Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Boasts Omnimovement and More Game-Changing Innovations
Omnimovement, intelligent movement, and more will change the game in Black Ops 6.
In many ways, Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 seems very much like the traditional Call of Duty experience players have been asking for. That's far from a coincidence with Black Ops 6 developers acknowledging more than once in a press preview of the game that they've heard feedback and criticisms levied at more recent Call of Duty games, but even when bringing back things like round-based Zombies and the traditional Prestige system, Black Ops 6 still innovates with new ideas like more fluid and sensible movement features. Positioned at the peak of Black Ops 6's potentially game-changing features is something Treyarch calls "Omnimovement," a new kind of movement that makes players more mobile while staying true to the Black Ops aesthetic.
Omnimovement, as the name suggests, deals with moving in not just the cardinal directions but in those in between as well. You can of course do that in Call of Duty games and pretty much every shooter as is, but Omnimovement lets you sprint in those directions instead of just slowly backpedaling or hobbling to the side around a corner. It's such a sensible feature that it'll have you questioning whether or not Call of Duty games had it before, but it's indeed a first for the franchise.
The possibilities of Omnimovement aren't just limited to sprinting either. Black Ops 6's new movement system also lets you dive and slide in any direction, too, through animations that feel fluid. This means no more spinning 180 degrees in midair while you belly flop onto the ground – instead, diving and looking behind you will cause your Operator to flip over on their back, a feature more commonly associated with tactical shooters. If you're just lying prone on your stomach without all the acrobatics to get there, you'll be able to flip over on your back as well to look behind you. When you consider scenarios like looking backwards after diving out of a window or rolling on your side to aim under a vehicle, you start to get an idea of what Omnimovement offers.
While Omnimovement is the highlight of Black Ops 6's movement innovations, it's joined by two other interesting features: intelligent movement and "corner slicing." The first of those essentially allows players to automate some of their movements through different settings like the ability to automatically sprint forward or mantle over and under obstacles. You can fine-tune these options as well: if you want to automatically scramble over small walls but not larger ones, you can configure your options accordingly, and you can make it so that you have a slight delay before you start sprinting as well so that you don't run yourself into an inopportune situation.
After hearing about these new features in the press preview for Black Ops 6, the first thing that came to mind was how these boosts in movement would add to the speed of a match. Would players be outpacing themselves accidentally, or worse, would returning Call of Duty players call out these features as ones that make the game easier and more automated?
"It was never a goal with Omnimovement to just make things fast," said associate design director Matt Scronce during an interview. "This isn't the fastest Call of Duty game. Our average speeds because you can sprint in any direction, and on average, you're probably sprinting a little bit more, are a little bit higher. But it was never about making things fast."
During the interview and the presentation, Scronce and senior director of production Yale Miller stressed that the goal with Omnimovement and intelligent movement was to elevate Black Ops Operators to the status they deserve. They're supposed to be the best of the best, the pair said, so if athletes and really anyone else can move quickly and fluidly in any direction, why shouldn't Black Ops members be able to do the same?
Corner slicing again is something you'd see more in a tactical shooter, and it's pretty simple. Once you approach a corner and aim your weapon, your Operator will lean to the side to "peek" their weapon around the object in front of you. It's unclear, however, just how visible that'll make you to aggressors or if the feature is more for the visual benefit of the player using it.
Scronce said the gameplay teams worked closely with those designing the maps while keeping these new movement features in mind, so Black Ops 6 players should see plenty of avenues to show off their refined movement once the new Call of Duty game drops on October 25th.
