Let’s face it, any time a Call Of Duty game launches there’s always a great debate around movement mechanics, for better or worse. Will that be the case with Black Ops 6? Probably, because the internet. But if there’s anything that points to where Treyarch has directed the majority of its team’s focus during development, it’s definitely into movement.
We were recently flown to Los Angeles, California to visit the Treyarch studio and talk all things Black Ops 6; what’s new (like the game-changing Omni Movement system) and returning, the action packed campaign, multiplayer fun and yes, even a little bit of zombies. So let’s dive into everything you need to know about the new gameplay and movement mechanics of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
OMNI MOVEMENT – THE FPS GAME-CHANGER
The mindset for the team in regards to player movement has been to keep players in the ultimate flow state and to have them feel like an action hero, the best of the best. This meant having a sole focus on fluidity and fidelity, for player intentions to seamlessly translate to actions and to sell that elite Black Ops power fantasy. In the words of Treyarch, movement should have players saying “OMG, this is a Black Ops game.”
This is where the new Omni Movement comes in, and stands to be the sole mechanic everyone will be talking about come launch. Not only is it the new system of movement for Black Ops 6, but I reckon it’ll quite literally change the entire first person shooter landscape. But what is it?
So far in first person shooters, if you sprint, you sprint forward. If you dive, you dive forward. If you slide… well, you get it. Treyarch wanted to build a movement system that felt familiar, but also answered the question of “How do the best of the best move?” And the answer was simple, they move in every direction.
Omni Movement means in Black Ops 6 you can sprint in any direction – forward, backwards, left, right, diagonal variations…any direction! But that also means you can do things like dive and slide in any direction and turn around in any direction too. This results in a super fluid, natural-feeling way of moving around a map and entering gunfights. And it also meant a domino effect of work needed from the team to pull this off to the high quality it currently sits in. Treyarch has recorded thousands of high-fidelity animations, all using mocap, to blend together into every single degree of player movement. Which means your operator will dive slightly differently any which way you move, and that extends to all movement in the game.
Every element of player movement has been reworked to amplify the Omni Movement system, like the ability to go prone. Supine Prone is Black Ops 6’s new way of going prone, where the player is no longer just a flat body pivoting around an axis. Instead, Supine Prone allows players to full body, tactically roll around in prone state – imagine diving to the ground and rolling on your shoulder to shoot the enemy’s feet from underneath a truck. This also applies to the classic dolphin dive. You won’t just dive forward through a window any more, you can now dive through a window, naturally turn and look back in mid air and shoot through the broken glass to take out an enemy and land on your back – full on action hero style.
It’s in the little, subtle areas where Omni Movement also seems to shine. Take something like the new Corner Slicing element, which will automatically tilt your gun around corners whilst ADSing – how this plays out also depends on the angle you’re coming in at, whether or not you’re sprinting and so on. Even the simple act of sprinting around a corner is touched by the system. Currently if you sprint and your player cuts too much into the turning circle, you’ll stop sprinting, but this isn’t the case here. Intelligent Movement has also been added within the settings for even more fluidity. Optionally toggled on, Intelligent Movement will take players from having to press multiple buttons in order to mantle, sprint, slide, etc in a sequence, to not pressing any buttons at all – playing into that mindset of player intentions translating to actions.
Needless to say, the entire Omni Movement mechanic that Black Ops 6 is introducing is just as exciting an update to gameplay as new guns or maps.
OTHER ADDITIONS
Speaking of guns, hit location animations have been reworked as well to give a more realistic, Black Ops style to them. Previously there had been 4 hit locations on a player body to trigger a bullet hit or death animation, so it didn’t matter if you were hit in the right or left leg, the same animation would play. In Black Ops 6, there are now 9 hit locations on the player body to trigger animations, and they also work in tandem with the particular weapons or gadgets dealing the hit. This means if you get hit in the right leg or the left leg, different animations will play, and to go further again, different animations will play for those hits with different weapons (ie. a shotgun hit to the body will animate differently to a sniper hit).
This will be particularly evident for players when viewing player deaths via the new dynamic death cam. Now, instead of the static death cam we know and love that abruptly stops the camera on a player’s death (and we watch the body yeet off screen), the new Black Ops 6 death cam will track the body death animation, allowing you to see that new and improved rag doll at its finest.
A NEW WAY TO PLAY
With additions like Omni Movement being such a fundamental mechanic in Black Ops 6, what does it mean for Call of Duty games moving forward? We can’t have this reworked movement foundation in one game and the old style in another, right? Looking ahead at the global systems of Call of Duty and whether Omni Movement will be running across all COD IPs, like Warzone, it’s too early to tell, with Treyarch mentioning they will have more information about this later in the year. However, the new Omni Movement system in Black Ops 6 will definitely be a new way for fans of Call of Duty to play and engage, and one which I can really see enhancing the overall experience.
Jake was a guest of Treyarch and Activision with travel and accommodation covered for the purpose of this preview.
