Activision and Treyarch have released a new Call of Duty Black Ops 4 trailer, oddly titled "Multiplayer Beta Trailer" that showed several game modes in the and offered a glimpse of battle royale for the franchise finally named Blackout.
Considering there will be no single player modes in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, it was somewhat redundant to put a "multiplayer" prefix in the trailer. Either way, the trailer kicked off by showing footage of the 10 initial playable specialists, six multiplayer maps and six multiplayer modes.
It stays focused on the previously seen modes for the most part, but offers a glimpse of Blackout, which is Black Ops 4's battle royale mode, at the end, in a sort of post credits scene. This happens just after the 12 October 2018 release date is shown.
Customisation will be extensive, and likely monetised for this game mode as four soldiers can be seen next to a helicopter in completely different outfits. The chopper takes off, chases some other players who are in ground vehicles and then gets shot down by a presumably high calibre shot coming from a sniper rifle, combined with a rocket launcher hit.
The screen then cuts off, announcing a beta coming in September 2018. As of now, it is unknown if it will be an actual beta or a glorified marketing campaign as the "Private beta" that was announced in the first part of the trailer requires a pre-order to be accessed. Activision didn't specify whether a pre-order will be necessary to "test" Blackout, but we should expect to see it coming.
Chances are, it is the commercial type of beta though, as it's hard to believe any serious testing would actually be taking place just a month before the game releases on three different platforms - PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Activision
At this moment it looks a lot more like an early access for those pre-ordered the game, which makes it somewhat weird that Activision don't simply call it that, as players do not shun the practice in general, so there is no need to hide it.
