COD Black Ops 4: behind the scenes on Blackout, Battle.net - and the new focus on PC
We're mere days away from the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - a game that takes the series in brand new directions, removing the campaign element completely and introducing us to Treyarch's take on battle royale. But there's more - including a concentrated focus on making the PC version of the game the best it can possibly be, while simultaneously moving the title to Blizzard's Battle.net for the first time. What we're looking at here is the biggest fundamental shift to the COD proposition since Modern Warfare - and in fact, depending on the success of the new game, the make-up of a COD series entry may never be the same again.
During the recent EGX Berlin - where developer Treyarch hosted a panel - Digital Foundry had the chance to sit down with members of the development team to discuss the game, the stronger emphasis on PC, how the team tackled battle royale and the technological challenges in integrating this new game mode with their existing technology. And yes, we asked the question - will the single-player campaign ever return to Black Ops?
At this point, arguably BLOPs 4's biggest draw is inescapably Blackout - and from a Digital Foundry perspective, we've found the beta period especially fascinating. On paper, the concept is compelling - the COD studios have spent 11 years defining, tightening and refining a killer multiplayer experience based on fast movement and short, sharp, brutal encounters. It's all framed by an innate understand of how a weapon should feel in the hand, how it fires and the damage it produces. Blackout transfers all of this learning - with further, extensive tweaking - into battle royale, a totally different kind of combat both in terms of environments, detail and of course, player count. And it does so while retaining the series' signature target 60fps. How does an engine traditionally associated with tighter multiplayer maps and a linear campaign cope with this new challenge?
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