After seeing a heap of gameplay footage from the upcoming Black Ops 4 battle royale mode, Blackout, it certainly looks like it’s going to be a huge contender in the popular genre. Those who have taken it for a spin during the beta are already calling it an incredibly refined PUBG. A big question, of course, is will there be new maps, or will it be a single evolving map situation similar to Fortnite? We spoke to Treyarch‘s co-studio head, Dan Bunting, about what players can expect moving forward.
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“I think that we have a lot of option on the table that we’re exploring and there’s certainly a possibility that we could explore new maps,” Bunting told PEDESTRIAN.TV. “I think that our first priority is to look at the map that we’ve built and make sure that we’re expanding that in the right way and bringing all the creative options that we have to that map.”
While a new map isn’t at all off the table, Bunting says the first aim is to adjust the current map to keep it interesting, including new areas.
“We have a lot of plans in place for how we’re going to change that map over time, how we’re going to expand the map over time and add new locations and maybe even some new teaming, so I think there’s a lot to do with the core map experience that we will have at launch,” he said.
“We absolutely want to focus first on making the map that players are spending so many hours with feel dynamic and that it’s changing and evolving over time.”
So it looks like the Fortnite approach to changing the map gradually rather than introducing an entirely new one seems to be the way Treyarch will handle Blackout, but Bunting made sure to clarify that new maps are still “very possible”.
While the team planned on making Blackout a 100-player experience, that number was dropped to 80 for the beta, then raised to 88, which didn’t have a huge impact on performance, Bunting said, but whether or not the full release will return to 100 is something that’s still being determined based on what the team observes in the beta. The main priority in this regard is the performance rather than player count, which also extends to balancing.
“We plan to bump it up to 100 again to see how that affects the gameplay performance and how it affects the overall balance of the experience,” he said of the game’s beta.
You’ll be able to pick up Black Ops 4 on October 12 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
