First Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 trailer and screens arrive

The new Call of Duty is here. Activision’s yearly FPS is looking sharp with Black Ops 4, with plenty of shooting, running, tomahawk throwing, shooting, dogs, and running. And running.

Heed the Call

Still with us? Didn’t pass out from the adrenaline rush? Okay, cool.

Developed by Treyarch, Black Ops 4 has plenty of new content, but delves back into the history of this sub-series of CoD titles. According to Activision, the game will offer fresh multiplayer experiences, including a new Zombies co-op campaign, and something called Blackout mode.

That new addition is where the call-backs to the legacy Black Ops titles comes in. In it, gamers will experience an all-out battle royale, loaded with locations and heroes from past games.

“Black Ops 4 gives our community more ways to have fun with their friends than anything Treyarch has ever created and introduces meaningful innovations to every element of the game, including next level tactical team-based multiplayer, the biggest zombies offering yet and Blackout, where the largest map in Call of Duty history brings together the rich universe of Black Ops,” said Rob Kostich, EVP and GM, Call of Duty. “More than 200 million players have called Black Ops home, and they’ve played for more than 15 billion hours. This is an incredible community that has inspired the development team to take their innovative gameplay design to new heights.”

That’s the general outline, but Activision went quite a bit deeper in today’s stream. You can find the details, right from the event, below.

Zombies return (natch)

Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the original Call of Duty Zombies, Black Ops 4 also debuts an entirely new and unprecedented Zombies experience that’s the biggest Day One offering in franchise history – with three fully-featured Zombies experiences at launch – IX, Voyage of Despair and Blood of the Dead.

With immersive new adventures, a brand-new cast of characters and a nefarious new enemy, Black Ops 4 Zombies will feature the deep gameplay and easter eggs that the rabid community of fans devours. It also includes the most customizable action to-date, new systems for creating and completing community challenges, and social systems designed to connect players.

Black Ops 4 also reintroduces difficulty levels and an in-game tutorial to onboard new players to the Zombies universe, while giving hardcore players the option of ratcheting up the challenge. Additionally, Zombie Rush is a brand new mode that streamlines the gameplay experience, introducing enticing new challenges to grizzled veterans, while creating a whole new tempo of gameplay for newcomers.

Blackout warning

In addition to unveiling Multiplayer and Zombies in today’s world premiere, the team also introduced Blackout – the new battle royale-style experience that combines Black Ops’signature fast, fluid, guns-up combat, with fierce new levels of survival competition across iconic Black Ops settings re-imagined at a colossal scale.

Blackout is an experience unlike any other game or mode in Call of Duty history, where players will have to scavenge, strategize, compete and survive to win. Featuring the largest map ever built in Call of Duty– 1,500 times bigger than Nuketown – Blackout thrusts players into a collision course as they play as classic characters spanning the history of the Black Ops series including the original Call of Duty Zombies Origins cast.

Battling solo or in teams, players will engage in diverse combat complete with ground, air and sea vehicles across a gamespace unlike anything ever in Call of Duty. Players will encounter fan-favorite Black Ops map locations and call upon a massive arsenal of Black Ops weaponry and equipment as the winner-takes-all action creates a new way to play Call of Duty.

Battle.net and a little something… missing

Also new this year is that Call of Duty is hitting Battle.net. Blizzard’s online PC gaming service will host the series for the first time, as Treyarch worked with fellow dev Beenox to get things up and running for PC gamers.

It’s an interesting step, though one that probably should have been expected. Battle.net hasn’t seen a new game arrive for it in a while, and to have that architecture just sitting there seems like a waste.

But I can’t in good conscience end this first look at Black Ops 4 without mentioning the elephant in the room. Nowhere in any of this did Activision mention a single player campaign. Even though it’s specifically pointed out in a few places that this was the multiplayer reveal, there’s no definite mention of single player.

Rumored for some time now, it looks like the publisher might have finally dropped the campaign from Call of Duty. We will, of course, let you know if that’s not the case, but for now maybe assume that it’ll be multiplayer and zombies only when Black Ops 4 arrives.

That’ll be October the 19th, by the way.