It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were playing the vanilla release of Battlefield 2042, but in the year and a half since then, DICE have been hard at work responding to player feedback and building more content into the game with their season plans. Their latest season is Season 5 – ‘New Dawn’, which brings with it a bunch of new elements, as well as some changes, and which we were able to briefly play around with ahead of launch.
New Dawn’s big attraction is the ‘Reclaimed’ map, which takes place in the wilderness of Czechia. There are six bases around the map, which is built for combined arms warfare with areas dedicated to CQC fighting, as well as others tailor-made for vehicles. For example, Flag D1 is located in a disused bunker, which has few entrances and very narrow paths for players to funnel towards, setting the stage for some creative close-range tactics. On the other hand, we found Flag E1 to be where we racked up the most kills, with a fuel silo in its middle surrounded by an open road, perfect for circling around with a tank firing on the enemy forces holding the flag from all sides.
There’s also a range of new weapons as part of the season, including the XCEC BAR, a high precision bolt action rifle with the ability to let you quickly swap between attachment options, one brought back from Battlefield 4, the GEW-46 (which is the old G36C), alongside the BFP .50, a powerful hand cannon. The Phalanx CIWS is a combined gun and missile anti-aircraft emplacement, also added this season.
New gadgets include a couple of new types of grenade – the Spring Grenade, a smaller grenade that bounces in the air before detonation, Anti-Tank Grenades, which basically do what they say on the tin, and Mini Grenades, which can be thrown faster and further than regular grenades and trade speed for power, although you’ll want to be accurate.
New Dawn also brings some quality of life improvements, including a familiar squad management system and reworked Vault Weapons. A new reworked map will also be available this season, Hourglass 2.0, with its overall size reduced to keep the combat focused, new opportunities for cover, and changes such as the village becoming a fortified military base, and downtown skyscrapers now engulfed in flames.
New Dawn of course brings 100 new tiers of Battle Pass content, available to all players as part of the Free tier in Battlefield 2042’s Battle Pass, and a special reward, Year 1 Battle Pass holders will receive an Epic skin and an XP booster throughout the first two weeks of Season 5. You can check out official gameplay footage from EA below:
