Battlefield 6 hands on impressions feat. interview with Vince Zampella | Friends Per Second #75

PLUS: Battlefield 6 hands-on, Dead Take interview, Cronos, Grounded 2, and MORE

Hey Users, happy Monday!

Thanks for all your lovely feedback on the last issue of the newsletter, I’m glad you’re digging the changes we made to it. Truthfully, this new format is much more fun to write, so I’m (selfishly) glad it’s resonating. Onto this week’s show.

Force Gaming steps in to co-host while Jake is travelling, Bruce Greene lends his Battlefield expertise to our Battlefield 6 impressions and Abubakar Salim joins us to chat about Dead Take.

This episode was a little Frankensteined together, so huge thanks to our editor Stu for bearing with us as we navigated travel and embargoes, and of course to Force and Bruce for joining us.

Let’s just jump right into it.

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Battlefield 6

Jake and I travelled to LA to play a few hours of Battlefield 6, and despite us both dying more than a few times (in our defence, we were playing with and against a lot of professional streamers), BF6 is shaping up to be a pretty good time.

The game got over half a million wishlists following the reveal event and overall, coverage has been pretty positive. This must be a relief to EA, who has put an awful lot of money behind the game (over $400 million, per this Ars Technica report). We got some time with Vince Zampella (Head of Respawn Entertainment and Group General Manager for EA Entertainment) and Byron Beede (General Manager of Battlefield) to ask them about the mistakes learned from Battlefield 2042, the franchise’s identity, and whether there’s any truth to the leaked 100m player target.

Cronos: The New Dawn

It’s August so it’s basically spooky season, or at least, that’s what all the shops in America would like you to believe. To get into the spirit, I recently played the first two hours of Cronos: The New Dawn, the upcoming survival horror game from Bloober Team. Folks, those first two hours absolutely ripped and I am really excited to play more. I’m downloading Silent Hill 2 Remake, Dead Space, and Alan Wake 2 to tide me over until September.

Dead Take

I don’t think anyone expected Surgent Studios to release a game quite so quickly after 2024’s Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, and from the sound of things, I don’t think Surgent Studios did either. We chat to creative director Abubakar Salim about how the game got green lit, the inspiration behind it, and pulling together a who’s who of voice actors for the cast.

What We’ve Been Playing: A The Friends Per Second Podcast Edition

• Ralph finished Donkey Kong and is trying to summon the energy to play Destiny 2

• Lucy has been checking out Wheel World, Tales of the Shire and Dead Take

• Force has been playing Grounded 2 and might have sold us all on Soulframe

Show and Tell

• Ralph watched Fantastic 4, but we’re saving that convo for when Jake is back

• Lucy was enamoured with Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

• Force is learning German. Ausgezeichnet!

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Thanks for reading, folks. We appreciate you! We didn’t get round to a User question this week, but we will next time, so make sure to comment below or email us at contact@friendspersecond.com.

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with another episode and another newsletter. Enjoy your gaming!

<3 Lucy