aspects of a gaming session that could have lasted hours. In between those highlights there’s a lot of arbitrary gameplay, more so during a beta. Players are busy learning the maps and trying to get around efficiently. Hence you don’t see the endless runs from the spawn point to the battlezone, only to get immediately shot by a well positioned sniper. It also takes a while to learn how to effectively use vehicles in any Battlefield game, so many of us won’t be pulling off any fancy moves immediately. Yet despite these reasonable caveats, I am hoping that this latest iteration of the franchise maintains its past equanimity. Offering useful roles to players of all skill, thus providing an entertaining experience.
Roger Edwards