One of the most common complaints during Battlefield 2042's recent open beta was about the lack of variety in the game's specialists. There were four available at the time, and I wasn't the only one to notice that most people seemed to pick the guy with the grapple hook. DICE is hoping to encourage other playstyles with the other five specialists included at launch: Constantin ″Angel″ Anghel, Emma ″Sundance″ Rosier, Ji-Soo Paik, Navin Rao, and Santiago ″Dozer″ Espinoza. Watch the trailer above to see them in action.
You thought grapple hooks and drones are fun? How about a wingsuit, a hacking gauntlet, smart grenades, and a wallhacks button? Here's what we know about the new five so far:
Emma "Sundance" Rosier (Assault)
Sundance is a French assault specialist who brings two major advantages to the battlefield. She's the only specialist with a wingsuit, which seems to give her greater mobility around the map. In the trailer we see her quickly glide across an open landscape and straight through a broken window, transitioning back to first-person quickly enough to enter a firefight. Seems handy!
She also carries "Smart Explosives," a bundle of special grenade types including "anti-armor, EMP, and Scatter grenades." In the trailer we see her use two, one that automatically flies toward a helicopter after being tossed through the air (neat) and another that just seems to blow somebody up.
Santiago "Dozer" Espinoza (Assault)
Dozer is a Mexican assault pick who seems decidedly simpler to play than Sundance. He has a passive that lets him take less damage and recover faster from explosive damage, and carries a ballistic shield that covers his entire front from incoming projectiles. It's not clear if that means it blocks rocket launchers, but let's just assume it's only rated for bullets.
Ji-Soo Paik (Recon)
Paik is a South Korean Recon specialist with two different ways to highlight enemies that are giving her trouble. Her primary gadget is a scanner that temporarily highlights nearby enemies through walls (and possibly for your squadmates; it's not clear). It's basically a short-lived wallhacks button, similar to Bloodhound's scanner in Apex Legends. Paik's passive ability is a sensor that will automatically highlight enemies that shoot at her (again, not yet sure if that info is shared with your squad).
Navin Rao (Recon)
An Indian recon specialist, Rao is the hacker of the Battlefield bunch. His "Cyber Warfare Suite" includes a wrist-mounted computer that allows him to "hack" enemy soldiers. Hacking and then killing someone will automatically spot any other nearby enemies for you, creating a potentially murderous chain reaction that encourages the aggressive approach. Rao can also manually hack in-world objects like windows or pylons (seen in the trailer) and "enemy equipment," which may refer to land mines or other gadgets.
Constantin "Angel" Anghel (Support)
Angel is a Romanian support pick who isn't so much a healer as a mobile gun store for his teammates. His main ability lets him airdrop in special crates that he and his team can use to swap loadouts on the fly (similar to the loadout boxes in Call of Duty: Warzone, it seems).
By the look of it, swapping loadouts can change which guns and secondary gadgets you're holding, but doesn't change which specialist you're playing. Angel's passive ability lets him revive teammates much more quickly than normal and restore a bit of their armor.
If you add in the playable specialists from the beta and Kimble "Irish" Graves (the previously-announced specialist portrayed by actor Michael K. Williams), that's a total of 10:
- Webster Mackay (Assault)
- Emma "Sundance" Rosier (Assault)
- Santiago "Dozer" Espinoza (Assault)
- Ji-Soo Paik (Recon)
- Wikus "Casper" Van Daele (Recon)
- Navin Rao (Recon)
- Maria Falck (Support)
- Constantin "Angel" Anghel (Support)
- Pyotr "Boris" Guskovsky (Engineer)
- Kimble "Irish" Graves (Engineer, I think?)
The presentation of the new specialists in the trailer is a useful reminder that the concept of classes has more or less evaporated in Battlefield 2042. Sure, Ji-Soo is considered a Recon character, but as the trailer shows, her wallhacks ability will be best used in aggressive, close-quarter scenarios, not sniping from a hilltop a mile away. So what makes her Recon and not Assault? A focus on intel, seemingly, and not much else.
It's also notable that more than half of the launch roster fall under Assault and Recon, with the other roles having only two options each. I'll be interested to see if DICE will adjust this imbalance in Battlefield 2042's first post-launch updates.
