Following the big reveal of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, developer Treyarch has discussed the military shooter’s campaign length and the impact of launching on Xbox Game Pass.
Starting with the game length, Treyarch production director Yale Miller told Game File that the campaign will be about as long as you’d expect from a Call of Duty game. “Currently, the game’s netting out in the kind of length of a classic Call of Duty campaign,” Miller said.
Call of Duty campaigns are known to be about 4-6 hours in length, though obviously this doesn’t represent the kind of experience you might have for a great variety of reasons. For Black Ops 6 specifically, Miller said the development of the game’s campaign responds to the call from fans for greater variety.
“They don’t want one note for your experiences. Luckily for us, Black Ops kind of lends itself to that, where you can do your heist missions, and your puzzle-solving and stealth and your big military incursions as well…While they want a lot of freedom, and they want a lot of variety…they also want to get taken on the roller coaster rides as well,” Miller said. “I think a big goal for us all is just to give players the opportunity to be smart, where you’re not just taking them on this journey the whole time, where they have the opportunity to explore and decide how they want to get through a situation.”
Unlike past Call of Duty games, Black Ops 6 was developed over a period of about four years, which is longer than usual, Treyarch confirmed in the interview. Another big shift for Black Ops 6 is that it’s the first entry in the Black Ops series that wasn’t made using Treyarch’s own game engine. All Call of Duty games for console/PC are now made on the same unified engine. Miller said this change “definitely had its benefits.”
As for Black Ops 6 coming to Game Pass at launch, Miller said he learned of this decision not very long ago, though the developer did not specify exactly when. It was reported in May that Microsoft still had not decided if it would put Black Ops 6 on Game Pass.
The Black Ops 6 campaign is about as long as you’d expect
With Black Ops 6 coming to Game Pass, it means the game might be able to reach an even wider audience, Miller said. And this led Treyarch to think more about the “onboarding” experience for people who might not be familiar with Call of Duty.
“It’s been four years since [the last] Black Ops… Zombies is super deep rich. It’s got quest lines and story. Some people just may not even remember that. With new players, how do you bring people into that universe?” Miller said. “Sometimes we take for granted that a lot of people play Call of Duty and have been playing Call of Duty before. ‘Oh, they’ll get it. You know, they’ve played this before.’ So I think it has forced us to relook at some of that.”
Black Ops 6 launches on October 25 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles, as well as PC. A multiplayer beta is coming prior to launch, and here’s how to get into the Black Ops 6 beta.
