Summary of 2042 development:
- Developers started leaving during the release of BFV, as EA wanted to compete against other games (BRs and normal shooters) and their concepts internally never given a look at.
- EA basically gave the memo of "copy what's popular".
- Classes scrapped early 2020.
- WFH with cross-gen was a massive pain with 5 different platforms with hardware being shared remotely.
- Game shifted into a BF title April-August 2020 from the BR (so basically about 18 months of development time) with 128p & specialists.
- The games original concept got shifted into Hazard Zone.
- August 2020 is when production really got started and concepts got solidfied. So basically 1 year and 3 months of true production.
- The leaked trailer (the epilepsy one) was basically early in production in early 2021 and show to QA in early 2021 in its finished form. Used BF3/BF4 assets.
- "Ahead of scheudle" was a giant fib. Past & current DICE devs say it was based on baseless predictions.
- In March 2021 DICE was overwhelmed and admitted they need help from others. But it wasn't easy again due to engine issues with lack of experience.#
- Later on in the months it became obvious so many issues like UI where creeping up and causing many issues.
- Technical test came and ofc was unstable and used Orbital as mentioned in the video was the concept map. And made clear the game was way behind schedule. And Tom was given indications then that BF 2042 was in a troubled state and stressed working environment (not due to crunch but more management issues etc).
- Tom then got word that the beta & launch was going to be delayed but only a few hours later it was clear the delay was weeks and not months.
- And ofc the last stretch where the beta was basically an alpha and the launch being a launch.
- In summary vast majority of development issues was a massive lack of time, could've benefitted of an extra year or so in an era where delays of 3-6 months where common. And since so many people have left over development time the studio DICE is basically so different now it needs renaming to reflect reality.
- Many projects where scrapped including a BC3 which EA thoguht wouldn't sell for some reason.
Categorizing this as rumor cause while Tom has been pretty spot on with his insider info, you should still take everything with a grain of salt.The future:
- The next BF shooter is being scoped as a hero shooter.
- Most interestingly it may be bands of specialists/heroes fighting against each other and not armies, even further away from BF 2042.
- The "connected unvierse" is basically adding depth to the specialists.
- A BR will come in the near future, not next 6 months but vague timeframe.
- That said things have not absolutely set in stone and DICE developers have been hard at work trying to fix the game to be good as possible (though personally in my eyes the game has fundamental issues of the gameplay core that can't mesh well with say the maps, least that's my opinion) and listening to the community.
