Dystopian future settings are nothing new, especially to the medium of video games. There is a long legacy of games featuring dystopian futures like the Deus Ex series, BioShock, or even Half-Life. Now, Battlefield 2042 has been revealed and is also set in a dystopian future that sees the United States and Russia caught in a never-ending conflict all over Earth. Battlefield 2042 does not feature a campaign, so the setting will only be explored in-game during multiplayer matches, but it is very interesting that the game's developers opted to set the game in a dystopian future like so many other recent titles.

Some of this year's and last year's biggest game releases have been set in dystopian futures. Cyberpunk 2077 lets players explore the crime-ridden metropolis of Night City with all of its flashing advertisements and violence. Biohazard saw players controlling mutated animals in a world that was devastated by those that came before and is still on the brink of destruction. As strange as it may seem, even the Splatoon series is set in a dystopian future after the extinction of the human race where squid-human hybrids have risen to the top of the food chain and are obsessed with streetwear. The games industry loves its dystopian fiction, but there are a few good reasons as to why it is so popular across the industry.

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What Defines Dystopian Fiction

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One of the first pieces of dystopian literature was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, written in 1726. In the novel, a surgeon named Lemuel Gulliver takes to the sea after his business fails. Throughout the novel, Gulliver travels and interacts with a variety of different societies and peoples. The novel explores themes of whether strength or moral correctness should motivate power, critiquing the idea of a utopian society, and what limits there are to human understanding. The story is referenced throughout a lot of modern media to this day, including Gulliver washing up on shore throughout Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Even now, Gulliver's Travels serves as a good template for what defines dystopian fiction. One big aspect is that the locations and societies that Gulliver visits expose problems of the real world while presenting themselves at first like utopias. This can be seen in games like BioShock Infinite that portrays the Columbia as an idyllic cloud city when players arrive before revealing its true nature. Another aspect of dystopian futures is utopian societies then being exposed to have serious flaws that comment and critique on parts of the real world, like how corporations strip the residents of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City of their humanity.

How Games Approach Dystopian Futures

Rather than seeing protagonists traveling to distant lands across the sea, video games tend to approach dystopias by utilizing futuristic but familiar settings. This allows them to blend in science fiction elements as well as showing a disdainful version of what could come. It allows video games to keep some of their elements familiar and rooted in the world that players already know. This helps players feel more immersed in the strange worlds that they visit, offering a reference point to observe them from. For this reason, games like Outriders often feature humans colonizing a new planet rather than playing from the perspective of the aliens.

But this makes it necessary for developers to flesh out the settings with as much detail as possible. This information is often communicated through characters in the game's story as well as small pieces of lore sprinkled through objects or textures. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of a game that features an extremely detailed dystopian future setting for players to explore. Night City feels almost as lifelike as reality, but it's a tangible future that many fear. A future where corporations control almost every aspect of life and engage in wars with one another while poverty is the norm is terrifying. It is even more terrifying because Night City's details make it feel all the more plausible, making Cyberpunk more engaging to players.

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Why Games Find Success in Dystopian Futures

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There are also some very good reasons that video games are able to make such strong futuristic dystopian settings. One of these is that it allows developers to be more creative with the game's setting and gameplay features. Battlefield 2042 could have been set in modern times again like Battlefield 4. However, that would have prevented the developers from being able to add in Battlefield 2042's new gadget system that sees players being able to take advantage of futuristic technology to add new ways for fans to play.

Of course, the near future in video games doesn't always have to be dystopian but having it does help games with their narrative and player motivation as well. Because of how much agency players have in video games, they require making sure players want to continue playing them. Some games have managed to keep players playing even if they dislike what their characters are doing throughout the story, but it is a very difficult narrative feat to pull off. Setting games during trying times helps ease the burden of getting players invested because it easily establishes the antagonist, be it an entity or a person. Having awesome villains is a big part of what makes video games great, and being born into a corrupt society immediately pits the player against the insane dictator, the man who wants to destroy the world, the one controlling throngs of innocents.

Of course, only time will tell whether or not Battlefield 2042's dystopian setting will garner a positive reaction, but it definitely seems as though gamers will have many more futuristic dystopian settings to visit in the future. Recent titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding have both recently shown fans some interesting new ways to explore real-world issues, and it will be very interesting to see what the games industry does with the genre in the coming years.

Battlefield 2042 is set to release October 22, 2021 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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