Battlefield 2042 is taking DICE's storied first-person shooter back to the future. As it turns out, though, it's also looking to the past, with a multiplayer mode that mixes aspects of 2042 with some of the series's biggest titles: Battlefield 1942, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3. The new mode is called Battlefield Portal, and it looks like it'll provide a whole lot more than nostalgia.

Developer Ripple Effect Studios, formerly DICE LA, provided us with an early look at Battlefield Portal before its announcement at EA Play 2021, which gave a rundown of its impressive capabilities. First and foremost, it brings a mess of elements from previous Battlefield games into the Battlefield 2042 sandbox. Those are chiefly six remastered maps: Battle of the Bulge and El Alamein from Battlefield 1942, Arica Harbor and Valparaiso from Bad Company 2, and Caspian Border and Noshahr Canals from Battlefield 3. All the maps have been amped-up graphically to fit with 2042's version of the Frostbite Engine, as well as altered in some cases to accommodate the 128-player matches possible in Battlefield 2042's PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S versions.

But Portal goes beyond just allowing you to jump into older Battlefield maps. It also brings back the factions, roles, and classes of those past Battlefield games, plus more than 40 vehicles and 40 weapons from the lot. And once Ripple Effect had decided to bring back those classic Battlefield elements, it started to think about what else it could do with them all.