With this year’s outing, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, developer Treyarch has completely ripped up the CoD rulebook. The last game, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, introduced super soldiers with ’exo’ suits that gave them extra abilities (such as the ability to jump higher) but Black Ops 3 features soldiers who have all of these abilities built-in. Furthermore, the game’s story campaign can also be played co-operatively with up to three other players, and so Black Ops 3’s levels have been designed on a larger scale, to accommodate new play styles and tactics that will work with four people.
It’s understandable, then, for fans to assume that all of this new gameplay would require a new game engine in order for it to run smoothly, but according to Black Ops 3’s multiplayer director Dan Bunting, that isn’t the case. Speaking to GamesRadar, Bunting explained that the upcoming game is using a modified version of an old engine (Quake 3 Arena id Tech 3):
Furthermore, back in May, Treyarch’s director of development tweeted that Black Ops 3’s engine is a “heavily modified” version of Black Ops 2’s, with that game being released back in 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Bunting explains that “there was a lot of tech work for the transition to the next-gen platforms to really capitalise on the power” and that the developer re-engineered their graphics and AI systems.
Engines these days, especially for games of this kind of scope, are very varied, so that each component of the game has its own engine in a lot of ways. The engine itself, what the people refer to the as the engine, is the technology the studio develops along the way".
Despite Bunting’s words and the game’s three-year development cycle, some fans are still concerned that the game won’t be up to scratch at launch or that the game will struggle under the scope of its new gameplay. Many have pointed out that with Advanced Warfare, developer Sledgehammer Games modified its engine so much that it referred to it as “Sledgehammer’s new COD engine”, noting that it built most of its code from scratch – with the game having all new “rendering, animation, physics and audio systems”.
Advanced Warfare was better for it, being praised for its gameplay and technological advancements, so it makes sense that fans are cautious to see if the same can be said about Black Ops 3 when the game is released in November.
Source: GamesRadar
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 will be released on November 6, 2015 on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.
