Black Ops 6 beta shows off Omni-movement and new maps | Call of Duty interview

I talked about the details of Black Ops 6 multiplayer and the reaction to it so far in an interview with Miles Leslie, associate creative director at Activision studio Treyarch. Drop in if you’d like and ping me on Twitter at @deantak. I’ve still go some codes left to share for multiplayer.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: What has the reaction been like?

Miles Leslie: In the moment it was pretty fantastic. It was so electric and so positive. Even since we did the direct, there’s been really good momentum building. A lot of positive. That’s energized the studio and all of our partners. We know what we’re doing. It’s resonating. Let’s keep going. Next will be beta. Early access is tomorrow. Everyone is super excited to finally get it out there. It’s been a while. Black Ops is back now.

GamesBeat: On the new parts of the game, have you had a chance to see how well people are learning things like the Omni-movement? I’m curious about that in particular, because it took me a while to jump and skid around every corner. People were doing that to me and getting the drop on me that way. I’m a controller player as well. I’ve seen some of the slow motion versions on the stream – people diving sideways and shooting while they fly through the air, that sort of thing. How are people picking this up?

Leslie: Early on, when we started it, it was important to us–it goes to what you were saying about what type of player you are. We didn’t want to create something that just made the best players better. We knew we wanted to do something big on movement. We had a bunch of time. Movement has always been in the Black Ops DNA. If you go back to Black Ops 2, the first time you could mantle and have your gun up and it never went down, that was a huge moment. Black Ops 3, the first time with all the advanced movement. All the learning from that is exactly that. How do you keep players in frame? How can I keep on target between controller with aim assist and keyboard and mouse without it?

We knew we wanted to do something big. We iterated our way toward omni-movement. It was a big “aha” moment. As soon as it was on, it was like, “Why haven’t we had this before?” That’s when you know you have something special. Then the hard work is chiseling away and playtesting. We have such a wide skill set within the studio itself. You get so much good feedback from players, both keyboard and controller. We’re tuning and tuning, playtesting. We brought in pros early because we knew they would pick it up and do some outrageous stuff. Did a bunch of tweaks.

Based on our experience, our playtesting–we’ve had a lot of time on this game to chisel away and fine-tune everything. We feel it’s in a good spot. If you’re a good player, you’ll be able to pick it up and use it. It will basically feel natural to you. If you’re already good, you’re good. It’s not going to make you better than other people, but it will add an element where you can now play how you want to. It’s player agency. You’ve always been able to slide and dive, but combining all these things into omni-movement makes it special.

Another big thing that came out of that was the intelligent movement. We have ways to reduce the friction of how many button presses, so you can use these things when you want and grow your skill as a player. You have something to achieve if you want. How do I master this?

GamesBeat: If you want to spin around 360 while you’re lying down, what are you inputting with the controller to make that happen?

Leslie: You go prone the normal way, and then you just rotate around the same way. Normally you’d just be on your belly. There’s no animation. Just rotating in place. But now, with supine, you’re down in first person and it literally rotates across your belly. You can see your chest and legs. Then it goes all the way where you’re now rolled on your belly. You can be sideways or all the way on your belly. It looks the way everyone imagined it should look. We just finally pushed on it to where it feels immersive.

GamesBeat: Some of that is more real. Would you say everything is more real, or not necessarily? I was watching some of the pros. They were stopping and doing a movement, stopping and doing a movement. It didn’t look like anybody would ever do that in real life.

Leslie: We’ve always had bunny hopping, cancel sliding, all these things that totally break immersion. Sometimes they can be fun if they’re not outrageous, not breaking the game. The goal was to make it feel grounded. You look at athletes and real operatives, they can move 360. They can sprint in any direction. That’s something you can do in reality, and it’s something we wanted to bring. But there’s also an element of fun. We want you to have these action hero moments. With the supine and omni-movement and sliding and diving in any direction, you can create your own action hero moments. That’s the key, to feel like that badass jumping out the window as I flip to my back. All these cool things that now are in the player’s hands.

GamesBeat: There were lots of announcements at Call of Duty Next. Did anything seem to come across as more of a bombshell for players?

Leslie: We were so happy about the reception for the camos. The team has absolutely killed it on the camos. To see the reception back at the studios, we were so ecstatic about that. We teased that classic prestige. That’s something close to our heart. We teased the first icon. I don’t know if you got to see that, but we have a cool thematic at every single prestige level that’s tied to the history of the Black Ops and Treyarch games. People loved that. I saw some people with the inspection. We’ve been grabbing clips and sharing them. We’re super excited.

