This year’s Call of Duty will stray from the traditional over-the-top single-player campaign, and will instead focus exclusively on competitive multiplayer, zombies, and battle royale. Although there were rumors in the past suggesting that there was a campaign that got scrapped, game design director over at Treyarch, David Vonderhaar, claims there was never a campaign like previous installments in the works.

At one point and time, talk surrounding the “scrapped” campaign mode in Black Ops 4 made headlines left and right. Well, according to publication site comicbook.com, Treyarch noted that Black Ops 4 wasn’t meant to have a campaign this time.

The website noted Vonderhaar and Dan Bunting, co-studio head, claiming that Black Ops 4 was being designed as a “social game” from the ground up, and not as a “traditional entry” in the series — even though it holds the “Black Ops” moniker.

The publication site cited Vonderhaar and Bunting saying the following:

“It wasn’t a campaign as people usually refer to it anyways. It’s like when people say ‘what happened to the campaign’ it’s like well it wasn’t a campaign in the first place. How can you say what happened to this that it wasn’t? I never know how to deal with that. It was always a multiplayer game. It was a multiplayer game… top to bottom.”

Bunting would follow up and say that the team could make a really big campaign, add co-op to it, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to be a “narrative-heavy” limited experience. Additionally, Bunting believes that a game that players would keep playing for a long time is better:

“We believe we’re making an awesome game. That vision started with building a game that is entirely constructed around social gameplay experiences is coming to life. And it is deeper and bigger than anything we’ve ever done. There’s more ways to play this game with your friends for longer than we’ve ever had before. Historically, we can make a really big campaign, add co-op to it, but at the end of the day, it’s still going to be such a narrative heavy guided experience for players that the replay-ability is limited. We wanted to make a game that players would keep playing for a long time because that’s something we are passionate about and play ourselves.”

With all of that said, do you believe the rumors that there was a traditional Call of Duty campaign in the works or do you think Black Ops 4 was meant to be a “social game” from the ground up?

Lastly, the Blackout beta — battle royale mode — is live. A month later, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is scheduled to release on October 12th, 2018.