Early screenshots from what is allegedly a canceled open world campaign for Call of Duty Black Ops 3 have emerged online.
In addition to screenshots, the alleged leaked content from the canceled open world campaign for Call of Duty Black Ops 3 also includes a world map. According to the leaker, it was originally envisioned as a “hub world” experience, where players would travel through a large area that is interconnected by hubs.
In the Singapore hub, you’d have areas such as the Chinatown, Downtown, Hilltop Park, Black Station, Biodome, etc – all with unique objectives, outposts and missions. You could explore the areas freely, taking down enemies, completing side missions, collecting upgrades and progressing the story at your own pace.
Defending a location, neutralizing biocaches, destroying weapon caches, sabotaging outposts, and other tasks are examples of objectives featured in the canceled campaign. In addition to a VTOL exfil system and a safehouse connecting every hub world location, the screenshots also appear to show a day/night cycle with a night vision mechanic. Traversing environments and buildings would have been much simpler, as a jetpack was also planned at this stage of development.
The game world appears to have featured defenses that could be purchased, like barricades, as well as ammo and equipment crates. Players would, therefore, have spent a significant amount of the game in these hub worlds.
After having being worked on for a little over a year, this version of Call of Duty Black Ops 3’s campaign was completely scrapped in early to mid-2014 in favor of the linear campaign that made its way into the final release. Assets from some of the locations, such as all areas in the Singapore hub world, were salvaged into missions in the final Call of Duty Black Ops 3 campaign, though level layouts were likely designed from scratch.
