Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 beta trailer appears to confirm big battle royale leak
Winging it.
Call of Duty fans have picked apart the recent Black Ops 4 beta trailer and found what looks like confirmation of a two-week old battle royale leak.
The beta trailer offers a whopping 13 seconds of footage from Blackout, Call of Duty's upcoming battle royale mode. The footage is spliced with short transition clips that are hard to spot unless you slow the video down, which is exactly what fans have done.
There are a handful of transitions in the Blackout footage. The first shows the tower first seen during the Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 reveal event in May.
Another shows Raid, the Black Ops 2 map, inside the Blackout map. (Blackout contains parts of iconic maps from across the Call of Duty series.)
Another shows Cargo, the multiplayer map from Black Ops 2.
Another shows players in an underground tunnel.
Another shows a couple of players using a wingsuit.
Another shows Asylum, the zombies map from Call of Duty: World at War, complete with zombies roaming the area, which confirms Blackout will have a player versus environment element.
But the most interesting transition reveals Nuketown in Blackout.
What's interesting here is we see destroyed Nuketown and we see water ahead. This detail tallies with a two-week old post from a redditor called Omnipotentem, who had previously leaked correct information relating to Black Ops 4's zombies mode.
Omnipotentem had claimed Blackout's Nuketown is set after the nuke dropped, and is placed in the middle of the map as an island surrounded by water. "The layout and theme of Nuketown in Blackout is similar to that of Nuketown zombies from Black Ops 2," they wrote.
That sounds a lot like the glimpse of Nuketown we have from the official Black Ops 4 beta trailer.
So, if this Blackout leak is accurate, what else does it tell us about Call of Duty battle royale? Omnipotentem said the developers at Treyarch are aiming for at least 50 players but are currently testing 64 (Treyarch has yet to announce how many players Blackout will accommodate.).
There's information relating to scavenged equipment, inventory slots, backpacks and weapon loot rarity (the higher the weapon rarity, the better the attachments, apparently).
Meanwhile, consumable abilities are lifted from the standard multiplayer specialist abilities. Omnipotentem said Blackout's storm/gas mechanic is a currently a simple visible wall that closes in on the map, and while players currently parachute into the map, this is subject to change.
So, while Activision no-doubt hoped its Blackout teaser would excite information-hungry Call of Duty fans, it perhaps failed to consider it would inadvertently confirm a leak about the current version of its battle royale mode.