Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s battle-royale mode ‘Blackout’ might be the series’ new, big feature, but at the moment, we don’t know a great deal about it.
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Activision and Treyarch have been quiet on the mode, indicating that it is still being ironed out. That said, while Activision and co. have continued their trend of quietness, a new screenshot of the game has been making the rounds that seems to shed light on one of the most important details on Blackout: its player count.
Said screenshot making the rounds suggests that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will support up to 60 players, which is presumably only going to be for Blackout.
If you’ve ever dabbled in the battle-royale genre, you will know 60 players is far from the high-end of player count. In fact, the two juggernauts of the genre — Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds — both support up to 100 players. Meanwhile, other battle-royale games currently in development are said to support even more.
While 60 may not seem like a lot, for series standards it’s quite the increase. If a 60 player count is what will ship with the game, then you have to assume the map(s) will be smaller in size compared to some other maps in other battle-royale games.
Call of Duty has always been about instant action fueled by quick, twitch-based shooting. It’s gameplay foundation will presumably be carried over for Blackout, which means the map(s) could be even smaller than a 60 player count even indicates.
Map size and how it feels in relation to the action is so important to a battle-royale game. But unlike most in the sub-genre, Call of Duty already has a gameplay foundation that needs to be taken into consideration. There’s less room for freedom of design, which could be turn out to be beneficial or hampering. Only time will tell.
As always, take everything of the unofficial capacity with a grain of a salt. For all we know, Blackout has 300 players, or maybe only 30.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is in development for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. It is scheduled to release on October 12th.
