All Call of Duty: Black Ops III Content Will be Unlocked at Launch

[Lizzy Finnegan]

All Call of Duty: Black Ops III Content Will be Unlocked at Launch


"It gives them the flexibility to consume the content how they want."

In a recent interview with Eurogamer [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-12-you-can-play-the-last-level-of-call-of-dutys-next-campaign-first] Jason Blundell, director of campaign and Zombies mode, revealed that all campaign missions for Call of Duty: Black Ops III will be unlocked from the start.

"The unlocking level system is an archaic mentality we've had since we did bedroom development back in the day-you do this, then go on to the next one," Blundell said. "Consumers and game players in general are far more mature these days. There are so many things vying for our interests today. It's about, how do they want to consume it? Maybe they put it down on level two, and then they're in work the next day, and some guy says, 'Dude, you've got to check out level four!' And he's like, 'Okay, I'll have a quick look.' That's totally fine. I think it's their choice."

While this does allow the option for people to skip directly to the end, Blundell says that he isn't concerned. "If you see the end you'll say, I need to understand this more," Blundell said. "When Netflix releases House of Cards and do all the episodes, does everyone just jump to the end and go and play the last episode? Sure you can. But it's about the journey, though, right?"

"The way the story is constructed, it's more than just the end moment," Blundell said. "I'm sure there are many films and other media types where you could read the last page, or see the last minutes, but really you've got to experience all of the other stuff to truly enjoy it."

Call of Duty: Black Ops III was recently revealed to be the most anticipated multi-platform holiday 2015 title [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/142734-Nielsen-reveals-Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-III-As-the-Most-Anticipated-Holiday-2015-Game] by Nielsen Game Rank.

Call of Duty: Black Ops III releases on November 6 on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PC, although the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game will not include a singleplayer campaign [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/142597-Black-Ops-3-PS3-Xbox-360-Lacks-Singleplayer].

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[Dango]

I thought this meant there would be no paid-for DLC or nothing on the Disc that's pay-locked.

Instead it's just something really, really dumb.

 

[daspooch77]

Why is it "really, really dumb"? Why is forcing the player to get through level after level consecutively better? It makes no sense to take options away, and they should have done this from the fucking start. Forcing a linear progression and not allowing the ability to skip levels at will serves no purpose whatosever. Perhaps you're too young to understand that cheat codes (and even unauthorized cheat hardware) have been an in-demand thing since the NES days in the 80s.

 

[Xorph]

Why is it "really, really dumb"? Why is forcing the player to get through level after level consecutively better? It makes no sense to take options away, and they should have done this from the fucking start. Forcing a linear progression and not allowing the ability to skip levels at will serves no purpose whatosever. Perhaps you're too young to understand that cheat codes (and even unauthorized cheat hardware) have been an in-demand thing since the NES days in the 80s.

Have you ever watched a movie before? Did you go straight to the scene select and just choose whatever scene of the movie looked coolest, then at the end hit the Menu button and skip to another random scene? In some sort of old-style arcade type game this would make sense, but CoD campaigns are pretty much interactive action flicks at this point. Playing them out of order your first run through doesn't make a lick of sense.

 

[munx13]

Not a fan of COD, but I like the idea. If a segment of a game is really terrible and I cant get though it or just don't want to waste my time to do it, I (and I assume many other people) just use cheats to skip it anyway. Good way to save time and trouble.

 

[Jeremy Dawkins]

I hope it's not a problem if I link this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdN4BTH1qa4. I like to enjoy stories from start to finish, but it's not my problem if other people do things differently.

 

[Quellist]

Why is it "really, really dumb"? Why is forcing the player to get through level after level consecutively better? It makes no sense to take options away, and they should have done this from the fucking start. Forcing a linear progression and not allowing the ability to skip levels at will serves no purpose whatosever. Perhaps you're too young to understand that cheat codes (and even unauthorized cheat hardware) have been an in-demand thing since the NES days in the 80s.

Have you ever watched a movie before? Did you go straight to the scene select and just choose whatever scene of the movie looked coolest, then at the end hit the Menu button and skip to another random scene? In some sort of old-style arcade type game this would make sense, but CoD campaigns are pretty much interactive action flicks at this point. Playing them out of order your first run through doesn't make a lick of sense.

When I played Thief way back in the day the 'Undead' missions bored and irritated me (because they were totally unlike the rest of the game) so much that if i hadn't found a cheat code to bypass them I might never have finished the game. I only ever used that cheat to get past those boring levels and my enjoyment of the game was vastly improved.

So yeah, I don't think this feature is dumb either

 

[The Enquirer]

Huh, not a bad little feature. It's nice to see them actually putting in some effort with the story mode this time. Replay value looks good so maybe I'll pick it up depending on some other stuff.

