A handful of missions into Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Treyarch and Raven drop you into an open-world map called Hunting Season and say, ‘Go have fun!’ And I did have fun, largely because I’ve never seen anything like this mission in a Call of Duty game. In fact, this kind of design is rare in triple-A games since only one studio regularly does it: Naughty Dog.
When I say only one studio regularly does it, I’m not talking about open-world maps. Obviously, open-world games are open-world, with all the side activities and map markers that come along with that. It’s rare, though, to play a linear game that throws out linearity entirely for a single level. But Naughty Dog has done it in its three most recent games.
I’m ignoring remasters and remakes, here. Naughty Dog’s three most recent games are technically Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, The Last of Us Part 1, and The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered.
Naughty Dog’s Wide Linear Levels
In Uncharted 4, Nate, Sam, and Sully get a handy little Jeep when they arrive in Madagascar, and have a ton of freedom to drive around on the gorgeous red clay. There isn’t a ton to do, but you can explore and look for collectibles as you go. Naughty Dog calls this approach to design ‘wide linear’, and the Madagascar section fits that title to a tee. The section is always leading you forward, same as any corridor shooter, it’s just that this corridor is extremely wide. You can do a lot of sightseeing along the way.
Naughty Dog took this approach to the next level in Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which offered up a similarly-sized area, but stuffed it with much more to do. In The Western Ghats, Chloe and Nadine have three puzzles they need to complete to progress, but the puzzles can be tackled in any order. There are multiple versions of each puzzle available, too, so no matter what order you attempt the challenge in, you’ll get a nice difficulty curve. Outside of that central series of obstacles, there’s a side treasure, the Queen’s Ruby Bracelet, that you can unlock by finding 11 tokens strewn throughout the level. It’s much more ambitious than the Madagascar section, and a must-play level in Naughty Dog’s oeuvre, despite hailing from a spin-off.
Naughty Dog reimagined its wide linear design again with The Last of Us Part 2‘s Seattle Day 1, which had Ellie and Dinah exploring the overgrown Pacific Northwest city on horseback. Here, Naughty Dog more heavily tied its wide linear approach to design into its story, making one of the optional things you can find a beautiful moment between Ellie and Dinah in an abandoned music store. If you didn’t know that Ellie’s acoustic performance of Take On Me was missable, well, now you know. There were a bunch of buildings in the area and you could explore them (or skip them) in any order you saw fit, stocking up (or not) on weapons and ammo before venturing further into the occupied city.
How Black Ops 6 Borrows From Uncharted
Call of Duty’s main innovation on Naughty Dog’s wide linear areas is how big it feels. They made an open-world map, with all the exploration and side activities that entails, but only intended for you to play in it for an hour or two.
The Open-World Map In Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6
You start off at a base camp and before you can take off in your Humvee, you’re given an electronic map that shows a ton of glowing objectives. Some, like supply caches, are less significant, but others are, essentially, optional missions. You only need to take down three scud missiles to progress, but there are way more points of interest on the map, and the terrain can change significantly depending on where you are, with rivers, mountains, valleys, and caves.
At one point, I army crawled along a river, taking out enemies with a silenced sniper as I went, until I finally got close to the missile and had to go loud. Another skirmish had my squad driving up to the fiery wreckage of a crashed helicopter, then defending it from attackers. There’s a decent amount I didn’t see, too, because this was structured like an open world and I only had time to do the “main campaign.”
In a COD campaign that has continually impressed me with its open-ended design, this is the most impressive. If Black Ops 6 is any indication of what the next decade of Call of Duty is going to look like, I’ll be back every year.
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