Call of Duty gives up on single player campaign

What’s this, an unscheduled post?! Unthinkable. None too long ago, I wrote a piece talking about The Decline of the Halo Series. During that post I touched upon Call of Duty and how that franchise was the series that kicked Halo from the pedestal it sat atop for so many years. It seems like that time of transition is once again here, this time for Call of Duty.

Multiple news outlets have had reports that the upcoming Call of Duty, Black Ops IIII, will not have a single player campaign element. Let’s be honest though, Call of Duty hasn’t been “on top” for a good few years now. The quality of their games have been steadily dropping as the annual release cycle puts pressure on the franchise’s three development teams to keep things fresh and interesting.

Plus, how do you compete with the likes of Warframe, Overwatch and Fortnite these days.

Back when I gave a crap about Call of Duty, I used to bang a drum saying that they should just release two versions of Call of Duty, one with the campaign and one that was just the online multiplayer. It seems like that’s finally happening, sans the heavy workload of creating a highly polished single player campaign. The reason I was banging this drum was because Call of Duty games have become undeservedly expensive upon release, I’s like to think this would mean that Black Ops IIII will receive a reduced price point to match its reduced content.

But I do not see that happening.

There is a silver lining though, It appears Treyarch have decided a better use of their time implementing a battle royal mode into their upcoming game, if rumours are to be believed. During my post about the decline of Halo, I spoke about how 343 struggled to keep the series relevant and jumped on the bandwagon when it came to trends. Like their Warzone mode and MOBAs. This stinks of Call of Duty jumping on the PUBG/Fortnite bandwagon too.

That isn’t to say the mode won’t succeed, it just feels rather cynical if it did come at the expense of the single player campaign. Which the developers have claimed was planed, but couldn’t be finished in time for the Autumn release. And God forbid a Call of Duty game doesn’t come out on time. This comes off the back of the news that unlike the first Modern Warfare Remaster, the remaster of Modern Warfare II won’t contain a remade campaign either.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t cared about Call of Duty for a good few years now. But this feels like a pretty dire turn of events for the franchise. Why even call it Black Ops at this point. The first Titanfall struggled to find legs thanks to its lack of a single player Campaign, Activision must really hope they’re battle royale mode set the world on fire.