Many publishers claim singleplayer games are dying but not many actually took a step to remove traditional storylines from popular games. However, Treyarch and its Black Ops 4 are a different story. Black Ops 4 does not have a single player campaign mode or should I say a “traditional” singleplayer campaign.
Instead, the game is chasing trends by adding a Battle Royale mode called “Blackout.” What’s interesting is that Blackout didn’t always exist in Treyarch’s plans for Black Ops 4. The mode was added very recently, according to sources speaking with Segmentnext who chose to remain anonymous for obvious reasons. Furthermore, Blackout replaced a traditional 4-player coop campaign that was part of the original concept of Call of Duty Black Ops 4.
Treyarch started discussing Battle Royale after the success of PUBG in 2017, the success which also pushed H1Z1 to the top that year. Blackout went into development in early 2018 which is why the studio had nothing to show at E3 2018, a show that had previously been used to fully reveal and discuss all things Call of Duty. Even when we are little over two months away from the game’s release, we haven’t seen its biggest attraction.
Treyarch may deny ever working on a singleplayer mode but if that is the case and singleplayer mode never existed, all they had developed in close to three years is the multiplayer mode and zombies? Becuase Blackout wasn’t finalized until early 2018, something that is also mentioned in the latest issue of Edge.
So what form of COD we were getting if Blackout had never got the green light from Activision? The lack of content alone would have enraged even the most hardcore COD fans.
Activision and Treyarch took too long to decide if Blackout should be created. And since Activision couldn’t push COD out of its strict fall release window, only one mode would make it to the final product. The developers couldn’t finish Black Ops 4 single player mode on time while working on Battle Royale as well. In the end, the decision was made to cut out the singleplayer mode.
And Blackout isn’t something that is created from scratch as there was no time. Characters and maps were picked up from previous COD games and smartly marketed to bank on nostalgia.
If information from our sources is correct, it is sad to see a once leader of online shooters and great storytelling in this genre brought down to this level.
Insider information aside, I also personally believe Activision did work on a traditional story mode. Black Ops 4 has been in developed since late 2015, maybe even before the release of Black Ops 3. At that time, no Battle Royale game was popular enough that it would push Activision to even consider a Battle Royale mode because with Activision it is all about making money and banking on popular trends in the name of innovation; and Battle Royale wasn’t mainstream until PUBG broke records last year.
Surely, they saw PUBG’s success in 2017 and discussed scrapping the singleplayer mode throughout the year before finally making the decision in early 2018.
Anyways, I have shared the information I had as well as what I thought actually happened with Black Ops 4 story mode. Do let me know what you think in the comments below.
