General Gaming Treyarch bosses explain decision to drop single-player campaign from Black Ops 4

[SaysWho?]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-black-ops-4-doesnt-have-a-traditional-campaign/1100-6461777/

 

Quote

"Development is a journey," co studio head Dan Bunting said. "We try a lot of different ideas and a lot of different things. The game that we are making has evolved over time, and that's just a part of development. I can't remember a single game that we've made that hasn't had a dramatic change in the prototyping stage. That's what prototyping is for. You prototype ideas; some of them work out great, some of them don't work out great and you pivot. You find a new idea [and] focus on that. We follow the fun."

 

The other studio head, Vonderhaar, pointed out that Black Ops 4's battle royale mode, Blackout, also changed a lot during the development process. "It's normal," Vonderhaar said about how video games can change substantially and significantly in the development process.

 

Bunting added that Treyarch had a huge ambition for Black Ops 4 when development started. He stressed that the studio was always planning to have Black Ops 4--across all modes--being an entirely social experience. Vonderhaar went on to say that Black Ops 4 never had a campaign in the traditional sense. "It wasn't a campaign as people usually refer to it anyways," he said. "How can you say what happened to this thing that wasn't. It was a multiplayer game."

 

[Mr.Vic20]

That's cool and their call of course, but this will be the first time since 2012 that I didn't buy the yearly COD. I like my Popcorn AAA SP fall titles. 

[skillzdadirecta]

Ih wait, it DOESN'T have a SP campaign? Oh well... i'll wait until a special or sale to get it.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Is it really "dropping" the campaign if there never were plans for one to begin with?

[Mr.Vic20]

1 minute ago, SFLUFAN said:

Is it really "dropping" the campaign if there never were plans for one to begin with?

As far as I can tell they were very upfront about no SP campaign, so no, you are correct on that point. Dropped or not though, it is missing. 

[SaysWho?]

2 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Is it really "dropping" the campaign if there never were plans for one to begin with?

 

I'd say yeah because when planning the game, there was probably a, "How about we drop SP for this game?" discussion.

[jaethos]

Why call it Black Ops 4 then? The names have always been a reference to the single player campaign. They might as well just call it CoD 2018 as the actual name.

[Brick]

Still disappointed that there is no campaign. I was disappointed in III because the story had no real relation to the last games (that and the story was a bit of a confusing mess with bad voice acting from your character). 

[ALIEN-gunner]

I'm sure it was going to have a campaign, otherwise calling it "Black Ops 4" is stupid. They probably had production problems and scrapped the idea. 

[Bitgod]

Played my first game of BR, wheee.  So the key to winning is apparently getting a sniper rifle.  Cuz that's how I died.  And everyone that died down the chain died that way.  I liked that the killcam would keep following whoever killed the person you were watching.  It is kinda fun and I'd be more into it, if I didn't have a potato GPU.  It was too abstract art for me.

[stepee]

I think that the title here is incorrect, they didn’t really explain why at all here.

[Stickey]

37 minutes ago, stepee said:

I think that the title here is incorrect, they didn’t really explain why at all here.

Yes they did. They pivoted the game to be fun. 

[Biggie]

I only play COD for the multiplayer so no single player campaign doesn’t bother me. (I say this every year when the new COD releases)

But I can see where it would be a bummer for those who do enjoy going through the SP campaign. You’d think for $60 they could include it. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

I've just been kinda picturing one guy at Treyarch working on the SP campaign, then Bobby K walks in the room and throws a stream of Fortnite up on a giant projector. SP guy then slowly clicks and drags his folder to the recycle bin, then starts cleaning out his desk.