One of the main elements of Battlefield 2042’s marketing so far has been the whole natural disaster angle, where each map in the game will have some sort of major environmental hazard adding to the regular, pedestrian dangers of Battlefield - like getting shot, blown up, run over by a tank or squashed by a fighter jet someone crashed into you.
Based on images and footage seen so far, these include sand storms, tornadoes, electrical storms and more. While definitely a source of danger, they’re also tactical opportunities that smart players can turn to their advantage. That said, let’s stick to the danger part for now - the game files contained a handy list of various damage types players can endure while fighting as no-pats, other than the basic damage caused by metal objects of various size slamming into you at speed. The ones we know about are Electric, Cold, Storm, Toxic and Radiation. One would think that Storm covers both Cold and Electric, but apparently it is a different damage type. Lightning and damaged power lines resulting from the destructible scenery can deal electrical damage, as can EMP equipment. Cold is pretty self explanatory on the hazard side of things, but the dataminer, who goes by the name temporyal on Twitter, also found destructible coolant tanks which also cause Cold damage.
❄️ Cold⚡️ Electricity🌪️ Storm☣️ Toxic☢️ Radiation I found destroyable cryotanks which could deal cold damage. EMP & storm are pretty self-explanatory. I’m not sure where we might encounter poison or radiation. Have a nice weekend! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/8gYSttR3zO — temporyal (@temporyal) August 27, 2021 So far there is no indication of how and where players can incur Toxic and Radiation damage, as these likely will come from sources we haven’t seen before - the dataminer speculates that destructible halon fire suppressant systems could cause Toxic damage. Modern halon based fire extinguishers use a vastly less toxic variant of the gas than in the past, and we struggle to see how decades into the future humanity would switch back to a worse one… but the world of Battlefield 2042 is ridden with a resource crisis, so it is plausible. Notably absent is any kind of fire damage, though we assume that both incendiary weaponry and fire-based environmental hazards will be present - in fact, we don’t have to assume, since the also datamined information about the “Discarded” map’s hazard zone refers to it. Also posted by temporyal is information about the map Discarded, which is set in India and centers around a looted and beached cargo ship. The landscape will apparently experience satellites crashing into it from orbit. Three different sizes of satellites have been found, including impact effects, resultant shockwaves and flaming debris.
⚓️ Discarded (India) Satellites have three different sizes and might crash during a round (there is a lot of in-engine data like flaming debris, trails & shockwaves or impact effects). pic.twitter.com/81noNalIue — temporyal (@temporyal) August 30, 2021 Since we know that satellites crashing back to Earth are a part of the Battlefield 2042 plot - yes, despite being multiplayer only, the game has an actual storyline - it makes sense that these impacts would have some gameplay significance. We assume that the three different sizes of satellite will drop in sequence, steadily intensifying as the match drags on. Battlefield 2042 is set for an October 22 release.
