Activision revealed details about Black Ops Royale, a new battle royale mode game coming on March 12.
The new mode is an homage to Blackout, the first Call of Duty battle royale map that debuted more than six years ago with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
Yale Miller, production director at Treyarch, said in a press briefing that Black Ops Royale is a bold new take on battle royale that was inspired by Blackout, which was Activision’s first stab at a battle royale mode for Call of Duty multiplayer. Blackout was an attempt to stave off the threat of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which went on to sell more than 100 million copies.
He said the team wanted to think about the “core loop” and what the team loved about Blackout, and the things that work well with Call of Duty: Warzone. The arena supports up to 100 players in 25 teams.
Pete Actipis, game director at Raven, said the core Warzone play has been around for six years and it’s times to shake thing up.
“It was about embracing the Black Ops and Blackout experience, capturing it in a modern way,” Actipis said. “And we wanted to build this experience with a brand new map.”
Miller said there was a lot of time and iteration spent on loot and how you build up power and making that a more varied experience.
The Avalon map was revealed for Endgame, the last mission of the single-player campaign in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. But this new Avalon map has a lot more land than the watery Avalon single-player map. You can still swim around a lot and hide underwater, but now there’s a lot more ground.
“We’re not done with the map,” with changes for Season 2 and Season 3. There’s a trauma kit that comes back from Blackout. You start out with one free-to-play token to start. Any time you die in the match, you can have a chance to come back in. Once you die, you are done. Your team can bring you back through redeploy towers. The redeployment takes time and it’s loud, so another team could position itself to attack you as you return.
You can find redeploy tokens in the field, but they are extremely rare, Actipis said.
You can get a surveillance drone. It can give you away if you don’t destroy it, but if you do, then it can give away a rival’s position.
Once you activate a redeploy tower, you can’t just turn it off. Cradle breaches give you risk/reward tradeoffs on the map. If there’s a breach, a bomb drops and the Cradle gas spreads. You can go to the area and get the best loot in the game, or you could wait and ambush another team.
The first one drops in circle three. You can kill ten zombies in the area and get a chance at getting a mystery box. You can get exotic weapons like ray guns and high-end armor or more. It’s hard to see in or out of the Cradle breach, so you can get “third-partied,” or ambushed.
There are plenty of gadgets, like an EMP grenade, grappling hook, sensor darts, psych grenades and stun grenades. You can toss out Cymbal Monkeys that can make noise and attract zombies. Then you can toss a grenade at them.
Gun upgrades can be better. You can go up to an upgrade location in the world, and you can upgrade the color of the upgrade so that you get better attachments and do it really quickly in a meaningful way. Your inventory will be different, with things like hot swapping items.
“Just know whatever gun you have is going to be better, Miller said.
You can pursue “operator orders” that are akin to character unlock missions of the past.
The summary of Black Ops Royale is that it includes a big map with the city of Avalon, a new game mode, lots of lethals, tacticals and field upgrades, wingsuit entry into the map, new Killstreaks, a weapon progression system, a new ballistic system, armor upgrade system, a new HUD and inventory system, operator missions and hordes of zombies.
“The number of systems in Black Ops Royale is massive,” Actipis said.
“This is the start and you can expect us to iterate,” Miller said.