[STEAM] Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Campaign Dev Raven Didn’t React to Modern Warfare 3 Campaign’s Terrible Reception: ‘We Were Already Pretty Locked In’

[Steam 0]

2023’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

includes perhaps the most poorly received campaign in Call of Duty history. It has a metascore of 56 on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and a 'mostly negative' user review rating on Steam. IGN’s own

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

returned a 4/10. We said: “Underbaked, rehashed, and cobbled together from multiplayer parts, Modern Warfare 3’s single-player campaign is everything a Call of Duty story mode shouldn’t be.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

added: “Clearly rushed to market, Modern Warfare 3's campaign tapes together ill-conceived open areas, underwhelming linear missions, and a meaningless story.” In short, it was all a bit of a disaster.

A year later and Call of Duty fans are yet again faced with another campaign from the first-person shooter behemoth, this time the Raven Software-developed

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

campaign. IGN has just reported on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, but did Raven tweak anything in response to the reaction to Modern Warfare 3, or perhaps learn any lessons from Modern Warfare 3’s campaign?

Not so, Jon Zuk, associate creative director at Raven Software, told IGN in an interview.

“The campaign… all game development is very fluid and we react to a lot of different things, but in the case of the previous game’s reception, we were already pretty locked in on the story we were telling and the missions we were creating,” Zuk said. “So we didn't react to how that was received.”

One key point of difference between the developments of Modern Warfare 3, led by Sledgehammer Games, and ****** Ops 6, led by Treyarch, is time. Modern Warfare 3, originally conceived as an expansion pack for 2022’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, reportedly imposed crunch on its developers as they battled to create a fully-fledged sequel in just 16 months.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

****** Ops 6, however, has enjoyed a longer development time than any other mainline Call of Duty game. Treyarch has worked on it for four years, ever since

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

came out in 2020. And for the campaign, Raven too has benefited from this extra time.

“The extra development time certainly gives us time to do a little bit more prototyping and a little bit more trying something out, finding out if it's fun and if it works and throwing some things away,” Zuk explained.

“When you have the shorter development cycle, sometimes you're stuck with things just for the time crunch that maybe you aren't as happy with as you could be. So I do feel like we had good opportunities to keep crafting and recrafting the missions until we were happy with them.”

Even if you do try to do the speed run version of it, it is going to be longer than Cold War. Players can also expect ****** Ops 6’s campaign to be longer than Cold War’s, Zuk confirmed, although your mileage may vary depending on how much time you spend back at your safehouse hub.

“You can go back, you can talk to your team, you can upgrade your ******* and your equipment and things like that,” Zuk said. “And you can do a little bit of searching around the safehouse , but there's players who are going to do all of that, and there's players who are going to do none of that and are just, I want to get to the next mission as quickly as possible.

“So I think that the game length is going to be variable from player to player, but even if you do try to do the speed run version of it, it is going to be longer than Cold War.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s subscription service. It comes after

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

bought Activision Blizzard for an eye-watering $69 billion, and has sparked a debate about whether the move will cannibalize sales of the game.

But will launching straight into Game Pass have a meaningful impact on the number of people who play ****** Ops 6’s campaign? Unlike with previous Call of Duty games, Activision is not releasing an early access campaign for ****** Ops 6, which means everyone jumps in at the same time from October 25.

Zuk said that from Raven’s perspective, it’s trusting owner and publisher Activision to do what’s best for the game. “I have no input in the business side of that at all,” Zuk replied. “The decision was made to not do early access this year, and I trust that Activision has thought out every bit of this and is very confident in the success of the title.”

We've also got confirmation of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up