David Vonderhaar Gives New Details About Call of Duty Blackout Battle Royale Mode in Black Ops 4
Studio design director at Treyarch David Vonderhaar, has released lots of new information on the upcoming battle royale mode ‘Blackout’, set to launch with Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
Sitting down with PlayStation shortly after the Black Ops 4 community reveal event on May 17th, Vonderhaar went into more details about all of the new features on show.
But most crucially, he gave a lot more information on the new Blackout mode – Call of Duty’s first attempt at battle royale – of which there was very little shown at the reveal event.
- More: Treyarch Believes ‘Blackout’ in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 Can Rival Fortnite: Battle Royale and PUBG
It is clear that the Blackout mode is still deep in development, hence why there was only a short teaser, but Vonderhaar has expanded on his comments about the map size (1500x the size of Nuketown), and confirmed it will be first person.
He also confirms that ten years worth of the Black Ops sub-franchise will ‘inspire’ the new mode, and we will see characters, weapons and vehicles from the previous titles return.
“1500 times bigger than Nuketown. And I think that’s probably being conservative really. It’s a big world. Biggest we’ve ever created for sure. And you navigate it with land, sea, and air vehicles, both new and potentially, inspired by the games that came before it. In terms of the characters you can play and the weapons you can use.
But it is distinctly its own experience, it is a battle royale experience. But it’s done in a Black Ops way – no one has ten years worth of universe, characters, weapons and vehicles, and no one has the mechanics, control systems, fluidity and the refinement. And it’s distinctly first person, obviously. And it’s all day one, unless we blow it.”
You can listen to David Vonderhaar’s full interview with PlayStation below.
It was also reported recently that development for the Blackout mode only began early last year, which means the team will likely be working around the clock in order to have it complete and refined for October 12th.
Another lead developer at Treyarch, Matt Stone, also recently stated that the team believe that Blackout will be “better than everybody else” – hinting at the competition they will face from the already established Fortnite and PUBG.