MeinMMO editor Nikolas Hernes was able to talk to 2 developers from gamescom about Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Not only were skins and the Omnimovement a topic, but also Black Ops 2.
As has been known for some time, Black Ops 7 is the next installment in the Call of Duty
series. Unlike the major competitor Battlefield 6, the new title focuses on futuristic influences and quite fast gameplay.
At gamescom 2025, I was able to talk with developers behind Black Ops 7 and discussed not only sources of inspiration, skins, and the zombie mode, but also a surreal sequence that I can’t forget after 13 years.
I was able to speak with the following developers:
- Miles Leslie, Associate Creative Director at Treyarch.
- Natalie Pohorski, Lead Narrative Producer at Raven Software.
Black Ops 2 as a source of inspiration and a beloved title for the community
MeinMMO: When I think of the Call of Duty series, I always have special memories of Black Ops 2. And my friends feel the same way. Why do you think BO2 is such a special game for many CoD players?
Miles Leslie: Oh, I like this question. Yes, I have worked on every single Black Ops. I have been with Treyarch since World at War. And I can tell you that this game was something special even in the studio because between World at War and Black Ops 1, we as a team gained so much experience that we really got into the groove. And with Black Ops 2, we put so much energy and confidence into this dynamic that it really manifested in the game.
And also our knowledge of what to do and what not to do. And what it means to develop a Black Ops game. I believe we really worked that out in Black Ops 2. And we had so much fun developing it. And that’s what’s special about having fun internally and thinking: Oh yes, we have to release it too.
And then you go out and people react so positively to it. I believe it was just the perfect moment for it. And since then, we’ve carried that momentum and the insights from fans into every game and constantly try to develop and deliver something new.
MeinMMO: Yes, when I talk to my friends about Call of Duty, it’s always about Black Ops 2 to this day. In the first trailers, the cinematic sequences were only or at least mostly about AI and robotics, which is a big topic today. Are there any inspirations from real life or movies for the story?
Natalie Pohorski: Yes, I think we are heavily inspired by the zeitgeist of human experience. We knew that 2035 would be our setting, so there’s an evolution of technology that we see today. We were already in Black Ops [2] in 2025, so we had already established some things in that world.
So when we looked at what technology might look like in 2035, there were some unknowns and some knowns, and we tried to find a good balance. The Guild is our technology company, and often they find themselves in a sort of gray area. You wonder: What exactly are they trying to achieve here? And Emma Kagan and David Mason and his team often argue about how to handle the situation.
Surreal elements in the story
MeinMMO: One more thing I found really cool were these fragments of the broken mind
. How do you try to express that not just visually but also in gameplay?
Miles Leslie: Yes, that was an important part. In Black Ops 7 – and I believe you’re already a fan, you saw it in Black Ops 2 – we’re always trying to find ways to deliver the unexpected. At the center of this story is David Mason, and we wanted to return to Black Ops 2 to tell the aftermath of the events surrounding Raul Menendez and David Mason, and now was the right time for it.
And so you return 10 years later. The world was still somewhat broken after Raul Menendez’s first attack. Then he appears again, and the world goes into turmoil, and David Mason must confront his own decisions and regrets. And then it was about how that manifests in gameplay, not just in terms of the story, but also in the locations and the gameplay and how we can weave it all together.
And there are many mechanics with these hallucinations, the fears that also manifest, which you can use in all the various missions where they occur. There are even some gear and abilities that rely on that. There are a lot of these mixes.
Natalie Pohorski: And regarding the characters, we are introducing a co-op mode, right? This way you can experience the story either alone or with up to four players while taking on the role of these characters. You embark on a journey with each of them. While the story revolves around David Mason, each of them has made decisions in their past that now take center stage. And you as a player accompany them.
MeinMMO: Will you try to express it in multiplayer mode too?
Miles Leslie: Yes, that’s what excites us: the multiplayer maps and the co-op campaign because we visit the same locations and draw from moments in the campaign to create multiplayer maps. So it’s 2035, and there’s a bit of mind-bending [around changing consciousness]. And we also use this with some gear where we are also dealing with mind-bending. This gives you a glimpse of multiplayer mode and the co-op campaign.
Some mind-bending sequences can be seen in the first gameplay trailer:
No mode should feel disconnected
MeinMMO: A question for me. I love playing CoD games with friends on the couch. Will there be a split-screen for the co-op campaign or for zombies?
Miles Leslie: Oh yes, no split-screen. Yes, everything is online, basically, and connected with all your friends.
MeinMMO: You talked in the past about the possibility of unlocking everything in each mode for every mode. How do you try to balance that? So that [people] don’t just play this one mission to fully unlock the Battle Pass?
Miles Leslie: Yes, no, good question. And we have designers who really focus on overall progress throughout the game. It has to feel fair, as you said, but also fair that you feel rewarded for the time you spend there.