Someone got a nuke. We spent so much time crafting that. To see the reception – “Oh my God, the hands burn!” It was really cool to see how a lot of the smaller details were shown that day. People will get it in the beta, but to have it happen right at that moment was really special. We’ve spent a lot of time on all those small things. It’s nice that it’s coming through and people are getting the intentionality of it. That’s a big keyword for us.

GamesBeat: The Gunsmith sounds like there’s some simplification going on, but also preserving the depth for people who really want that.

Leslie: A big thing that we wanted to do is make the overall UI, the interface, more accessible. Call of Duty has been adding things to a point where it gets really complex. You dive into the game and you don’t know what button to press, even if you’re a core fan, let alone if you’re new.

We started there. How do you streamline it? Just putting in the stuff players really need. You saw that in the lobby stream. Operators and all that. Then, once you get into Gunsmith, which can be really complicated–that should be fun. You should feel like an operative building your gun. You shouldn’t have to be doing math, doing all these complex things. It should be really meaty choices about how you want to play. We’ve stripped out a lot of the negatives.

What we’ve always gone back to in Black Ops, each one has a unique thing, their attachments. You can build the gun how you want. It’s more about which pro you want, versus which pros and cons you’re trying to compare and contrast. That’s the simplification. You want SMG and you want to be silent? We have some options for how you want to build it. If you want to go loud and have more rapid fire, all those really chunky changes–that’s the simplification of Gunsmith in that sense. But it’s still a system where you can build the gun you want.

GamesBeat: It’s nice that you can have this global loadout. You take your guns everywhere.

Leslie: That’s a huge one. We didn’t get that until we were playtesting it. On paper it’s one thing, but as we were playtesting it, when you update one gun and it updates everywhere–it was another thing like omni-movement. Why haven’t we always had this? It just makes sense.

GamesBeat: Is this one of the benefits of having a unified engine?

Leslie: It’s a benefit of taking advantage of the time, to be honest. We’ve had a little extra time on this game. It goes to that intentionality. We’ve gone back to every Black Ops game and audited all the features that we liked, that the fans like. What do we want to bring back in a new way and evolve it? And then what are the things that are causing a lot of friction across all the systems. It was a nice evolution, again, of that intentionality across everything. Where do we spend our time overall?

We’ve been working with all our partners. Now that we’re all on the same engine, you do get a lot of good expertise. You can reach out to your sister studios. There’s a bigger knowledge base. That’s huge. And now we’re building that. They’re coming to us and we’re coming to them. Hopefully every game benefits from that.

GamesBeat: Things like Warzone–what do you think players are going to notice? They get a new map, but are there other things that will make something like Warzone better?

Leslie: They get the omni-movement, which is absolutely going to be huge. When you talk about a playground for movement and platforming, that’s Warzone. I can get on everything. With Area 99, the new map – which is fantastic, built for Resurgence – we really wanted to bring Nuketown to Resurgence in that sense. It’s inspired by that. It feels like Black Ops 6. It’s an extension of that game into Warzone. But then you get the omni-movement as well. I think players are going to resonate with that.

We’ve been working with Raven trying to streamline a lot of that accessibility in the interface. The quality of life stuff. You shouldn’t be fighting the game. You should be fighting other players. You should just be able to play.

GamesBeat: I’ve always had trouble with picking up things in Warzone. I don’t know if that’s changing at all.

Leslie: It’s funny. That’s another one where there’s a huge list, talking about quality of life–again, it goes to how you should be fighting other players, not the game. How do we make that as simple as just look down and grab something? How do I loot stuff? How far does it spill away when I kill someone? There are all these micro-decisions that can add up. If I get in a gunfight and I die trying to grab some stuff, I died because of the game, not because of my skill.

GamesBeat: With 16 maps, it sounds like this is an awful lot of work for just the initial release.

