Portal is the ultimate customizable experience. So much so that you have to create game modes on a separate out of game website. And that website just went live...
A lot of fans have lost hope with Battlefield 2042's main multiplayer mode, and that's fair enough, but there's one mode that the community remains hugely hyped for - Portal. If you don't know what Portal is: maps, weapons, vehicles, and characters from older games are jumbled together in a hugely customizable experience. In Portal, you might see a Battlefield 1 horse being ridden by a marine from Battlefield 3, who's wielding an MP40 from Battlefield 1942 and charging through a Battlefield 2042 map.
Portal can be customized in so many ways that there's a separate website for setting your matches up, and that website just went live, you can explore it yourself right here.
How To Use Portal
First things first, go to the website and sign in with your EA credentials (if you don't have an EA account, you'll need one for Battlefield 2042 anyway, and you can make one in under five minutes right here). Once you've done that, you can begin crafting your experience:
Core
Game Mode
Choose between: Rush, Conquest, Conquest Large, Team Deathmatch, and Free-For-All.
Map Rotation
Choose between Battlefield 2042 maps or a selection of older maps.
Game Mode Details
Choose the maximum amount of human players (between 1 and 128), the game time in minutes (up to an hour), the reinforcements removed per kill, the per-squad character limit, and even whether squad spawn is allowed.
Modifiers
Gameplay
In this section, you can choose headshot or body shot damage multiplier, whether friendly fire is allowed, and even whether aim-assist is allowed or not.
Soldier
There's a ton of options here that let you affect the basic movement and health of players:
Vehicle
There isn't as much to choose from here, basically how many and how quickly vehicles spawn, as well as the health multiplier for vehicles. But there is one option that prevents people from leaving vehicles...
User Interface
This is just an On/Off switch for the compass, minimap, HUD, ally identification, and the weapon attachment mini menu.
AI
The same options in "soldier" are repeated here, but now apply to the bots.
Restrictions
Teams
The most exciting menu by far: from which game do you want each team to come from. So you can have Battlefield 1942 characters vs. BF3 characters, for instance. This will define each team's vehicle and weapon choice. You can choose the following four "teams":
- Battlefield 2042
- Battlefield 3
- Battlefield Bad Company
- Battlefield 1942
Characters
This is a very simple menu that allows you to deselect any of the character models from the respective teams you've chosen to not be in the match. Don't like the Battlefield 1942 engineer for some reason? No worries, you can bin him.
Weapons
The weapon section menu allows you to choose what weapons are available for each team. Fans will be pleased to know that you get a pretty decent amount of weaponry from each of the three older games, about 15 on average
Attachments
Like the last menu, this just allows you to ban certain attachments from either team if you don't like them.
Vehicles
In this menu, you can choose the vehicles for either side, and we've got to say, we're very impressed at quite how many vehicles they've remastered here.
Gadgets
For anyone complaining about Specialists, this menu will come as a relief; you can choose to ban certain Specialist-specific gadgets as well as generic grenades and equipment.
Rules Editor
This is currently unavailable, but we will update you as soon as this section of the editor becomes available for use.
We're very happy with what we've seen here, but of course, we too noticed the lack of Battlefield 1 content. Though it might be on its way...
Will More Content Be Coming To Portal?
Yes, the devs have confirmed that as well as producing more maps, weapons, and specialists for All-Out-Warfare (their bizarre new term for "multiplayer") they will also be producing more content for Portal. Indeed, we've already had the first leak about new content for Portal. Apparently, season 1 will bring with it remastered content from Battlefield 1, one of the most beloved games in the franchise. You can read all about it here, otherwise, have a great time enjoying Portal!