A mammoth new resource of information about Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has been shared online, throwing up some interesting talking points around things that were ultimately cut from the game. As reported in Eurogamer, the gigantic info dump, which was shared on Reddit by user Purpletoaster 20, details a wealth of intel on things that never made it past the cutting room floor during Treyarch’s development process back in 2017.
The post itself is described as being “the result of months of research & discussion with people who have inside knowledge,” which the original poster plans to put together in a more easily digestible video format on August 18. Ahead of that though, the post goes into quite some detail on Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, but most specifically on the game’s originally planned co-op campaign mode, which was ultimately scrapped in early 2018.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 notably launched back in October 2018 without a single-player career or story mode, opting instead for a Solo Missions mode and a battle royale mode known as Blackout. Now, this post has given a bit of a deeper dive into a campaign mode that was seemingly well into development for the game before it was cut altogether. According to the information shared in the post, the co-op career mode was scrapped due to technical issues and the overall gameplay loop being considered too repetitive.
The mode was designed as a 2v2 campaign and is described as a “race to the finish” style of campaign. Players would’ve been jumping in as one of two playable factions; The Free People’s Army, “supported by many of the world’s impoverished countries,” or the “central government body” known as The World United Nations. Players would be able to select the faction of their choice and then carry out different, faction-specific objectives in order to compete with the other team of two. The action was apparently set to take place in the year 2070 against the backdrop of several climate disasters and a global pandemic. A little on the nose, but it would’ve made a lot of sense, narratively speaking.
The post also goes into some depth about the core concepts behind fundamental aspects of the co-op career mode, such as combat systems, mission design, player companions, progression, and cutscenes, to name a few. It’ll definitely be worth checking out the full explainer video that’s planned to be coming next week, as there’s a lot to take in from the main post. Either way, it seems as though it was a real shame to have had the co-op campaign cut from Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, as it sounds as though there was a huge amount of work put into it by the developers.
Modern Warfare 2 is currently in the works and is set to release on October 28. Whether or not it’ll feature a co-op campaign mode alongside its single-player offering, we’ll have to wait and see.
