Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Heroes
19.09.2025
Theatre of childsplay
It's 2009. Barack Obama is elected as the first black president of the United States, a little game called League of Legends celebrates its insignificant release, and somewhere at EA, the foundations are being laid for the development of the gaming industry for the next few decades. In June 2009, Battlefield Heroes became the first “Play for Free” title to be launched – a business model that will probably be with us forever.
The biggest departure from the Battlefield-brand – with the possible exception of Battlefield Hardline – was not only free to play, but also comic-style and extremely humorous. It was a little like an EA executive had seen Valve's Team Fortress 2 and said, “Let's do that, but with Battlefield.” The advantages are hard to deny: a younger audience, lower hardware requirements, and all under the guise of “If you don't like it, at least it doesn't cost anything.”
So what looks like a Fortnite-mod today was novel for its time and found its target audience, even if the game never really made it into the mainstream. That's why in 2015, the servers for Battlefield Heroes were shut down alongside those for EA's other “Play 4 Free” games Battlefield Play4Free (basically Battlefield 2 for free), Need for Speed: World and FIFA World . I never played it myself, but of course I listened to the soundtrack... an short endeavor, as there are only four tracks that Gamerip has unearthed.
They were composed by Marc Canham, who worked in the video game sector from 2002 to 2014 and wrote for games such as Driver 3, Far Cry 2 and the last two Infamous-games First Light and Second Son . His current work, however, is more in the TV sector. Of the four pieces for Battlefield Heroes , only West Flag is actually relevant, which is basically the main theme Battlefield Heroes in a longer form. West Flag (NA) and West Flag (RA) are radiofied sounds of old marching songs.
With the Main Theme, Canham emphasizes the cheerful comedy aspect of the comic shooter. Instead of brutal World War sounds, the piece begins with a short quote from the Battlefield-theme, only to then switch to lighthearted whistling (Fun fact: the theme played during the Battlefield 6-beta at the shooting range). In doing so, the composer picks up on the drill ground atmosphere often present in films, in which recruits are encouraged to perform their training with masochistic enthusiasm and joy.
What appears to be a profound examination of the cruel reality of war is, in fact, merely lighthearted, almost childish sounds that give the shooter a certain degree of levity. At the time, I simply found the track amusing and still enjoy listening to it today, but it is not particularly moving or even exciting. The same can be said of the score itself.