And that was an important part of it. As Natalie said, we now have a game so interconnected that we wanted to guide players through the different areas, basically through discoverability. I think there have always been these barriers where you thought, “I don’t want to lose my progress when I try out the story or play zombies.” That is no longer the case. You can move freely in the game and continue your global progression and weapon progression. That was very important to us. It’s still balanced.
You can’t cheat it. You can’t bypass it. But you’ll be rewarded for your time, that’s really the key.
MeinMMO: An interesting topic was, in my opinion, the last campaign mission. [Miles Leslie interjects: Endgame
] Endgame, yes. Will it be updated continuously to keep the experience varied for players who really enjoy this endgame mode?
Miles Leslie: Yes, we are not yet talking about our plans after release. But we are already planning how to support the game and do some fun things together with the fans.
The Omnimovement
MeinMMO: As for gameplay mechanics, I think one of the most important aspects of BO6 was the Omnimovement. Are there any aspects regarding that where you think you went too far or not far enough?
Miles Leslie: Yes, because we developed Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 in parallel, each game had its own identity, and we emphasized that. But we knew we wanted to introduce Omnimovement.
We implemented that with Black Ops 6. The feedback was really positive. And then of course you use these insights internally, but also for the players, and consider how to realign them. We also knew we wanted to add wall-running in Black Ops 7. And that brought about this realignment.
We have experience with advanced movement, right? Black Ops 3. And it was very important to us that the combat fits within the framework. You don’t want players to leave the game because they have to jump too high or too low. And so, there’s this constant iteration where it’s not frustrating for either side, right? You don’t want to feel frustrated when using it, and you also don’t want to feel frustrated when it’s used against you. So we wanted to realign that.
But beyond that, the most important insight for us was that players want more options to express themselves in the game. The Omnimovement allowed them to do that, but we wanted to take it a step further.
So let’s drop the Tac Sprint, but allow you to toggle it on if you want. This way you have more choices on how you want to play and more options to really engage in combat.
MeinMMO: Were there any weapons or gadgets in the past that you didn’t think would be particularly powerful, but became really good through the Omnimovement?
Miles Leslie: Yes, I think that’s the beauty of Omni. Let me give you a perfect example. For me, it revitalizes content that has always existed. Semtex. That has always been there, right? It’s a dinosaur, it’s been in every single one.
But the beauty of Omnimovement was that if I wanted to jump out of a window, I could perform a 360-degree omni-movement backward and then throw a Semtex behind me into a window, and that for the first time, because it sticks, otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible, right? And thus it takes something and refreshes it in interesting ways. Now you can combine that with wall-jumping, where some of these other things go, you will breathe new life into them when you discover how to use them in the maps, in the campaign, in zombies, and all these things.
MeinMMO: An aspect you are surely often asked about is SBMM [Skill Based Matchmaking]. Are there considerations to introduce a special mode with SBMM or the regular mode? [This means a separate mode with or without SBMM]
Miles Leslie: It’s a topic that comes up repeatedly, and we have nothing to do with SBMM, so I think they [the PR contact] can give you the contacts of the people who deal with that.
The zombie mode and the transit map from Black Ops 2
MeinMMO: Yes, one aspect I love about Black Ops, Black Ops 1, and Black Ops 2 is the zombie mode. And there were always these crazy maps like the moon or the Oval Office in Black Ops 1. Can you tell us something about the new maps?
Miles Leslie: Yes, so what excites me most about the zombie side is that it is the largest RPG map, a round-based zombie map, right? And we were really inspired, you talked about Black Ops 2, right? We were inspired by Transit. Do you remember Transit [a map in Black Ops 2], with the bus and the rides to all these places? We wanted to take that idea and then, as we always do, turn it on its head.
What happens if you could drive around? What happens if you could drive over zombies? What happens if you were shuffled through all these different locations? But they aren’t just normal places. Now you will be in the Dark Ether for the first time. We let players enter the Dark Ether and discover all the secrets, all the story elements that couldn’t be uncovered before, and that is really exciting.
The story is crazy, right? Zombie stories are already crazy, and the team thought, let’s make it even crazier. But that doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible and you can’t understand it. It’s still very accessible, but it has so many layers that are really exciting.
MeinMMO: Do you have favorite zombie maps?
Miles Leslie: How dare you? If I give you an answer, I’ll basically offend someone. No, you know what? I will answer it differently. It’s because I’ve been around since World at War.
My fondest memory is when the zombies were brought to life. I remember the team. We were just working on it on the side, and it was something we did to relax, which is why it is so special to me that something that was just fun became something that so many fans love.
It’s as if we have the responsibility to push that forward, and I look back on that moment and then look at Black Ops 7 and think: It’s so great that we continue to push that forward. That’s what’s special about it for me.
