Hands-on: In Season 7, Battlefield 2042 welcomes players to Haven
3.19.2024
By Thomas Wilde, Contributor
El Alicanto is the backdrop for the first of two new maps in Season 7 in BF2042. Haven is a suburban conflict zone that’s set in what’s left of this tiny desert town in Chile. When you walk down the main street, you feel like you’ve got a target on your back. It’s because you do.
I can say that with some degree of authority, because I got an early crack at Haven before Season 7’s debut. I played a few rounds of Conquest 64 on both sides of the map, which is packed with blind turns, dark corners, sniper’s nests, and ambush opportunities.
Haven's story is simple: You’re there to either protect or disrupt the flow of water supplies through the region. El Alicanto is a vital pipeline for local resources, and if it goes down, the US may lose its foothold in that part of the world. As “No-Pat” mercenaries fighting on either side of the war, you’re sent to gain control of El Alicanto by any means necessary.
Compared to other BF2042 maps, Haven is small and cluttered, but relatively flat. The edges of town are a no-man’s-land with a disturbing lack of cover, but the center of town provides a lot of opportunities for tense, building-by-building urban combat.
When I played Haven for the first time, I ended up assuming that someone had me in their rifle sights at all times, because it was usually true. You need to stick with your squad, stay out of the open, and avoid being predictable, or someone’s going to knock your head off from the other side of the map.
You can go a long way on Haven with a smart, coordinated fireteam, but running off on your own is lethal. Every bombed-out storefront and rooftop could hold an enemy, and the main roads serve to funnel you into potential crossfire. Even heavy armor has to be more careful than usual, as every street is lined with alleyways and burned-out storefronts. Any one of these hiding places could have someone waiting to fire an RPG, drop a C5 charge, or hack your vehicle.
The key term for my experience of Haven is “paranoia.” A lot of BF2042 feels like a game of rocket tag, where whoever spots an enemy first wins, but Haven really ratchets that up. I participated in some pitched battles through downtown El Alicanto that were some of the tensest fighting I’ve seen in the game so far.
According to EA’s Tom Straatman, Haven has been a “labor of love” for the Battlefield team, and draws inspiration from several past maps such as Bad Company 2’s Arica Harbor, Battlefield 1’s Amiens, and Strike at Karkand. Haven can support up to 64 players at a time, and supports Breakthrough, Conquest, FFA, Rush, and TDM modes.
In addition to Haven, Season 7 of BF2042 will feature the debut of a new map called Stadium, which is a standalone version of an area that got removed from the launch map Hourglass in patch 5.2. Stadium is set indoors in a soccer arena in Doha, Qatar, with no available vehicles. It’s built for a close-range, all-infantry firefight. I didn’t get to try Stadium for myself, but players have reportedly been requesting that it make a comeback for a while now.
Season 7 in BF2042 also features several new guns, such as the Predator SRAW wire-guided anti-vehicle weapon, and a new plane, the XFAD-4 Draugr bomber. The Draugr comes equipped with EMP bombs and radar-guided missiles, in order to let you sow chaos from the sky.
Starting on launch day, Season 7 has its own dedicated Battle Pass, which features 100 tiers of rewards. The premium edition of the Battle Pass only includes cosmetic options such as specialist and weapon skins, while the free version lets you unlock new weapons like the SRAW and the AK5C, a close- to medium-range assault rifle.
All the new content comes alongside a number of quality-of-life and balance tweaks. Weapon animations and recoil have been improved, the deployment screen has been streamlined, and a few changes have been made to render ground vehicles less vulnerable to infantry players’ weapons and gadgets. Those changes include putting a 2-second timer on anti-tank mines, making it slightly harder for Rao players to use their Cyberwarfare Suite on enemy vehicles, and removing the EMP function from Casper’s Recon Drone.
Battlefield 2042 is available for purchase on the Epic Games Store. Season 7, Turning Point, is set for release on March 19. It’ll be followed by a free weekend on March 21 to 24.