Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 Dev Talks Decision to Drop Campaign for Last-Gen Systems

Despite Activision's decision to cut the story mode for Call of Duty: Black Ops III on last-generation consoles, the publisher remains committed to storytelling inside the Call of Duty universe. In a new interview with GameSpot, producer Jason Blundell started off by saying he was fully supportive of Activision's decision to drop campaign for the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version of this year's game.

"My job is to push the current-gen consoles as far as I can," he said. "When I heard that an old-gen version was going to be made outside of Treyarch, and found out the things that would have to be cut in order for it to work, I was fully behind Activision's decision to remove it."

You might read online and in forums that campaign modes in shooters like Call of Duty are getting less play as people gravitate towards multiplayer experiences. This might be true, but for Call of Duty specifically, campaign mode is still of great interest to players.

"You say that fewer people are playing campaigns these days, but our metrics say different," he said. "This was an active topic at Treyarch, until our numbers showed us that, regardless of what you read on forums, players spend a good amount of time in all modes."

"As a medium, we have to tell stories" -- Blundell

Cautioning that it's his personal viewpoint, Blundell went on to say that he hopes storytelling remains a point of focus in the Call of Duty series and other franchises going forward.

"I'll say this, and this is my personal view, the death of storytelling and the death of campaign is the death of society," he said. "As a medium, we have to tell stories. For Black Ops, it's absolutely essential to continue the art of storytelling."

Activision says it cut the campaign mode from Black Ops III's last-generation versions because the game's 1-4 player co-op campaign was so ambitious that it "could not be faithfully recreated on old generation hardware." The last-generation version of Black Ops III is being developed by Beenox and Mercenary Technology, not principal developer Treyarch Studios.

Black Ops III launches on November 6 across all platforms. For lots more on the game's campaign, which stars actors from Law & Order and Battlestar Galactica, check out GameSpot's just-published preview.