Battlefield 2042 is enjoying a small resurgence as it nears its two-year anniversary, thanks to a recent free weekend, a sale, and multiple updates from the developer. The game’s new season will hopefully maintain players’ renewed interest in DICE’s futuristic military shooter — particularly the new mode that lets you deploy and fight against hordes of 3D-printed synthetic soldiers who run around naked and smash enemies’ heads in with hammers.
Season 6’s of Battlefield 2042 will introduce a new limited time mode called Killswitch, a 12v12 game type that lets players print out waves of Geists — the aforementioned buck-naked ’bots — that can be deployed in combat. They’re effectively (fast) zombies who sprint at the opposing team and try to bludgeon them to death, as seen in the trailer above.
Geists are printed at Forges in Killswitch’s maps (Redacted, Manifest, Hourglass and Spearhead), and teams will battle for control of those Forges while they simultaneously attempt to capture locations called AOS nodes.
How did these synthetic soldiers, who are not canonically zombies, find their way into Battlefield fiction? According to DICE and publisher Electronic Arts, a secret R&D lab off the coast of Scotland is the victim of an AI run amok. That artificial intelligence has taken over and created the Geist, glowing-eyed bad guys who are programmed to kill. Sure, I buy that.
While zombies may be something of a tired trope (and prominently associated with more popular modern military first-person shooters), it’s fun to see DICE and developer Ripple Effect experiment with Battlefield while new leadership rethinks EA’s approach to the franchise.
Killswitch is playable as part of Battlefield 2042’s Dark Protocol event, which runs Oct. 31 to Nov. 14. Players who take part in Killswitch matches can earn Ribbons that can be cashed in for free cosmetic rewards, like weapon and vehicle skins.