Fans of Battlefield 6 are worried the new game will pull a Call Of Duty when it comes to crossover skins, but the developer insists it will remain ‘grounded’.
According to current rumours EA is expecting to attract up to 100 million players to Battlefield 6, when it’s released in October. That’s orders of magnitude more than any previous entry in the series and more akin to the numbers enjoyed by the likes of Call Of Duty and Fortnite.
Some influence from those games can already be seen in Battlefield 6, as the sequel will feature a separate battle royale mode. That isn’t necessarily a bad idea but it has many fans worried that Battlefield may pick up some of Call Of Duty’s other bad habits, especially when it comes to paid-for skins.
Call Of Duty and Fortnite are known, for better and worse, for mountains of cosmetic skins based on movie stars, cartoon characters, real-life celebrities, and much more. Call Of Duty fans are getting increasingly fed up with the trend and it seems Battlefield 6 will be purposefully avoiding it.
Speaking with DBLTAP during a recent London event, Battlefield 6 design director Shashank Uchil (who’s been working on the series since 2018’s Battlefield 5) expressed a disinterest in any sort of wacky crossovers for the game, insisting the game will remain ‘grounded.’
‘It has to be grounded. That is what Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 was – it was all soldiers, on the ground,’ said Uchil. ‘I don’t think it needs Nicki Minaj. Let’s keep it real, keep it grounded.’
That second bit is a very pointed reference to how Activision added rapper Nicki Minaj as a playable skin in 2022’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Not even as a character, but as herself and not in any sort of military wear.
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Battlefield Studios head Vince Zampella (who famously helped create Call Of Duty) was also quizzed by Eurogamer about the possibility of crossover skins.
‘We want to be true to Battlefield, we want this fantasy to feel like you’d expect of Battlefield, so that’s what we’ve been focused on,’ he answered.
While it can feel like Call Of Duty fans are always complaining about something with each new game, the series’ use of crossover skins has been a point of contention for many years now.
Things started off with celebrity cameos like Lewis Hamilton and various footballers, but as the years went on the skins became more and more fantastical.
It was one thing when Call Of Duty was adding action heroes like Rambo and John McClane, who at least somewhat fit with the series’ aesthetic, but now you have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and cartoon characters like Beavis and Butthead running around shooting one another in Call Of Duty’s otherwise realistic looking maps.
There’s no shortage of Call Of Duty fans hating on these sort of skins online, with the Beavis and Butthead ones prompting a Reddit thread labelled ‘COD is cooked’ with more than 8,000 upvotes.
‘I was fine with the future tech, the anime, I reluctantly accepted the animal and mascot characters but… f***ing giant glowy cartoon character? Really?’ reads the top comment.
‘I remember coming around a corner and seeing Nicki Minaj knifing some dude and just turned the game off. It was the last time I played COD,’ reads another.
A separate thread from nine months ago innocently asked fans what their favourite Call Of Duty collab has been and while there are plenty legitimate answers, a lot of comments are people answering with none of them.
The top comment is just a blunt ‘No’, with the second most upvoted being, ‘None, I hate annoying skins, let alone crossovers.’
As a result, a rumour from April, courtesy of frequent Call Of Duty insider GhostOfHope, suggests that despite the crossovers ‘printing money,’ Activision plans to rein them in because of fan complaints.
By comparison, Battlefield fans have been elated at just how ordinary the skins for Battlefield 6 look so far. When the first line-up of skins leaked earlier this week, fans on Reddit praised them for looking like… generic soldiers.
One comment simply reads, ‘I love them, I love them, I love them,’ while another says, ‘Finally no weird operators, just plain anonymous soldiers.’
That said, there remain concerns that EA will opt to sell weird crossover skins later down the line. After all, the reason Call Of Duty and Fortnite keep doing them is that despite the complaints plenty of people are willing to pay good money for them.
‘The moment I see Nicki Minaj running through the map holding an M16, I’m out,’ says one fan, with someone predicting it’ll happen in just six months.
Another fan writes, ‘Modern military skins is totally okay, but that’s a big no if we see some other characters for instance from Squid Game, Beavis & Butthead, Diablo 3, etc., etc. with anime guns and/or some other funky/pop/arcade things.’
It’s worth noting that Battlefield has dabbled in crossovers before, with Battlefield 2042 receiving skins based on Dead Space and Mass Effect. However, those are EA owned franchises and at least vaguely fit Battlefield’s near future aesthetic.
Even so, while the Battlefield 6 team might be disinterested in copying Call Of Duty’s example when it comes to collabs, the higher-ups may have different ideas, especially if they want to market the game to a wider audience beyond the established fanbase.
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