There’s something about the noise of a Battlefield game. The soft, terrifying crack of a sniper rifle you can’t see. The rumble of a tank as it rounds a corner. The agonising creak of a building falling apart at the seams around your once-safe hiding place. EA’s series has always used noise not just to communicate the feeling of being in a true warzone, but as a mechanic all its own. The mark of a great Battlefield game is that, a few hours in, you’ll experience the dawning feeling that you’re no longer being subjected to the noise – you’re reading it.

It’s something of a metaphor for the game as a whole. A full-size Battlefield match is full of sound and fury – dozens of players, multiple objectives competing for your attention, loadouts to consider, squads to wrangle. Learning to work within all that noise, to navigate it, is the path to victory. After hours spent in its open beta, Battlefield 6 isn’t just bringing the noise, but looks to push it to new levels.

In many ways, this is a comforting return to familiarity: Battlefield 6 is set in the near-future, but near enough that it resembles a contemporary military game; it sees a return to class-based gameplay; it takes its cues from the shape of Battlefield 4 and the “tactical destruction” of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

It all means that, when entering the enormous tug-of-war environments of Conquest mode, this feels like the gaming equivalent of a warm blanket. I know exactly where I should be, and what I should be doing, meaning I’m immediately putting my attention towards learning how maps work, and how the team can work together most effectively.

But just as you learn to read that noise, returning players will start to feel how subtle changes can make for big effects. Take what the developers are calling “kinaesthetic combat” – a term used to cover a raft of changes to how your character moves through the world. You’ll automatically lean around walls, crouch-run when under fire, and slide when approaching cover – it’s designed to feel right as well as benefit you, tiny, intuitive changes that add to a far smoother experience.

Drag-and-revive is a part of this, perhaps the biggest change to the make-up of a Battlefield game – Support class players are still the most effective way to get your teammates back up after you’re downed, but anyone can now help out. Approaching a downed player, you’ll now be able to grab them, pull them out of danger, and revive after a few seconds. It’s a fabulously risky proposition, often forcing you to run into danger in order to reap the rewards of saving someone else, and there’s an art to realising when you should or shouldn’t try it.

This approach – adding new details rather than wholesale shifts – feels as though it’s paying off handsomely, even pre-release. This is Battlefield as we remember it, but modernised. It still feels distinct enough from its genre peers to feel essential, without straying too far from the core of the experience we already loved. It’s going in loud, just as you’d hope.

Battlefield 6 is in open beta on Xbox Series X|S until 1am Pacific, Sunday, August 17 – and for this weekend, you can play it online with no Game Pass membership. The full game will launch on October 10.