Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Won't Have a Campaign

By Rebecca Smith,

Revealed two months ago, Activision and Treyarch promised more details were to be announced for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 today. They pulled through on their promise and answered several big questions about the upcoming game... and there won't be a campaign. While they left that nugget of information until last, we wanted to get it out of the way before moving on to detailing what the game will include.

Advertised as the game that offers players the most ways to have fun with friends, and the most replayable Black Ops game in history, first the team introduced the game's multiplayer. The game's multiplayer is set in between the events of Black Ops II and Black Ops III, but it has been stripped back to remove thrust jumping and wall running — combat is completely boots on the ground. Instead, the team has chosen to focus on gun play to make the experience better for players. In fact, they've made more improvements to the gun system in Black Ops 4 than they did to the previous three Black Ops titles combined.

First, players will always have their guns up regardless of whether they're sprinting, mantling over cover, throwing grenades, or using equipment and scorestreaks, allowing players to get back into the action quicker. The weapons themselves have also received a lot of attention. They've paid attention to details like hot barrels that smoke, bullet flashes, bullets that deplete as the magazine is expended, and other things that you wouldn't normally think about. Each weapon will come with its own set of attachments; no longer will attachments cross between weapons in the same class. These attachments include a new category, operator mods, which expand the weapon's capabilities beyond its core functionality. You can take a look at some of these improvements in action in the multiplayer trailer below:

Specialists will make their return. Some of them are new characters, while others are more familiar to players (although they've been reimagined). Each specialist has their own specific equipment that brings unique abilities to the team. The following specialists were confirmed through the presentation:

Ruin has a grapple gun allowing him to close gaps quicker and perform a ground slam.
Crash is a medic who can heal his team mates and give bonus health for a limited time. He can also resupply team mates with assault packs.
Recon is an expert in situational awareness. His sensor dart highlights enemies within a certain radius surrounding the deployed dart. Meanwhile, his vision pulse now benefits all of his team mates.
Seraph has a tac deploy that acts as a spawning beacon allowing her to control her team's offensive flow for a short time.
Torque can deploy razor wire and deployable cover/barricades to disrupt the enemy team's offensive flow.
Firebreak focuses on area denial with a reactor core that sets fire to enemies within its radius of effect. He can use his own health to extend the duration of the core.

Players will have solo missions to allow them to get used to each of these specialists. The missions feature a series of trials that introduce their abilities while also exploring their backgrounds and stories "within a Black Ops narrative". The following trailer introduces this narrative.

Other changes that have been made include healing that is no longer automatic and has to be triggered with the press of a button. Then, to help increase situational awareness, the team has introduced the fog of war that reveals a small area around the player and their team mates on the mini map. The aim is for players to communicate more. Finally, League Play will be returning, although details were scarce.

Next the team moved onto zombies and the promise that the team will be starting fresh. The game will launch with three fully fledged zombie experiences featuring four new playable characters and new enemies from an ancient order. Gameplay-wise, the team will be providing customisable tools and social systems that will turn the mode into an evergreen mode that keeps players coming back again and again. This includes over 100 custom mutations that allow players to change the rules of gameplay, like zombie speed, zombie health, trainability, zombie type, player damage, and magic box functionality.

Another way to keep players coming back to the mode is limited time curated challenges called Callings that will introduce new ways to play the game and set the team up to provide a whole season of content. Other new features include bot support to provide AI team mates, a new Zombie Rush game mode that simplifies the experience and changes the tempo of gameplay, different difficulty levels, and a tutorial.

The first experience is called IX and is set in a time when zombie combat is society's favourite form of entertainment. You can see the trailer for it below:

The second experience takes players back to the sailing of the Titanic. Voyage of Despair has a slightly different take on what might have caused the ship to sink:

The third experience is a returning favourite. Blood of the Dead brings back Mob of the Dead from Call of Duty: Black Ops.

One of the world's worst kept secrets was revealed next. Black Ops 4 will include a battleground mode on the biggest map the team has ever made (over 1500 times bigger than Nuketown, to put it in perspective). Dubbed Blackout, the mode will include familiar Black Ops characters — Hudson, Mason, Reznov, Menéndez, Woods, and the casts of previous zombie modes — weapons, equipment (including land, sea, and air vehicles), and the favourite parts of previous maps. The mode was introduced with the final trailer of the evening:

Treyarch has teamed up with developer Beenox to provide the best PC gaming experience they can create — this version is custom built for the PC. It will be the first Call of Duty title ever released to run on Blizzard's Battle.net platform. The title will have an uncapped framerate and will support 4K, HDR, and ultra-wide monitors. The game is being tested on a wide range of hardware to make sure it can be experienced by as many players as possible.

Players who pre-order the title will get access to a private beta, although details on this were not forthcoming. What we do know is that the full game will be arriving on October 12th, 2018.

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Written by Rebecca Smith

Rebecca is the Newshound Manager at TrueSteamAchievements, TrueAchievements and TrueTrophies. She has been contributing articles since 2010, especially those that involve intimidatingly long lists. When not writing news, she can usually be found sharpening her very, VERY, pointy grammar stick in anticipation of its imminent use. Outside of TSA, TA and TT, she works in an independent game shop so that she can spend all day talking about games too. At home, with a variety of PCs and consoles on hand from which to choose, starting with a ZX Spectrum, games are never far away there either. However, as you're not supposed to have an unhealthy obsession with just a single subject, she also likes to read and dream about owning her own tribe of minions. She'll occasionally go outside.