The much-awaited Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was finally revealed by Treyarch earlier this month after weeks of rumors, leaks and speculations, given loyal fans of the CoD franchise a good look at what the game will bring. It is the latest title in the Black Ops franchise, and succeeds Black Ops III, which was released back in November, 2015. The game will officially launch October 12 on all popular platforms, including PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Now, in an interview with Activision’s editorial manager, Kevin Kelly, Treyarch’s Senior Producer Jonathan Moses and Community Manager Rob Smith are giving fans a first-hand idea about what to expect from the PC edition of the upcoming title.
According to Moses, Treyarch is paying a lot more attention to PC gamers than ever before, which he says, “will come through in how smooth and polished the game is shaping up to be”. The game, he says, will support 4K, HDR, and uncapped frame-rate, which means players with the fastest hardware can get an incredibly smooth playback experience.
“In Black Ops 4 PC players will be able to fully scale the experience to balance the performance and the visuals across the widest range of PC specs. We’re also allowing players to customize controls per Specialist. For example, players can choose between press and hold vs toggle behaviors per ability. A player might prefer to hold for grenade cooking, but toggle for Ruin’s grapple”
He also said that a ‘big team’ at Activision’s subsidiary, Beenox, is working full-time on the PC game, and are collaborating closely with the rest of the development team at Treyarch. The Beenox team, he says, consists of artists, engineers and designers, all of whom are “working across features and content for Black Ops 4”.
One interesting thing about Black Ops 4 is that instead of Steam, it will come to Blizzard’s Battle.net, marking a huge departure from norm for the franchise. Moses said that this wasn’t a sudden decision, but a well though-out one, with Activision working with Blizzard over this for a long time.
According to him, the new structure is expected to be beneficial to gamers from a stability and security standpoint. “We’re getting access to their security experts and Battle.Net team, so players can expect best-in-class security and stability from the start … We’re going to be linked into Battle.net’s social systems, enabling players to chat across titles and coordinate matches“, said Moses.
On his part, Rob Smith said that the Treyarch team “is really excited about what Black Ops 4 can mean to the PC community”. According to him, the company wants the upcoming game to represent “the kind of content and options that PC gamers have come to expect from their games”.
He further said that he hopes for an “open and engaging dialogue about what we deliver on day one and how we’ll listen and work with the community in the months post-launch”.
