Black Ops 4's missing campaign: "decisions like that are difficult"

We recently caught up with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 designer Matt Scronce at E3 where we discussed some of the changes coming to the game.

It's no secret that Black Ops 4 will not, for the first time in the series, feature a story mode. Treyarch announced the divisive decision back in May. Some fans were not happy about the adaption, but it was clear Treyarch wanted to focus more on multiplayer and their new, somewhat inevitable battle royal mode, Blackout.

"Every decision like that is difficult, but it's one of those things that sometimes we have to make," Said Scronce.

Black Ops campaigns were always are welcome gear change from the typically historically-based stories of the alternating titles. They were weird and that had value in a series that was notoriously linear in its representation of war. When you think about it this move was inevitable though, and we'll most likely see a number of our favourite multiplayer shooters drop the single player campaigns over time.

They're expensive to make, require long development time and, we're sorry to say, offer no monetisation options after launch. Factor in the steady movement towards more online play by the community and it suddenly seems like an easy decision for the developers, but maybe a bit of a bitter pill to swallow for fans.

"We take a look at what our fans want and what they expect from us and from day one we never set out to have a traditional campaign," said Scronce. "And we did make that decision at a point in development to go away from that."

There is something in its place though. Blackout is the new, flashy battle royale mode teased by Treyarch as featuring a map more than 1500x the size of Nuketown with land, sea and air vehicles.

"It was kind of a no-brainer, but it was just one of those 'what if there was a battle royal game with Call of Duty mechanics? with the smooth gunplay that we're known for, the fluid movement that we're known for' and it just kind of made sense," said Scronce

With the narrative being shifted to run throughout the entire game, namely the multiplayer, it looks like there will be a lot of change coming to the Black Ops series. Is there still enough there to keep you interested?

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is scheduled to land on October 12 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.