There are three inevitabilities in life: death, taxes, and the developers behind a military shooter saying that their game isn’t political in nature.
It was all but assured that we would see that last one play out with Battlefield 6 when it was first announced. Its first trailer showed us loaded images of Brooklyn being turned into a warzone, and we learned that the campaign’s story revolved around unnamed countries parting ways with NATO over a heated disagreement. There’s a lot to unpack there, but the game’s creators didn’t seem to think so. In an August interview with Polygon, executive producer Christian Grass downplayed the idea that there was some real-world commentary to glean from it: “We wanted to create something that felt that it could be real, but it’s clearly fiction because we’re creating entertainment products.”
You can get up in arms about Grass refusing to make a statement, but do we really need him to? Battlefield 6’s story speaks for itself. The campaign isn’t shy about offering commentary on blind patriotism, political violence, and America’s ethics, even if it isn’t explicitly picking a side. Battlefield 6 has good politics if you want it to. And it has bad politics too. It all depends on how you want to interpret a strange story devoid of authorial intent.
There’s no avoiding real-world connections as soon as Battlefield 6 begins. It starts with a political assassination, as the Secretary General of NATO is killed in an unexplained act of violence. Every country wants answers, but NATO refuses to give them. That tension causes some unnamed countries to leave the alliance entirely. That’s not the only side effect of the act; it also spurs the creation of Pax Armata, a private military group that seizes on the unrest. They say they want to restore order through force, launching sieges on different global stages, from Gibraltar to Brooklyn.
Who is involved and what Pax really wants is left intentionally vague (at least until the campaign’s final revelation). There’s no implication that they are aligned with a real-world authoritarian regime or anarchists. It’s a far cry from previous Battlefield games, which weren’t shy about putting countries like Russia in the villain seat. The choice leaves the door open for players to project whatever they want onto the conflict, especially during the ongoing fallout of real-world political assassinations.
For instance, look at the campaign’s set of Brooklyn-based missions. In them, a squad is called in to New York City to sniff out a hidden Pax safehouse and stop a planned terrorist attack. That mission gives way to a tidal wave of uncomfortable images, as the peaceful streets of Brooklyn Heights are doused in flames and panic. There’s a valid critical read of this, positing that it’s tone-deaf for our current moment. The Trump administration is currently waging war against places like New York City, threatening to send troops into left-leaning cities to combat what’s being depicted as a rampant crime wave by Republican politicians.
It’s reasonable to feel that Battlefield 6 is irresponsible in its use of New York City at this time, playing on lingering 9/11 panic (the troops say “never forget” before blowing up the Manhattan Bridge) to justify why the military’s presence could be needed at home. Even if it’s wrapped in a fiction created well before the events it is dropping into, it skews close enough to reality that it’s hard to fully disconnect from it. The story eventually funnels into “deep state” conspiracy territory, for instance, that might raise some alarm bells for skeptical players.
It doesn’t help that Battlefield has a history of using New York City as a scary war playground. Battlefield 3’s final mission, “The Great Destroyer,” also involves bombs, trains, and terrorist attacks, culminating in a scene where you fistfight the antagonist in Times Square. What does it mean for the studio to routinely return to that well, dredging up the same anxieties about terrorism in major cities? Even if it’s not an intentional decision, one could see the series as a subconscious airing of anxieties over what these seemingly lawless cities are like.
But there’s a polar opposite read of Battlefield 6 too, which speaks to how loose the pieces really are. You’d really have to stretch to read Pax Armata as a stand-in for Antifa or homegrown progressive activism. They’re a private operation born out of the global military industrial complex. This is an organized group that wants to use an assassination as a smokescreen to take control of countries through violence. They claim it’s about keeping the peace, but they’re really just trying to stir things up to speed up the collapse of society. Of any real-world group, they are most closely comparable to accelerationists. (That’s a group tied to extremist right-wing ideology, usually tied to breaking down the “system” to advance the ultimate goals of white supremacy.)
Battlefield 6, in all its vagueness, doesn’t go as far as to give Pax that specific motive, but the authoritarian undertones of their messaging open the door for interpretation. Pax Armata are unequivocally the bad guys. They’re also the people who want to forcefully take over New York City. And the patriotic thing to do is to stop them. Analyze those undertones as you will.
With both of these interpretations of the story holding water, Battlefield 6 will give you a headache if you’re trying to mine it for consistent political meaning. Sure, you can try to figure out potential biases that may have subconsciously informed how it plays out, but the empty intent of its creators shines through. The story mashes current events and tropes together to create a gauntlet of war gaming clichés. Sniping mission? Check. Hard-to-control tank set-piece? Check. A whole night vision section? Check. Any meaty political context is reduced to set dressing to create a world-hopping campaign where all of that can coexist. When Christian Grass tells you that the team isn’t trying to make any grand statement about modern politics, believe him.
But even if there’s only half a brain rattling around in Battlefield 6’s head, the campaign still has some of its teeth intact. The story actually offers up an unexpectedly harsh critique of America and its relationship to its troops, even if its creators would likely downplay that intent. Setting aside the Pax Armata of it all, the heart of Battlefield 6 lies in the soldiers who have pledged their allegiance to NATO amid the war. When the story starts, we’re led to believe that this is your average “rah rah” military story about loyal troops who will do anything to protect America. They are constantly talking about doing their duty and following whatever orders they are given. They even shrug off any context they are offered through the story. During the Brooklyn mission, they meet up with President Fernandez, who speaks about the conflict, bemoaning the lack of compromise offered by the other side. A soldier cuts him off: “I’ll leave the politics to you.”
[Ed. note: Spoilers for Battlefield 6 follow.]
That blind patriotism may earn them medals, but it becomes clear very early on that the rewards stop there. In an early mission, a squad gets backed into a corner and has to fend off approaching Pax Armata troops. It doesn’t go well, and you watch as each of your teammates is killed in action beside you. When the siege ends, you drape an American flag over a fallen companion’s body. Blood seeps through the cloth, offering an on-the-nose metaphor that foreshadows what Battlefield 6 is actually interested in.
As the campaign winds down, we learn the shocking truth about Pax Armata. The group was partially created by the CIA to give a divided world a common enemy to rally behind. (It’s similar to the conclusion of Watchmen, Alan Moore’s seminal comic series, oddly enough.) That plan went awry when some dangerous people allied with Pax, but America sent its troops out to die fighting a manufactured crisis of its own creation. In the campaign’s final mission, the squad is nearly killed as Melissa Mills, the mastermind behind the plan, orders a bomb strike on them to try and tie up all loose ends. That’s what blind patriotism gets you, I guess
Even if the specifics are intentionally wishy-washy, the core message is undeniable. It’s a story about betrayed soldiers whose loyalties are taken advantage of by a country that sees them as nothing more than pawns in a geopolitical game. They are disposable bodies who are only worth keeping around as long as they don’t ask questions. Maybe the writers behind the story don’t intend for that to be the takeaway, but intent only matters up to a point. The story communicates what it communicates once it’s out of an author’s hands. And while Battlefield 6 may not skew right or left in any coherent way, the words on the page are loaded.
How you choose to fill in the gaps around that idea is up to you; Battlefield 6’s conflict is incoherent by design. If you want it to fit your worldview, it’s frustratingly vague enough to support that. But however you choose to interpret it all, know that it isn’t devoid of politics entirely. A corpse lying under a blood-soaked American flag isn’t exactly a subtle image.
