With Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 introducing a brand-new battle-royale mode in place of the traditional campaign/story mode many players were left skeptical and dismayed. Now with the "Blackout" Beta event up and running - and players seeming to take a liking to the new mode - the game's director David Vonderhaar and studio co-head Dan Bunting recently discussed exactly what happened to the game's campaign.
Claims have been made that the campaign mode was dropped on account of development issues, that isn't the case according to Vonderhaar - who recently told Game Informer that Black Ops 4 was always envisioned as a "social game" as opposed to the typical Call of Duty title: “It wasn’t a campaign as people usually refer to it anyways. It’s like when people say ‘what happened to the campaign’ it’s like well it wasn’t campaign in the first place. How can you say what happened to this that it wasn’t? I never know how to deal with that,” they explained. It was always a multiplayer game. It was a multiplayer game…top to bottom."
Bunting went on to explain that, despite the lack of a campaign, player's should still be enthused about the upcoming game - as the studio is. It may not be exactly what fans have come to expect from the long-running series but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
We believe we’re making an awesome game. That vision started with building a game that is entirely constructed around social gameplay experiences is coming to life. And it is deeper and bigger than anything we’ve ever done. There’s more ways to play this game with your friends for longer than we’ve ever had before.
Historically, we can make a really big campaign, add co-op to it, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to be such a narrative heavy guided experience for players that the replay-ability is limited. We wanted to make a game that players would keep playing for a long time because that’s something we are passionate about and play ourselves.
What do you think about Treyarch's comments? Would you have liked Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 to have included a campaign, or are you happy with Blackout?
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 releases on October 12th for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
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