As Activision promised, the new mode for Call of Duty: Warzone looks like a proper throwback to the franchise’s first battle royale, letting fans grapple-hook and glide around the game’s Avalon map like it’s 2018. New gameplay footage from the official Call of Duty YouTube channel shows that the upcoming Black Ops Royale mode contains plenty of references to the original Blackout mode.
The 45-minute-long video contains an interview with Raven Software’s Pete Actipis, who explained how the development team approached translating older Blackout concepts into Warzone. The video then shifted to several matches of Black Ops Royale with teams led by eSports players JoeWo and Repullze.
Actipis showed off high-tier loot zones during one of the matches, comparing them to the zombie-infested areas in Blackout. Viewers also observed that several sound effects return from Blackout, including the circle-closing alert noise, which should bring back some memories for hardcore Black Ops fans.
Nostalgic references aside, Black Ops Royale also takes a different approach to weapons and loot, doing away with loadouts and assigning guns to different “archetypes.” The mode also takes a Blackout-inspired approach to Perks, as they are consumables that are manually activated.
Black Ops Royale will be live in Call of Duty: Warzone on Thursday, March 12, at 9 PM PT / Friday, March 13, at 12 AM ET, after the launch of the game’s Season 2 Reloaded update. The update comes with new weapons, maps, and a Zombies map.
What’s old is new again, and like with any new content, Call of Duty players will certainly have a lot of thoughts and feedback. Luckily for them, Activision recently launched a Call of Duty CM account for community teams to interact directly with fans.