The Call of Duty franchise has long been synonymous with competitive shooting, but in recent years, it’s also elevated to become a major player in the ascendant battle-royale genre. Today, Treyarch and Activision announced Black Ops Royale, an original take on the genre inspired by the series’ first battle-royale mode, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s Blackout.
Black Ops Royale serves as a return to the Blackout style of battle royale gameplay within the existing Warzone infrastructure. “There are clear influences from the core Blackout experience — like bullet drop and weapon handling, as well as the armor system and use of the Trauma Kit — capturing the Blackout pacing, traversal, and combat feel in a modern way,” the blog post said. “This isn’t a remake; it’s a unique experience that pays homage to the Blackout core gameplay while keeping the flow of a match feeling right for Call of Duty: Warzone players.”
In Black Ops Royale, 100 players across 25 squads wingsuit in with no loadouts, no gulag, no buy station, and weapon upgrades that are obtained through rarity. The goal is to outlast 24 rival squads on the massive Avalon map. Avalon first appeared as a large-scale Endgame map in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and now serves as the big map in Warzone. Avalon offers connected locations and intentionally designed combat zones, with no hint of the red fog that’s present in Endgame. For its appearance in Warzone and Black Ops Royale, Treyarch tinkered with the map, reducing its reliance on water and adding connections between the islands to feed into the larger battle-royale gameplay.
Once you arrive, you must scavenge the map to find your weapons with fixed archetypes and five-attachment upgrade paths. As you find and equip attachment kits, you raise your weapon’s rarity, which unlocks your preset build, hopefully en route to upgrading your arsenal to Legendary. Speaking of the weapons and gadgets at players’ disposal, players also have Blackout-inspired equipment, including grappling hooks, sensor darts, and trauma kits, not to mention Killstreaks and a tiered armor vest system.
Players will combine their weapons archetypes with class benefits along with build themes to earn better firepower, with a HUD that follows closely to Warzone’s existing UI, but gives players information like enemy health, weapon rarity and archetype, attachment upgrade paths, and more. The original Perk system also comes back, this time, with no fixed slots. Instead, players have five consumable boosts that you can swap on the fly. Each one grants temporary advantages that can be activated on a moment’s notice with the aim of providing critical boosts when strategy or the situation at hand demands.
Once the match starts, players battle it out over land, sea, and air to keep alive and avoid the encroaching perimeter collapse. Players can also take part in optional activities like hunting bounties, cracking strongboxes, capturing relays, and fighting through guild defenses. These side-objectives offer rewards like armor, UAV sweeps, and other upgrades to your on-the-fly loadout.
Black Ops Royale arrives on March 13. Players looking for a Season 2 Reloaded roadmap for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 should look forward to a new blog on March 4.
