I occasionally play BFV with some friends and it's so damn good, even though it's a last gen game. The atmosphere, the music, the attention to detail, the animations, the audio, just everything is soooo good. It's a real shame this game was cut short so that the devs could focus on 2042 (what the hell happened there!)
I loaded up BF1 recently too and WOW, again, the music, the atmosphere, the maps, the action, it all felt tense in a way that 2042 just doesn't. I like 2042 and play it regularly, but these two previous titles are head and shoulders better in nearly every way.
I feel that Battlefield 1 was the last BF game that got fully supported throughout its lifespan. Operations (breakthrough) but across 2 or 3 maps, epic games!! The airships, dreadnoughts, massive tanks, and the destruction. My God the destruction in BF1 is incredible, pretty much everything can be blow to pieces.
For me, 2042 is a decent first person shooter, but it's not representative of a Battlefield game by any means.
As for the next game, I don't know if the current DICE team really understand what made the franchise so great. Instead of focussing on making a top notch BF game, they seem to distracted by what other FPS games are doing. BF shouldn't be following the crowd. The suits and accountants at EA need to be removed from the equation and just let DICE do their thing.