 

[thewatergamer]

My kneejerk reaction was this is bad, though I think that stems from this fallacy of "I'm special because I beat the game properly" which frankly is kind of a silly notion to have in the first place, when it comes to Blobs 3 the singleplayer is filler so it's not a big deal, it would be interesting to see this feature implemented in a much more difficult singleplayer game however

 

[Imper1um]

I thought this meant there would be no paid-for DLC or nothing on the Disc that's pay-locked.

Instead it's just something really, really dumb.

Yeah, sadly, this sounds like a really...clickbait ploy. I don't understand why they used the "Netflix" analogy. See, with Netflix, and their "unlocking the entire season from Day 1" is a big thing because right now, you can't consume the entire season from Day 1 on TV. You have to wait for 3-5 months for it to all launch. With games, you don't do that. You don't wait for any time to get through the game. It all goes at your own pace, but you could consume the entire game in one sitting, and in the case of this game, probably the entire campaign in about 3.5 hours ;-) .

 

[Xorph]

When I played Thief way back in the day the 'Undead' missions bored and irritated me (because they were totally unlike the rest of the game) so much that if i hadn't found a cheat code to bypass them I might never have finished the game. I only ever used that cheat to get past those boring levels and my enjoyment of the game was vastly improved.

So yeah, I don't think this feature is dumb either

I'm not saying having a level skip option is dumb, previous CoDs have had that for the more "controversial" levels. I just think that arguing for an open-ended level select where everything is unlocked at the start in a game with a linear story is a pretty dumb idea.

 

[Bindal]

That title is highly misleading: It's not CONTENT that's unlocked, but the CAMPAIGN LEVELS.

 

[josemlopes]

Didnt liked the idea in Alone in the Dark so Im not really into it here

 

[flying_whimsy]

That is a highly misleading statement overall. That said, it's also really stupid. Basically, it's a 'hey, why not skip to the controversial mission first.'

It's like they don't anything about actual storytelling: even the most basic cause and effect.

 

[Bindal]

That is a highly misleading statement overall. That said, it's also really stupid. Basically, it's a 'hey, why not skip to the controversial mission first.'

It's like they don't anything about actual storytelling: even the most basic cause and effect.

Well, it is a CoD by Treyarch - they never really did a "controversial mission" thing. The clostest they came to that was in Black Ops 1 with the torturing and that wasn't really that controversial due being a brief QTE and the guy you're dealing with being not the nicest guy to begin with.

If it would be Infinity Wards, then yes, that would basically what it means, most likely.
With Treyarch, it feels more like "what stuff can we get away with in a CoD-Campaign, mechanically?" - in which case, getting away with not having a campaign to play through for a conclusion, I think. Or it might be just a technical choice as the campaign is fully playable in Coop, so they might anticipated that people may end up in missions they haven't reached in their solo playthrough yet and rather want to just fill the gaps or replay the missions they enjoyed without caring about the story.
(Personally, I would go for the 'what can we get away with?' reason of why they did this)

 

[marioandsonic]

So not only do the developers think that not having to play the main story campaign is a point in the game's favor, but there are apparently so few other selling points worth mentioning that they proudly announce it in an interview.

Yeah...not interested.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

COD gets a fair bit of shtick for mostly reasonable reasons, but treyarch seem to have a collection of trusting fans and the beta was a pleasant, if somewhat twitchy surprise, so i'm willing to go out on a limb here and believe these fellow's sincerity. Not that this feature is particularly useful to anyone other than those who hate getting stuck in a story, even if it appears to pander to a heavily attention deficit (children?) crowd. Compared to Battlefront, this is looking a much fresher experience that is miles more tempting than that over-marketed, fan-fondling, nostalgia-wallowing, film-pressured, half-baked, baby's barely veiled turd-cake.

Captcha: Deep thought. ?

 

[sneakypenguin]

Awesome I'll give campaigns a run through but would like a skip IE I just saw the first 3 levels of x game played at a friends why do I wanna slog through it 2 hours later when I get the game to my house.

Every other form of media in the world allows skips doesn't hurt to have it in gaming now.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I thought this meant there would be no paid-for DLC or nothing on the Disc that's pay-locked.

Instead it's just something really, really dumb.

Indeed. Before clicking on the article, I was ready to have to give props to ActiVision. Now I'm just like... whatever. It's Call of Duty. Make the campaign linear - no one but me and a few other people are going to play it anyway.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

I thought this meant there would be no paid-for DLC or nothing on the Disc that's pay-locked.

Instead it's just something really, really dumb.

Exactly what I thought when I read the title. Just makes me think "big whoop", this is completely pointless. He even goes on to say that skipping levels will be a bad idea.