The horsepainting.jpg image found at Battlefield 2018 teaser site ea.com/neverbethesame. — AFP Relaxnews
Players discovered the new Battlefield reveal date by observing drips leaking from a pair of water pipes.
The 2018 iteration of land, sea and air combat franchise Battlefield is to be announced on May 23, according to an in-game Easter Egg.
Hidden in a Battlefield 1 map modeled after 19th century French fortress Fort Vaux, and locked inside an isolation room (marked "isolement" in game) lay an abandoned prison cell and a set of dripping pipes.
Those leaky droplets landed in a specific pattern, which a member of the Battlefield Easter Egg Discord community discovered was morse code, corresponding to the website address ea.com/neverbethesame.
That website displays the text "May 23, 2018" plus the social media hashtag "#battlefield", while share buttons for Twitter and Facebook encourage site visitors to post the text "On May 23, Battlefield will never be the same".
To open the room in the first place, tiny buttons added to wall plaques scattered around the fortress had to be pressed in a specific order, spelling out the world "isolement" itself.
The site's source code reveals links to an image called horsepainting.jpg, a larger version of a picture found inside the isolation room next to an overturned pile of books and a lantern.
Two VentureBeat reports filed in March and April suggested that the new Battlefield, referred to as Battlefield V, would be set during World War II and, at some point after its debut, would add a Battle Royale mode, following the fervor with which Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds have been received.
October's Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 is also rumoured to be adding a Battle Royale mode, though as a replacement for the franchise's traditional single player campaign.
Publisher Electronic Arts confirmed that 2018's Battlefield would be released during the last three months of the year.
The franchise has tended to launch new entries in October, ahead of blockbuster rival Call Of Duty in early November.
This year, however, and likely in response to the Oct 26 arrival of Red Dead Redemption 2, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 has targeted an Oct 12 debut, and EA may prefer to avoid launching Battlefield in between the two.
EA has a ticketed public access weekend event, EA Play, scheduled for June 9 to 11, and on June 9 will present its E3 media briefing ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. — AFP Relaxnews
