'Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII' is leaving some fans behind. That's the whole idea.
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII might not be for you anymore.
When Treyarch, the studio behind this year's entry in the series, revealed Black Ops IIII back in May, that reveal was accompanied by a revelation: No more campaign. For the first time, one of the biggest annual blockbuster roller coasters in video games won't have a story to tell.
To hear Treyarch explain it, that's the whole point.
"We've said that we wanted to build a game that's really built around the social gameplay experiences that you can play with your friends," co-studio head Dan Bunting said in an E3 interview. The reason, he explained, is that's what Treyarch does best and it's also where fans are headed.
"That's really the big emphasis, that's where we've honed our skills the best as a studio over the years," Bunting continued. "That's what I think our core fanbase knows us for the most, and [they] spend the most time in our game there."
To be clear: Bunting didn't explicitly say that Black Ops IIII is leaving campaign fans behind. He readily offered a number of ways in for people that generally prefer Call of Duty campaign modes and offline gaming in general.
"We've said that we wanted to build a game that's really built around the social gameplay experiences."
"The solo missions that we're developing for the [10] specialists are really meant to give you more back story and understanding of who the specialists are, what kind of personalities they have, who they work for, why they're here, how they interact with one another," he said.
Call of Duty's specialists are a relatively new idea from more recent games; they're fully formed characters that bring their own unique tools and abilities to the table. Introducing each one via discrete missions "gives you the ability to master their gameplay roles, which is something that's unique for each character," Bunting said.
He also pointed, somewhat unexpectedly, to Blackout, the new Fortnite-esque "battle royale" mode in Call of Duty.
"I do think the game has a lot to offer from a multiplayer standpoint, even for those who typically might just want campaign. I know we haven't gone into too much detail on Blackout yet but I think it's going to be really appealing to players who traditionally might gravitate toward campaign first," Bunting said.
He didn't get into specifics on this -- the full-on Blackout reveal is coming later -- but broadly speaking, battle royale games offer a slower-paced experience than your typical Call of Duty online match. The larger maps and resource-gathering inherent to battle royale experiences do tend to be friendlier and more approachable than the more traditional online play that Call of Duty is known for.
Bunting did stress that while Blackout is a step away from the traditional series framework, it's not going to be a completely foreign experience for longtime fans.
"We wouldn't be doing [a game experience like this] if we couldn't build it in a way that's completely unique to us. That core movement system, the core gunplay mechanics, all the stuff is really the starting point of a mode like this," he said.
"It's a big part of what makes Call of Duty unique against all other first-person shooters. That's the foundation that we build on, we start there."
Bunting also spoke to the technical side of making Blackout work in a way that's faithful to Call of Duty. Since the early days of Black Ops IIII's life, the team at Treyarch has been building new tools and features into the engine that powers the game.
The goal, Bunting said, is to enable Treyarch developers "to build massive spaces in a way that's seamless, can still maintain our 60 frames per second, and can support the rapid streaming of textures and assets, the memory overhead of a large space."
Behind the scenes changes to Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII do more than just allow Treyarch to build larger, more battle royale-friendly levels. For the first time, there's a Call of Duty mode that makes bullet-drop -- literally, the Earth's gravitational force exerting influence on the path a bullet travels -- a real consideration.
It's the sort of thing that never really mattered on Call of Duty's more traditional multiplayer maps. But stuff like bullet-drop is now a necessary consideration as Blackout sends players off to fight in a larger battlefield than they've known before in this series.
All that said, Blackout is still an online mode. Specialist missions are still, in large part, a training ground meant to familiarize players with the central tools they'll have access to in the online experience. Black Ops IIII doesn't have to be played online, but it really should be.
After all, it's what players seem to want.
"That's where they spend more and more of their time with each game. Playing multiplayer, playing [the cooperative zombies mode], playing all the experiences we give them that let them play with their friends. [That's why] we moved to a cooperative campaign with Black Ops III," Bunting said.
"A big change like this is always hard, especially in a franchise where you have a lot of expectation built over the years, [but] I think that people understand the message that there is a change this year," he continued.
"It's a change we're doing hopefully for the better. We're going where our fans are going. We're trying to give them more of what they love about Black Ops and Treyarch games."
Topics Gaming
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
