Battle royale is headed to Call of Duty this year, with the Blackout mode. Of course, this time around, Call of Duty isn’t spearheading the charge with a new paradigm in the shooter genre, but rather, entering an already crowded market. Battle royale games have already found great success, with PUBG and Fortnite being two of the most popular games on the planet at the moment.
It makes sense, then, that developers Treyach carefully experimented with the concept before they decided to jump all into it with the new game. For instance, in an interview with Newsweek, Game Director Dan Bunting revealed that at one point, Treyarch tested out the mode with a 144 square mile map- which is absolutely insane.
“We have invested a huge amount of our development energy into those tools. They can basically paint terrain down in massive, massive spaces. We had a test map of 12 miles by 12 miles as the biggest space we were able to build and run,” Bunting said.
Of course, Bunting does note that the developers are committed to providing a buttery smooth 60 frames per second experience, which has long been the hallmark of the Call of Duty franchise- so don’t expect maps that big in the final game when it launches this October for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC, maybe.