Treyarch Reiterates That ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’ Never Had a Campaign Mode

With the Blackout beta in full effect this week and heavy anticipation going into its multiplayer, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is shaping up to be a huge holiday hit this year…even if it is missing a little something.

Treyarch has noted in the past that Black Ops 4 wasn’t really meant to have some kind of campaign this time around, though some players argue that there was one being planned, though it was cancelled due to development constraints. However, in an interview with Game Informer, the team made it clear that this is not the case.

David Vonderhaar, who serves as game designer director over at Treyarch, and Dan Bunting, co-studio head, explained that Black Ops 4 was being designed as a “social game” from the ground up, and not a traditional entry in the series — despite being called Black Ops 4.

“It wasn’t a campaign as people usually refer to it anyways. It’s like when people say ‘what happened to the campaign’ it’s like well it wasn’t campaign in the first place. How can you say what happened to this that it wasn’t? I never know how to deal with that,” they explained. It was always a multiplayer game. It was a multiplayer game…top to bottom.”

As for the community insisting that there was one to begin with, the team shot down that theory rather quickly, with Bunting saying, “We believe we’re making an awesome game. That vision started with building a game that is entirely constructed around social gameplay experiences is coming to life. And it is deeper and bigger than anything we’ve ever done. There’s more ways to play this game with your friends for longer than we’ve ever had before. Historically, we can make a really big campaign, add co-op to it, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to be such a narrative heavy guided experience for players that the replay-ability is limited. We wanted to make a game that players would keep playing for a long time because that’s something we are passionate about and play ourselves.”

Finally, Game Informer asked if the Blackout mode was “easy” to plug into the game, To which Vonderhaar noted that “it was not easy, as you suggest.”

The full interview can be seen here.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 releases on October 12 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.