Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 might’ve been released five years ago, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t still learning more about the game. A recent leak from what seems to be a developer’s portfolio includes footage from what looks to be the campaign mode that was axed before the game shipped. Obviously, much of this footage is unfinished, but it does give a few hints at what players might’ve been getting up to in the 2v2 career mode had the team at Treyarch been able to include it.
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This footage comes courtesy of a user on the subreddit GamingLeaksandRumours. It’s not immediately clear where they got this footage, but it does look legitimate. That said, it’s important to approach all of this with healthy skepticism. Not only is this unused footage, but it also seems like it’s relatively early in the campaign’s development. Much of it is using placeholder art, which means it’s probably not totally representative of what the mode could have been.
Either way, it is a neat look at something that many players felt was missing from Black Ops 4. If you’ve forgotten, the rumor was this campaign mode was going to be a 2v2 multiplayer mode where four players would team up in groups of two to battle through a post-apocalyptic world set in the 1970s. There also would’ve been the option to go it alone alongside bots, but Treyarch eventually decided to cancel the project due to several factors including technical concerns and poor internal testing.ย
In place of a campaign, players received one of the better battle royales available at the time in Blackout. With this being the first battle royale in Call of Duty, it helped set the stage for what would eventually become Warzone, and some players actually prefer Blackout to this day. Your preferences will likely decide whether you think losing the campaign was worth it for Blackout, but it’s hard to imagine what Call of Duty would be like today without its influence. At the end of the day, this test footage is a reminder of what Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 could have been had things gone differently. For some, that’s a sad thought, but many others are more than satisfied with the direction the series has gone in the years since.
