PREVIEW – This year’s Call of Duty game was revealed properly.

Treyarch‘s game is going to have three main game modes – multiplayer, Zombies, Blackout -, and the rumors about the lack of a single-player campaign were true. The multi is set between II and III, giving the Specialists background stories, and it will resemble Overwatch, as the characters will have different play styles and abilities, putting more emphasis on teamwork than before instead on the kill/death ratio. There will be no wall-running or thrust jumps either.

The zombie mode, which seems to have time travelling characters, will start with three maps outright (Voyage of Despair – RMS Titanic, IX – Roman Empire, Blood of the Dead – Alcatraz with the Origin characters, a returning place from Black Ops II… similarly to multiplayer, there might be remakes/redesigns of older maps here as well), offering a lot of customization (allowing players to set up the challenges and the experience: the zombie speed, the health, or the player’s damage will be customizable for example). Similarly to Fortnite’s limited time game modes, there will be the Callings, with limited time challenges.

What’s Blackout? Battle Royale, confirming another rumor – it will be set in the Black Ops universe with familiar characters and locations from previous games, and unsurprisingly, looting and vehicles will also be part of the game mode.

The PC port is co-developed with Beenox (confirming yet another rumor), and it will have an uncapped frame rate, HDR- and ultra-wide monitor support, a 4K resolution, and Battle.net integration (exclusivity), similarly to Destiny 2 – Battle.net’s mobile app will allow communication between players in different games, too. Let’s get through the regularities – the box art and a ton of videos, then we discuss the game for 1.5 more pages…

„We’d be lying if we said we don’t play other games. We draw inspiration from anywhere, but if you look at the history, Treyarch tries to innovate as much as possible and make anything feel like our own. How do we make Black Ops 4 deeper and more tactical than it’s ever been before? We ended up with these different pieces of content that we kind of innovated ourselves across [the series]. Then Zombies is a new experience with a new narrative, and it’s bigger overall. Then there’s the battle royale mode, Blackout – all of those we try to make our own. If they’re similar to other games, they just happen to be similar, but I think as you play the totality of Black Ops 4, you’ll see and feel why it’s very different,” Miles Leslie, the producer, told VG247.

Black Ops IIII will have no regenerating health. Instead, you’ll have a stimpack to plonk into your arm to gain back some HP. (Far Cry 3?) Treyarch considers this change as another layer added to the tactics because they think from now on, it won’t matter who shoots first, but instead, the decision when to rush the other player or when to use the stimpack.

The developers say that the campaign mode was never even planned for this game. (Which is weird – the team had over two years to come up with something, as three developers are rotating the development of Call of Duty around. Last year, it was Sledgehammer, and next year, it would be Infinity Ward’s turn. The battle royale craze wasn’t as high two years ago with H1Z1 on PC… unless they responded to that.) „There was never a traditional campaign. We’ve always wanted to tell stories in different ways. […] Going back to the very beginning of Black Ops 4 development, we never had set out to make a traditional campaign. We always started from the place of, we’re going to make something different with this game that was going to be inspired by how our community was interacting with Black Ops 3 and the games over the years. We see more and more players spending more time with multiplayer and zombies, not just in the game, but out of the game, streaming and talking about it in forums,” Dan Bunting, the head of Treyarch, told Eurogamer.

Another critical question is the number of players in the Blackout. Regarding the subject, David Vonderhaar told the following to GameStop: „We haven’t actually decided. We have to create the best experience and to create that experience in a Call of Duty universe; you have to try various flavors of that until you find the right one.” That sounds like they won’t have a hundred players. There might be less. Like 24.

Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII will launch on October 12 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. (No Blackout on the Switch then?) The pre-orderers will get a beta (as usual, which means the PlayStation 4-owners should get the advantage due to the Sony-Activision Blizzard deal), and the PC users will have to use Battle.net, as discussed before. A few more videos…

Source: Gematsu, VG247, VG247, VG247, WCCFTech, WCCFTech

-Zardoz-

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Treyarch

Genre: FPS

Release date: October 12, 2018