MeinMMO: Yes, I really liked the zombie mode in Dead Ops. How did you approach this modern version of Dead Ops? I believe you said I could unlock things for the other modes in Dead Ops too? How do you go about that since it’s a different genre?
Miles Leslie: I mean, for us, as Natalie already hinted, since the game is so interconnected, it was the right time to bring Dead Ops back because it’s such a shared experience.
We want to achieve that discoverability we talked about. Dead Ops has always been more of a niche product, right? Not all fans were aware of it, and so we thought, since it’s now so easy to try out all the different game modes, maybe now is the right time to make DO [Dead Ops] accessible to a wider audience and attract more fans to it, like you, because once they hold those two weapons in their hands, they will fall in love with the game, and we also know that there are barriers where an MP player might say, “I can’t because I have to grind.”
No worries, you can achieve your global progress in DO, and so you can gain new fans in all these different modes.
Absurd end-credit scene and the campaign
MeinMMO: When I think of the campaign in Black Ops 2, I always have this wow moment in mind, I believe it was at the end of the campaign, where there was this strange sequence where you played rock music, I believe. [Miles Leslie interjects: Oh, the credits! I have fond memories of that.]
It was so weird, but it was so much fun. I would love to ask why or how this idea was implemented?
Miles Leslie: I’ve never been asked that before. Back then it was like that, and this goes back to what I said: The team was so confident and had so much fun that we wondered how we could have even more fun and express that in the game to show players how much fun we had developing the game. This is how the idea emerged to do something over the top during the credits, and we implemented that, and that’s the outcome you saw.
The following sequence is meant:
MeinMMO: Regarding the mission structure of the campaign, the campaigns over the years have had a very linear structure. You can choose this path, you can choose this gadget. We talked about the “Fractured Mind” sequences, are there any other innovations regarding an approach to the structure?
Natalie Pohorski: I think the variety of these missions greatly depends on how you play them, how you play as a team, and how you decide to approach them. For example, you could say, “Oh, maybe I’ll approach it this way and you take care of this thing,” just like with that strategic level that plays a role in that. And then there are these diverse locations, each providing a unique gameplay incentive. I think this element, where you learn a bit about the world again but also connect your characters, contributes a lot to the variety that comes from the moment-to-moment gameplay and these unique places because it’s like a roller coaster, right? We go through these real locations, we go through Avalon, the future, and the past.
Miles Leslie: And then regarding the structure: It’s linear, and there’s no hub you go to. Each mission is a linear roller coaster in terms of structure. You work your way straight through the campaign.
MeinMMO: Will the weapons and gadgets be leveled in the missions that don’t belong to the endgame?
Miles Leslie: Yes, the entire campaign.
MeinMMO: I think Cold War is a good example of how it was worth replaying the missions because there was so much to discover. I have fond memories of the Berlin level.
Miles Leslie: Oh man, old school. We just talked about that. I love it. Yes, and that was a big advantage, right? We spent so much time developing these stories, and we want players to never feel like they’re not progressing and that they are not rewarded for their time. And this is where the co-op campaign comes in, where you are rewarded. Global progress, weapon progress, just everything.
MeinMMO: How do you handle the difficulty level of the campaign? I personally preferred to play Black Ops 2 on the highest difficulty options. Are there ideas on how to set the difficulty apart more from the other options, aside from just dealing more damage or taking less damage?
Miles Leslie: Yes, in this game there are no difficulty levels. We wanted to optimize the player experience so that you can dive in right away, but it’s integrated into the missions if you know what I mean. And in this roller coaster, we will challenge you on how you approach it, but it also allowed us, as Natalie said, that you have the option to play in co-op mode, and you can assemble a squad or play with friends, so there’s the opportunity to devise a strategy on how to approach these missions, and it gets harder with more players. So there’s the option if you want it to be harder, you can team up with other players and try to fight your way through.
The big topic: Skins
MeinMMO: Yes, and my last question, which I’m sure you get asked often, concerns skins for the multiplayer mode and the other game modes. How do you select specific skin themes or collaboration skins?
Miles Leslie: Yes, definitely. So, first of all, our approach in this whole matter is that we have so many fans, right? Millions of fans, and they all want something different, and for us, it’s important to serve the largest number of our fans and to give them what they want in the game. And when the team deals with collaborations and all these things, that’s really the goal and intent. We have heard the feedback and take it seriously. It’s therefore important for us to maintain the tone and theme in Black Ops 7 while also supporting our large fan base.
MeinMMO: Are there any favorite collaborations you would love to do with this futuristic theme?
Miles Leslie: I love this question, but I can’t answer it. Because if I said it, someone else would get it.
MeinMMO: Thank you.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 will be released on November 14, 2025, and faces significant competition this year with Battlefield 6. Both games take different approaches in many aspects. MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski explored two completely different games at gamescom: Shooter goodbye: Why two gamescom hits prove that the gaming industry still underestimates women as players
