Respawn's Vince Zampella to head up Battlefield franchise and has plans for a connected universe
Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto will work on "expanding the narrative, storytelling, and character development."
Changes are afoot at EA as the company is shaking up the Battlefield franchise.
These changes are starting off with Respawn Entertainment co-founder Vince Zampella being out in charge of the franchise going forward. His new position comes on the heels of DICE GM Oskar Gabrielson exiting the studio.
Another change in leadership puts Halo designer Marcus Lehto in charge of bringing more to the franchise by starting a new studio in Seattle focused on bringing more storytelling elements to the series. His new studio will work alongside DICE as well as Battlefield Portal developer Ripple Effect, which according to GameSpot is "developing a new Battlefield experience in the Battlefield 2042 universe."
The studios will be working together to "expand upon and improve Battlefield 2042," along with future Battlefield games and experiences which will serve as "extensions" as part of a "Battlefield universe."
"This is an 'And' strategy in many ways," Zampella told GameSpot. "We will continue to evolve and grow Battlefield 2042, and we'll explore new kinds of experiences and business models along the way that we can add to that foundation to provide an awesome array of experiences for our players.
"In this universe, the world is interconnected with shared characters and narrative. This universe is also built with our community as we harness the power of Portal and user-generated content that puts creativity in the hands of our players.
"We intend to build a Battlefield universe, one with multiple projects that are interconnected with the player at the center. We plan to grow Battlefield and meet players where they play through various experiences and business models, including our upcoming Battlefield Mobile coming in 2022 from Alex Seropian and Industrial Toys."
How this new connected universe will work and what experiences and games will be part of it are unknown, and it is also unknown how early in the development process things are at present.
Battlefield 2042 was released back in November and was most recently updated with a huge patch which brought with it a number of fixes, Weekly Missions, changes to the HUD, and much more.