A massive Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 leak has made its way to Reddit, seemingly revealing all there is to know about Treyarch’s notoriously canceled campaign mode from 2018.
From mission design to combat, progression, and narrative, details about the scrapped experience — which remains the only instance in the mainline series to this day — appears to have been aired out for all those curious.
This is a fantastic and interesting read on Black Ops 4’s canceled campaign mode and includes 400+ images of actual concept arts, screenshots or early builds, storyboards, and more.https://t.co/H0iLocCynw
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) August 10, 2022
The apparent leak was published Tuesday by u/Purpletoaster20 on the r/GamingLeakAndRumors subreddit, a post that has accumulated 21 community awards at the time of publication.
Purpletoaster20 disclaims in the post that the leak is the result of months of research and discussion with people who have inside knowledge of the mode, and that they will also be releasing a long-form video on the topic on Aug. 18.
In addition to an Imgur album containing what is said to be over 400 images of leaked concept arts, screenshots and more from the mode’s development process, Purpletoaster20 runs down seemingly all there is to know about the canceled content.
Going through the post, it seemingly all lines up with the 2019 Kotaku report from Jason Schreier that detailed the “turbulent production,” “drastic reboot” and “perpetual crunch” that plagued Treyarch and its QA team in the months leading up to the launch of Black Ops 4.
“Black Ops 4’s original campaign was called Career,” Purpletoaster20’s post reads. “It was scoped to be a 2-v-2 ‘race to the finish’ mode as covered by Jason Schreier with his 2019 article covering the developer abuse within Treyarch. The mode was scrapped in early 2018 due to technical issues & the overall gameplay loop being described as too repetitive on top of the title being set to release a month earlier for October 2018. Outside of that, there’s very little knowledge in the public for how this mode would’ve played.”
Some of the main highlights regarding the mode include:
Ultimately, it is certainly noteworthy to see a leak of this magnitude come out, especially nearly four years after the initial launch of BO4.
At the time, especially before the Schreier report, some might recall that the narrative from Activision was “the BO4 campaign was never planned” and that “Treyarch just “wanted to try something different.”
According to Purpletoaster20, this leak was something they could only get to now due to college responsibilities, and that this is something they simply wanted to share for those interested.
“If [Activision and Treyarch] care, they delete & I move on with life,” Purpletoaster20 wrote. “This was a fun summer project & taught me a lot on Game Development (which is odd since my career choice isn’t remotely close to it lmao). You won’t have to worry about me after this. This + a hint of MP is all I have & I don’t think I’ll have the time to do something like this again… The vid & 1 more post, then I move on.”
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