Leslie: It was a lot of work. We thought it was important, again, to come out swinging. We have 16 original maps, 12 of them for 6v6 and four Strike maps. That just means they can be used in the 2v2. It was important for us to do that. It’s an extension of the attitude and the identity of the game. You’re globe-trotting. You’re going to places you visited in the campaign. It feels like you’re constantly in the world. And then also leaning into the era, 1991. Rewind is in a strip mall. It has a video store. A lot of players don’t even know what VHS is, but you can run in the video store and shoot up the VHS tapes. They’ll go flying. We have some cool physics. We wanted to lean into all that stuff. Our design principles have evolved over the years. Our classic three lanes, players respond really well to that. We’re coming in swinging with all of the maps.

GamesBeat: Are we likely to see retro maps or remakes of older maps? Last year started with all of those.

Leslie: Our goal was to deliver original maps on day one with Black Ops 6. We know that fans always want those fan favorites too. We want to bring them as well, especially looking the best they ever have. We have some surprises post-launch, a good mix of original maps and some cool reimaginings and remasters as well that fans will be excited about.

GamesBeat: With Zombies, is it two maps? Are they larger, or more difficult to create?

Leslie: It’s a combination of things. One, the complexity, because there’s AI involved. It’s PvE with the zombies and it’s a co-op experience that you have to balance. The two maps are so distinctly different. This is a big one, with round-based zombies being back. We heard the community. The Zombies scene is killing it. Each map is really unique. Terminus is huge. Liberty Falls is huge and complex in its own way, the small town. It takes time to get that right. Thinking about Black Ops 3, when we had a bunch of Zombies maps day one, we’re learning from everything we did before to deliver unique experiences.

The main quests are huge. We have the directed mode now, so you can bring that story. It’s packed with a lot of gameplay. There’s so much in it. It takes a lot of time to get that right. Again, it goes to that intentionality. Two is the right number to deliver unique experiences and the story we wanted to tell. And as Kevin mentioned on stream, we plan to deliver another Zombies map before the end of the year. Three brand-new experiences by the end of the year is huge.

GamesBeat: Are you already seeing some crazy plays from the experts and the streamers?

Leslie: Oh, yeah. There are so many awesome ones. Not only that–we’ve had awesome shots of people driving and then getting crazy shots, like some sideways snipers that I saw. But also people getting out of the way. They perfectly back dodged or dodged forward. Again, it looks like a movie trailer. It almost looks scripted, like something we made, but it’s actual gameplay. Players are creating their own trailer moments. With theater back, tons of players are going to be able to use those clips and create their own awesome highlight reels. There’s so much they can do.

GamesBeat: Do you have any particular advice for players? What should they practice the most?

Leslie: It depends on what type of player you are. Black Ops 6 is massive. The campaign is huge. There’s a lot to dive into there, this conspiracy thriller. If you’re a campaign player, you’re going to be eating a lot. There’s a lot of story. If you’re a multiplayer player, those 16 maps, all the weapons, the omni-movement–there’s enough for everyone. But hopefully there’s new stuff, and a sense of mastery with the new progression system and the other ways you can develop mastery across the new equipment and everything else.

We want players to come and engage longer. I personally don’t like the word “grinding,” because we don’t talk about it that way. We don’t talk about making content to grind on. I know it’s a common term, but it should be engaging, rewarding content that you want to play and feel rewarded for doing the things you’re already doing. Maybe there’s a few cool challenges that ask you to get out of your comfort zone, but you feel rewarded for doing that.

We have an onboarding tutorial for the first time with omni-movement. In the beta players can get a little snippet of that to help them get acclimated. There are tons of settings we’ve put in so players can customize how they want.

GamesBeat: When guns were getting highlighted or nerfed, that felt like grinding. Now I have to grind another one. But now you have the global loadout. You don’t have to work on the same gun in different games.

Leslie: You don’t. If you unlock something, it’s unlocked. That was a big friction point for players. If you unlock things on a gun and you’re rewarded for using it, certain attachments will be unlocked already on other guns as well. To your point, maybe I want to change things up. In that case I don’t feel like I’m starting over. That’s always a negative experience. You can get out of your comfort zone, try things, and feel rewarded for it. You shouldn’t have to fight the game. The game should give you things to do. We think we’re on the right track with that stuff. We’ll find out in the beta.

This is our first time with a big open beta. We’re super excited. Hopefully everyone in the world tries it and gives us feedback and they love it as much as we do. When we get that many people playing around with the new movement system, that’s going to be fun.

GamesBeat: I’d like to see the stats on whether the PlayStation players slaughter the Xbox players.

Leslie: That’s an infographic that will never come out, but it would be funny to see.