Portal has brought remastered, classic content to Portal at launch is Bad Company 2, a fan-favorite game from 2010. It's nice to be able to revisit Bad Company 2 in some form through 2042, but more than anything it's a reminder that a third one never came, and could still fill a niche in the franchise.
In many ways, Battlefield 2042 is the antithesis of Bad Company 2. Both BC2 and its predecessor had a more prominent focus on its single-player campaign than every other entry in the series. They each follow the titular Bad Company, a squad of misfits, which give these two games more personality than its more serious counterparts in Battlefield 3 and 4. 2042 has entirely abandoned single-player content, which is a fine approach for what it's hoping to accomplish in the live service landscape, but there has been untapped single-player potential in the Battlefield series ever since Bad Company went on hiatus.
A third Bad Company could also be the impetus for a return in gameplay that many fans have been hoping for. A major emphasis in Bad Company 2 was its destructible environments. Since 2010, Battlefield has gradually toned down the destruction (even in Portal's Bad Company 2 maps), even though it's one of the most frequently requested features from the community. Oftentimes entire maps would be razed by the end of a match, and while this certainly caused some issues with having adequate cover, there is definitely a middle ground between that and the lackluster destruction of Battlefield 2042. Most importantly, though, a Bad Company 3 could continue a spin-off series that tried for a different scale than the rest of the series.
Battlefield Doesn't Have To Keep Getting Bigger For A Bad Company 3
Battlefield 2042 has taken a bold step in bringing 128-player lobbies to the series, but many have felt that Battlefield 2042 may be too big. There's room in the series for entries to feature a more constrained experience. Bad Company 2 featured 32-player lobbies on PC, with maps designed specifically for the Rush game mode. A Bad Company 3 could emulate this, bringing back the beloved Rush, while creating a more tailored style of play than the sandbox of 2042. Multiplayer games seem to be continuously growing, and there's nothing wrong with 2042 trying to follow suit, but that doesn't mean there isn't room to grow in the other direction as well.
Battlefield 2042's three major game modes - All-Out Warfare, Hazard Zone, and Portal - point to something of an identity crisis for the game. It's almost as if there was no clear direction that the developers wanted to take the game, so it got a bit of everything. The Bad Company games have a very clear, established tone and style, and a third could capitalize on that. It may be a perfect opportunity for the developers to make a scaled-back, tightly designed Battlefield experience without worrying about making it bigger and bolder than all that have come before. Battlefield 2042 has a long list of technical issues, glitches, and bugs, but its design is moving it away from gameplay elements that were celebrated in the time of Bad Company 2, and a follow-up with Bad Company 3 could be a chance to recapture some of that lost identity.
