Battlefield 2042 Season 5 confirmed with new map, no new Specialist

Battlefield 2042 just launched Season 3 last week, but DICE already has its sights set on the future. The developer published a new update blog about its 2023 plans for Battlefield 2042, including new information about Seasons 4 and 5.

After announcing that it would continue to support the game after Year 1, DICE has now provided a few key details about what that future will look like, and it won’t include any new Specialists. Season 4’s Recon Specialist will be the last Specialist that DICE adds to the game, rounding out the roster at 14 characters.

Season 4 will also launch with a new map that’s “smaller, shorter, and linear designed for up close and personal, close-quarters combat that Battlefield is famous for.” I’m not sure about that last part, but fans have been asking for a Metro– or Operation: Locker–style map in 2042, and Season 4 will finally deliver, it seems.

DICE also confirmed that we’ll see a rework for Discarded in Season 4, but the last launch map—Hourglass—might not get a much-needed revamp until Season 5. All that will come to the game in early 2023, most likely in February given the game’s history, though the holidays could throw a wrench into that.

However, Season 4’s map won’t be the last new one coming to 2042. DICE has already gone into pre-production on Season 5, which will bring its own map to the game. Interestingly, it looks like longtime fans of the franchise might recognize the location, as the map will return to a “forgotten battleground that last saw combat in the Battlefield 4 era.” The blog goes on to describe it as an “overgrown area, engulfed with vegetation and by the 2042 war.”

Looking even further into the future, DICE had an interesting statement to make about 2042‘s controversial Specialists. As we know, Update 3.2 will finally fit Specialists into a more rigid class system that’s more in line with how previous Battlefield games worked. However, DICE has now stated that player feedback surrounding this rework will act “as learnings for, and informing, our new Battlefield experiences for the future that are in pre-production.”

Like I said in my impressions of Season 3, I have a hard time believing that DICE will fully abandon the Specialist system going forward, as it’s the easiest way for them to sell cosmetics. But I also think there are ways that Specialists or classes can work more synergistically from the start, most likely by giving them very specific roles. Given that DICE has been flirting with moving away from the four-class system ever since Battlefield V‘s scrapped class archetypes, it seems like this has been the plan for a while now. Still, removing cringe voice lines, locking weapons to specific subclasses, and making the characters themselves a little more anonymous and “soldier-y” could be the sweet spot that DICE needs to hit. We will have to wait and see.